Hello everyone, I'm Mischa. Inspired by yesterday's live event, I wrote this piece right afterward.
I've been on a weight loss journey since late 2021 and I've lost 20 kilograms so far. I've reached 11,5% bodyfat, but I'm working to lowering that percentage. I still have quite a bit of abdominal fat which I would like to lose for health reasons, but also because I want to reach a lean physique.
Dipping into those last few kilograms of fat have produced the strongest cravings which led to some poor choices.
During my weight loss journey I have managed to get rid of a few Mischa's. They are all forms of Evening Bryan who have progressively been refined through my weight loss journey:

Lazy Mischa who refuses to track calories when times get tough
Innaccurate Mischa who skips weighing certain foods to fool himself into a caloric deficit
Sugar Mischa who loved to eat sweet foods and indulge in chocolate and cake
Fast Food Mischa who would always eat at a fast food restaurant when he was in the city
Potato Chips Binge Mischa who for no reason would walk to the supermarket and buy a bag of Doritos and a bag of chocolate and go wild, leading to shame, regret, and weight gain

I've come far. I am consistently eating a whole foods plant based diet without refined carbohydrates or sugar. I've been vegan for 6 years (with some periods of vegetarianism here and there), and I've been tracking calories since I started my weight loss journey using YAZIO.
I never binge on junk food any more. These days, cheating consists of eating more nuts, raisins, fruits or peanut butter than my daily caloric budget allows. I binge on whole, healthy foods, but they can still lead to stalls in weight loss. Calories will always be calories.
A few weeks ago I came across Blueprint and it has been a revolution. I'm starting with the nutrition and created a modified version for myself. Instead of always deciding in the moment what I wanted to eat, I've started to plan my nutrition meticulously and make these decisions beforehand. Leaving these decisions to my Autonomous Self has been a liberating experience so far. When I have my nutrition in order, I will get some blood tests done and start working on supplementation.
My current version of Evening Mischa convinces me that the Blueprint dinners (Beet salad, sweet potato) are not enough calories to last me through the night and to fuel my morning run, thus he convinces me to eat a few handfuls of nuts or have a rye cracker with peanut butter, which always turns into 3 or 4, easily adding 500 calories to my carefully crafted regime and thus inhibiting weight loss for that day.
Normal Mischa knows very well that there is no problem with the dinners. In fact, he knows that they are optimized to be easily digestible so the stomach is nice and empty when it's time for an optimal sleep. But Evening Mischa has shown up a couple of times last week and won the battle, and I've had enough.
I'm hereby firing Evening Mischa's authority to make decisions about my food. The system is in place, everything is prepared and planned.
It is time to let my Autonomous Self take over from here on out.
I started writing this without much forethought, and instantly some doubts arise. Evening Mischa panics. But there is really no point in waiting any longer. I want to be in a caloric deficit continuously and keep losing weight.
I want an optimal body.
I want to live long and healthy.
I want to be rid of all the fat.
Present Mischa wants this.
Future Mischa wants this.
The only person who does not want this is Evening Mischa who shows up 1 hour after dinner convincing me that I need to eat a few more handfuls of nuts or a cracker with peanut butter because I don't feel full enough, or because I need energy for my run tomorrow.
If I start losing weight more than 0,4kg a week, I will increase calories. There is no need for interference. The system will handle it.
I don't need Evening Mischa to meddle with these affairs.
The Data Steers Everything.

I knew that Ray liked to party, but this was a little too much. He was on the dance floor with a spaced out look in his eye, dancing like he’d just stepped out of some 1980s music video. The people around him didn’t seem all that put off, but they were probably almost as high as he was.

Almost, being the operative word in that sentence.

Look, I get it. I like to party too from time to time. But you gotta be smart about it. You gotta know where your limit is, and I don’t think that Ray knew his limit.

***

I’d never actually been to this part of town before, but hey, there’s a first time for everything, right? Ray and I had just closed the deal of our careers and figured a little celebration was in order. I’d initially figured we’d just have a few drinks and maybe get laid. But when he broke out the molly, I wasn’t going to say no and the next hour or so after that was fucking killer.

Then we’d ran into that dude at the bar.

This guy was… well, he looked like he was on drugs, not like he sold them. He had messy hair, a grin that said: ‘I just farted!’ and I’m pretty sure he was covered in glitter. He was wearing a hot pink suit, with a neon blue bowtie, on top of a regular black tie. Yeah. Two ties.
Anyways, he must’ve realized that we were also high off our asses, because as we took a seat at the bar he came right over to us, wearing that ‘I just farted’ grin and chatted us up.
“Hey man! You two having a good time tonight?”
“Fuck yeah we are!” Ray replied, “Fucking love your getup, man!”
“Aww hell yeah, brother!”

The Glitter Man went in for a high five and Ray reciprocated.
“You having a party?” He asked.
“Yeah, just closed a fuckin BIG ASS client. Fuck yeah, we’re having a party!”
“Oh man, then I’ve got just the thing for you! Check this shit out.”

Glitter Man reached into his suit jacket and took out a gunmetal gray cigarette case. He opened it, showing us a collection of small neon blue pills inside.
“These right here? These are gonna kick your night up a whole other notch,” He promised. “You want in?”

Ray stared down at the pills, and I could see his eyes widening like a kid who'd just walked into a candy shop.
“Fuck yeah, I want in!” He said with barely a moment of hesitation, and that is when I stepped in.
“Wait up, the fuck are these?” I asked. “Molly?”

“Nah, man. It’s a new thing. Been calling it Blue Lagoon. Trust me, this is the shit! One pill… and you’re never gonna forget tonight. I got a buddy who swears this shit lets him see into other worlds.”
“How much?” Ray asked.
“Tell you what, man. I’ll hook you both up for ten bucks a pop!”

Ray started reaching for his wallet, but I stopped him.
“Dude, we don’t even know what this shit is!” I said.
“C’mon, loosen your asshole and live a little, Geoff!” Ray replied, pulling away from me. “Sorry about my friend, man. He just needs a few more drinks.”
“Hey, no worries!”

Ray handed over twenty bucks and Glitter Man dropped two pills into his hand, before taking off.
“See you around!” He said, and that was it.
“You in this with me?” Ray asked, offering me one of the pills.

I didn’t answer, so he started making a ticking clock noise.
“Times almost up…” He sang, “You gonna get the stick out of your ass and party like a man, or are you gonna pussy out?”

I took the pill, sighed and put it in my mouth.
“ATTA FUCKIN’ BOY!” Ray cried and slapped me on the back, before taking his own pill. “Thought for sure you were gonna go all fuckin’ soft on me!” He teased, “Go full Mr. Mackey from South Park. ‘Drugs are bad, M’kay!’” He laughed at his own bad impression of the show.

He turned back to the bar, reaching into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes.
“Hey, my buddy and I are gonna have two dry martinis!” He said, “Dirty as you can fuckin’ make them!”

He popped one of the cigarettes into his mouth, and that was around the time I noticed that the world around me seemed… off…

I blinked slowly, looking around at the people in the bar. I could’ve sworn that I saw flowers blooming on their skin, but it was hard to get a look at them. They only ever seemed to be there when I wasn’t looking directly at them. From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something moving behind the dance floor. Some tall, wandering shadow although I couldn’t get a good look at it either. I think that it might have looked at me, with eyes on stalks like some kind of slug. But I couldn’t be sure. It disappeared completely when I tried to look at it head on.

I looked over at the bartender, a relatively plain looking brunette. She glanced at me briefly as she shook our martinis, and I swore that I could see flowers growing out of her hair, wreathing her head in vibrant colors that were impossible to really describe.

I looked over at Ray, and he was staring at her too. I’m not sure what he was seeing, but whatever it was, it had to be beautiful! The man beside me had roses growing out of his eyes and whenever he laughed, I heard a chorus of angels singing. He was holding a giant chameleon that he kept petting, and it was looking at me.
“Think this is DMT?” It asked.
“Who the hell knows?” Said the man. His head was mostly flowers now.

Ray absentmindely handed me my martini, and I took a sip. It tasted like heaven. It tasted like a fresh donut, right out of the oven with the glaze still melty and warm. I wanted to cry from just how beautiful it was!

A hazy mist swirled around me, lifting me up to new levels of paradise. As Ray and I went to the dance floor to join the party, I felt at one with the universe.

A beautiful girl with flawless dark skin danced with me, as we danced I realized that my place in the cosmos was here! Right here!

And then I saw it, really, truly saw it. The grand tapestry of all things. It was right there in her eyes. Right there for me to see. An expanse of events, all seemingly unconnected save for the fact that they contributed to some great, glorious final outcome. A perfect future for all mankind, for all that existed beyond mankind. Hundreds of lives, thousands, millions, billions… perhaps even an infinite amount, all moving parts in an enormous machine, working toward the completion of a single function. Pawns in a grand game whose outcome had been determined outside of time. Every little piece would in it’s own way, fall into place exactly when it needed to, at the moment it needed to, each one carefully guided by a grand design, that operated exclusively through others. An outside force, that pushed them to trigger the events that would lead to the favorable outcome, and arguably, the only outcome, but there really was no big picture to be seen. The end result was something far less finite. It was a state of being. A higher state. A type of perfection that went beyond perfection. Oh, the knowledge of it burned so bright in my skull!

I hugged the girl that I was dancing with and we kissed. She told me that she was proud of me before promptly dissolving into a cloud of butterflies, and as I watched them fly away I laughed, knowing that they too were part of the fabric of the universe! I admired the crowd dancing around me, basking in their radiance. They seemed to go on forever and I could see every aspect of their lives in each of them. Their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations. I loved each of them, and looked into each of their souls, looking at what the greatest possible version of them might be.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow. The same one from before, possibly? I looked at it, watching as it surveyed the crowd. Despite its darkness, I could see its shiny white teeth and beady eyes. The eyes shifted to me for a moment where they lingered, but the shadow didn’t move.

Water flowed around me, distracting me from the shadow again. Fish swam past me, daring me to chase them and I obliged. They promised to take me to a mermaid and teach me how to live in the sea with them. Then I promptly threw up all over some poor girl who was just trying to dance, and after I apologized to her, I tried to explain to the fish that I just needed to sit down for a moment, but by then they’d already turned into seagulls and were just casually shitting on the dude they were sitting on.

I stumbled over to one of the booths and collapsed into it, trying to catch my breath.
“Would you like some cheese, sir.” Asked the sentient platter of cheese on the table underneath me.
“My name is Brie!” Said the brie.

I stared down at the platter, before picking up a cube of cheddar and trying to eat it. For some reason it tasted like a napkin. This was because it was actually a napkin.

My skin felt cold, my hands were shaking a little. The music was way too loud and my mouth was dry.

I looked up.

There were no fantastical creatures around. No fish, no seagulls, no flowers, no talking cheese. Just a normal nightclub.

My head was kind of throbbing.

I took out my phone to look at it. It’d been about an hour since Ray and I had gotten our martinis. Had time really passed that quickly?

Speaking of which, where was Ray?

I looked around for him, before finding him still on the dance floor, dancing like a goddamn maniac. He didn’t seem to be coming down the way that I was. Maybe I’d puked some of the drug up when I’d vomited and it had cut my trip short?

Speaking of which, what the hell was that? DMT or something? I was pretty sure that I’d just hallucinated everything that had just happened. Those had to be hallucinations, right?

I shook my head, before trying to ground myself in the moment. I still felt dizzy and weak. I ended up going to the bar to just get some water before finding another seat where I could rest for a while while Ray partied his little heart out… and after another hour, I started thinking that maybe something was wrong with him.

I noticed that he only seemed to take a break once, and when he did, it was only to head to the bar to get another hard drink. While he was there, I noticed him slipping a familiar gunmetal gray cigarette case out of his pocket. He downed some pills from inside and chased them with a generous sip of whatever he’d gotten. Then, swaying like an idiot he put the cigarette case back in his pocket and lumbered back to the party.

That idiot.

He must’ve bought the whole fucking case off of that weird guy we’d seen earlier! It was one thing to try some weird new drug like a dumbass, but this? This was insane!

I considered going up to him to ask him just what the hell he’d been thinking, but given how out of it he probably was, I knew there wouldn’t be much point to it.

So I resolved to just watch him, and make sure he got home safely like a responsible friend/co-worker. I didn’t really want a repeat of the Vancouver Incident where I’d had to drag him crying like a baby out of a convenience store at 4 AM because they were out of gummy bears. (He’d promised me that it would never happen again and up until now I’d held him to that.)

I guess if nothing else, Ray didn’t seem to be violent or anything while he was high. The bouncers in this place looked pretty tough, and I really didn’t want to have to watch them beat the crap out of him. And it wasn’t until around 2 AM when the party was dying down that I started to notice Ray acting strange. Well… strange compared to the way he’d been acting for most of the night.

He’d seemed more unstable on his feet and seemed less interested in dancing now. He kept looking around frantically, and I saw him take out the cigarette case to look for more pills.

I figured that this was probably the time to get up and stop him.
“Hey, hey… relax, man,” I said, coming up to him and stopping him from taking more of those pills. “Take it easy, alright?”

He looked over at me with wide, bloodshot eyes as I spoke to him.
“Geoff?” He asked in a small voice.
“Yeah, it’s me. Put the pills down. How many of those have you had?”

I took the case from him and looked inside, only to feel my stomach sink a little when I realized that it was empty.

It suddenly occurred to me that I probably should have been watching him closer, to make sure he didn’t take all of the goddamn mystery pills, and I quietly kicked myself for not thinking about that sooner!
“Well shit… you feeling okay, bud?” I asked.
“Fraid…” He slurred, “Universe is… wrong…”

His eyes suddenly widened, filled with a horror that I’m not sure I could properly describe.
“THERE!”

He pointed at something over my shoulder and I looked.
Behind me, sat the unknowable terror that lurks in all places where something ceases to exist and only absence remains… absolutely fucking nothing.

“Maybe we need to get you to a hospital…” I murmured.
“No hospital! N-no hospital!” He said, “Please… Geoff… j-just get me somewhere safe! Please!”

Yeah, I was definitely getting him to a hospital. I’d already made enough dumb decisions for the night. I didn’t really feel up to making one more.
“Alright, let’s get you someplace safe,” I said with a sigh. I took out my phone to call us a cab. “C’mon, Ray.”

He grabbed at me like a scared child as I led him out of the club, jumping at every shadow that we saw on the way out.

***

“So what exactly did he take?” The nurse asked me. She had a sort of deadpan, matter of fact tone and barely even looked at me, while Ray screamed bloody murder in the next room. I gotta say, I wasn’t exactly beaming with pride as I confessed to the nurse that Ray and I had partied in defiance of every 1980s anti-drug PSA we’d grown up with. But it needed to be done.

“I think the guy called it Blue Lagoon,” I said. “I don’t know how many he had, but it was a lot.”
“Blue Lagoon?” The nurse asked, “That’s a new one.”
“Yeah I’ve never heard of it either. I took one of the pills too,” I said. “I was seeing shit for about an hour before I came down. Like, mermaids, talking cheese, flowers… that kinda stuff.”
“So it’s a hallucinogen?” She asked.
“Yeah, I’ve never done DMT but I was thinking it might be similar to that? I don’t know.”
“We’ll take some bloodwork shortly, see if we can’t figure out some more,” She said before leaving me.

I quietly went back to Ray’s room, and watched as he fought against the restraints that bound him to the bed.
His face was bright red from all the screaming and he was sobbing like a little kid as he struggled.
“IT’S COMING! IT’S COMING FOR ME!”

I didn’t bother trying to talk to him. He was still pretty out of it, and he’d been screaming about something coming for him.
“GEOFF!” He sobbed, looking at me. I saw him trying to reach for my hand, “Don’t… don’t leave.. Don’t let him take me, Geoff… please… you gotta let me out of here, YOU GOTTA LET ME RUN!”
“Relax, you’re gonna be okay,” I promised. “I’m gonna stay right here with you.”
The words didn’t seem to do much for him. He just kept fighting and sobbing.

At around 4 in the morning, I finally slept. It was in a chair in one of the waiting rooms, since Ray was still screaming too loud for me to sleep in his room, but I slept. I figured that when I woke up, Ray would have sobered up a bit and we could both go home.

I was wrong.

When I woke up, there was a police officer standing over me, gently shaking my shoulder. My first thought was that the nurse we’d talked to had reported us for taking drugs (which I thought they weren’t supposed to do!) but no.

He just wanted to ask me a few questions about Ray.

My memories of talking to the police are hazy. I don’t entirely remember how the conversation went, but I knew that they’d asked me about where we’d been that night. They asked me if Ray had gotten into any fights, or if I knew anyone who might want to kill him. It wasn’t until around halfway through the conversation that I figured out that Ray was dead.

I never saw the body. It was covered when they wheeled it out of the room.

But I saw the blood.

Good God… all that fucking blood… more than I thought could fit in a person.

From what I heard, none of the nurses saw what happened. At some point, the screaming had just stopped and when they’d come in to check his vitals again, they were greeted by the gory mess that used to be Ray.

After the police talked to me, I didn’t hear a lot about the investigation into Ray’s death. To my knowledge, they never identified any suspects. Hell, I don’t even think they’re entirely sure about what killed him. I heard somebody say it could have been some kind of animal attack, but I think that got shot down pretty quickly, since where the fuck would the animal have come from?

The police cleared me as a suspect in the case pretty quickly, since I’d been asleep when it had happened and there were plenty of witnesses who could confirm I was in the waiting room, passed out.

I imagine that they talked to some people at the nightclub we’d been at too, but I don’t think anything ever came of that. I’d been watching Ray for most of the night. He’d been dancing and having a good time. The only time I hadn’t been keeping an eye on him was when I was hallucinating, and I highly doubt he picked a fight with someone who’d be willing to break into a hospital to murder him during the hour that I was indisposed! There was literally no logical reason he should have died the way he did! There wasn’t a single person I could possibly think of who could have killed him!

Person being the operative word here.

Before he died, Ray had been screaming about something coming for him. My memories of the hallucinations I had after I took that pill are a little hazy, but I remember the shadowy thing I glimpsed among the crowd a few times.

I remember the pitch that the guy who’d sold us the pills had made:
‘I got a buddy who swears this shit lets him see into other worlds!’

Call me crazy… but I’m wondering just how true that pitch was. Maybe not everything we saw after taking those pills was a hallucination. Maybe they let us see something… touch something… and they let that something touch us right back.

I don’t know for sure. But that’s the closest thing to an answer that I’ve got. Either way, I’ve been sober ever since that night and I think I’m going to stay that way.

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/ReddXReads/comments/13lfqkw/vulturebeard_the_legbeard_that_ruined_roomies_fo Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/ReddXReads/comments/13u79ht/vulturebeard_bad_roomies_part_2/
^{Hi again, it’s the bunny. I’ve just barely stepped into Reddx’s discord, but Ezekial is still posting this saga for me so thank you, Z.}
Trigger warning: This will deal with a lot of aspects relating to child neglect (and possible abuse) and Kid being ignored or taking the brunt of Vulture’s anger. Sorry for the spoiler as well, but I think we saw this coming, too (especially if you’ve seen Z talk in the discord). Don’t push yourself to read if you’re not okay with these concepts.
The Cast List
Bunny (author): 33, female. Recovering lifelong doormat slowly building a spine. Neuro spicy gym rat with major depressive disorder, general anxiety disorder, and most recently diagnosed with ADHD. Unfortunately, very familiar with surviving trauma.
Z (poster): My partner. 31, nonbinary (they/them), also neuro spicy with depression, anxiety, OCD, BPD, autism, and also familiar with lifelong trauma.
One Liner Beard (OLB): 33, male, neuro spicy with ADHD and depression. His nickname here comes from the fact that in messenger, he usually has one-word replies like “oof” or “mmm” as an acknowledgement he had seen the message but has nothing further to contribute.
VultureBeard (Vulture): 30, female, neuro spicy and disabled with multiple conditions. She has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, POTs (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), autism, depression, anxiety, chronic migraines, but also possibly a list of things that may or may not be real. The star of this unfortunate circus. Her name comes from how she always pops up when I’m cooking food, complaining about how hungry is and how she’s unable to cook.
Kid: 3. Female. OLB and Vulture’s child. Likely neuro spicy like we all are, but she’s also only 3 years old. Slightly speech delayed and not potty trained yet.
Take a deep breath. Now take another one. This chapter will likely make you mad.

Chapter Three: “Do You Want Bologna?” Or, Vulture as a Parent
Imagine this: it’s eight in the morning and you’re cozy in bed. The blankets are warm, and you hit snooze on your early alarm so you can sleep in before you have to get up.
Your peace is shattered by a toddler crying, followed by the screech of, “WHAT!” or “GET DOWN FROM THERE!”
Yeah, welcome to The Life.
Vulture has a messed-up sleep schedule. It’s partially because Kid doesn’t sleep soundly through the night, but it’s also because Vulture’s sleep schedule is essentially flipped backwards to where she stays up all night and wants to sleep during the day. Vulture says it’s “insomnia” but sometimes she’s up late gaming with Discord friends or watching anime. I couldn’t tell you which issue it was day by day. Sometimes if I go to sleep late, I hear Kid crying from her room because she had night terrors or had potty troubles. Sometimes I hear OLB and Vulture awake shuffling between rooms in the hallway.
Because of this, Vulture and mornings don’t mesh well. Kid is usually put in her room for bedtime around 7 PM, usually with her tablet to keep her company and either give her something to watch, or to play white noises for sleeping. Kid does not have a real sleep routine as well. She’s just kind of shut in her room. Sometimes there’s a bit of a routine like winding her down with chocolate milk and giving her a countdown of “okay, ten more minutes and then bedtime,” but for the most part she just does not want to go to bed. Bedtimes are met with a lot of crying, and the beardy parents telling us that she will be upset for a bit.
Kid has an attempted daily schedule, if Vulture is awake enough. Theoretically:

9 AM: Awake and watching TV while Vulture is on her computer in the same room
1 PM: In the room for naptime (but it’s usually play time)
4 PM: Free to run around while dad is home
7 PM: Bedtime (but she’s usually playing then too)

But a lot of times, that schedule gets thrown out of whack depending on if Vulture gets up on time. When she sleeps in, Kid is in her room from 7 PM to 1 PM. Sometimes Kid will make a fuss to make Vulture get up earlier than 1 PM, and Vulture will be grouchy because she “went to bed at four in the morning” because she either had “insomnia” (read: gaming or watching anime) or because Kid wouldn’t sleep. Or Vulture will be up to take care of Kid and make sure she is in a clean pull up and has eaten. Then she shuts her into her room and goes back to sleep. Sometimes if Kid is too much of a handful, Vulture will say, “It’s 12:45. That’s close enough to 1.” And put Kid in the room because that’s close enough to nap time.
Sometimes because Kid won’t go to sleep, she’ll still be up at 9 PM and that breaks her schedule too. A lot of times, it works out that OLB is the “fun” parent while he’s home, because he’s up at 4 AM to leave for work by 6 and doesn’t come home until between 4 or 5 PM. Then she spends time with him while he’s home.
There’s also a child lock on the inside of Kid’s bedroom door, those doorknob covers that you have to push and turn, so she can’t open the door and wander around unsupervised. I was originally the one who suggested the child lock, back when she was younger, and they didn’t have the secondary child gate they currently do now that’s stored in the garage. Since then, with her potty training and Vulture’s likewise awful sleep schedule, I’ve suggested more than once that they take the door handle blocker off and put up the second kiddy gate they have to block the living room and kitchen off, so she can get up if she needs to, but the child lock still remains. At most, she would have access to their room, since it doesn’t have a kiddy lock on it. Me and Z’s bedroom has a child lock on it, as well as the bathroom door. She could freely wander between her room and her parents’ room that way.
I hear Kid playing in her room by herself a lot, squealing and having fun and playing pretend. Or moving her furniture around. And no, the furniture is not secured to the wall, so she can move her bed around the room. I’ve also told OLB and Vulture they needed to make sure she can’t topple it and chain it to the wall but, yeah, that hasn’t been dealt with.
When Kid really needs attention, she will cry and wail. And I mean wail. The two beardy parents don’t have baby monitors or anything that can hear into her bedroom, so she has to wail loudly enough to be heard through the walls. Luckily, the house has thin walls. Because of her early bedtime, she’s often awake early in the morning. Sometimes Vulture will respond, sometimes Vulture won’t wake up until around noon.
Yes, that means Kid is by herself a lot.
Kid is a bubbly three-year-old. She loves it when Z and I give her attention, which admittingly isn’t as often as I would like to give her. With my own Depression™, I spend so much time fighting to just gather enough mental energy to be a productive human. Despite me wandering in a mental fog, Kid remains a bright spot in my day. I met her when she was a fresh baby bean just barely out of the hospital, and I immediately fell in love. Since then, I’ve seen her grow almost her whole life, except for when they were all in north Texas. She has blue eyes and brown hair that will curl on its own. She loves dinosaurs, Baby Shark, Octonauts, and occasionally whatever anime the parents are watching. Don’t ask me how many times I’ve heard the Baby Shark song. I don’t want it stuck in my head for another solid week.
She used to watch a lot of Ms. Rachel’s Songs For Little videos, because originally Vulture wanted Kid to learn sign language to help communicate. I’ve rarely seen Vulture attempt to upkeep the sign language lessons. She did at one point. I think after Kid started becoming more vocal, the idea was dropped. I have heard some of the familiar videos so often that even I learned the kid’s songs, but I guess that’s also part of the collateral when dealing with kid’s media.
Kid usually exists in a half-dressed state, usually just wearing a pull up and that’s it. Unfortunately, because Vulture is so hard on her tangles when she tries to brush her hair, Kid doesn’t like hair care and will fight being brushed. Her hair used to exist in a perpetual state of being matted with at least one major knot, until Vulture’s mom ended up giving her a bath and getting her to stay still enough to endure the brushing, even with the wailing of a protesting Kid going strong. Her hair was then cut to make it more manageable, and strangely, that fixed a lot of the matting problems.
Kid is let out of her room when Vulture wakes up, usually needing a diaper change. At three years old, Kid is not potty trained yet. Just from what I’ve heard from my bedroom, it sounds like OLB and Vulture are finally starting to step up on potty training, but it’s been an uphill fight. I know a few of my other parent friends have had an extremely hard time potty training their kid. I’m not a parent, so I don’t actually know how challenging it can be. I do know though that it shouldn’t sound like the toilet is some kind of punishment for peeing in her cloth panties that they’re trying to switch her to. Or, that they try to get her to sit on the toilet when she has no interest in it and she ends up throwing a tantrum. Unfortunately, without much context, that’s how some bathroom trips sound.
Kid wears pull-ups to bed and the cloth underwear during the day, or sometimes just pull-ups. They’re trying to teach her how to recognize when her body has the potty urge, which she still doesn’t quite get right now. She has literally peed on the tile floor through her cloth undies. Vulture messaged the house chat once saying, “Kid just lifted her leg while in the rolling chair and peed all over the floor.”
You know. Like a dog.
With the potty-training trouble and Kid only sometimes in pull-ups that can contain her mess, Z and I don’t let her into our room as often as we’d like to, because she doesn’t recognize when she has to go. It sucks, because Kid adores spending time with us and our room has cool animals, like my retired psychiatric service dog and our three ferrets. She loves the ferrets. But if we spend time out in the living room with everyone, Z’s patience tends to have a shorter fuse because they can’t stand Vulture (that’s also another tale I have). We’re also stuck out in the general mess of the living room if we are out there with her. It’s either the general mess that toddlers make, spilled food, and general filth. The best times we’ve had spending time with Kid is just chilling in our room as she ooh’s and ahh’s over the ferrets or watches TV with us. Z and I quote SpongeBob line by line daily, and she has watched some of the show with us.
I feel awful about shutting Kid out so much, when I see the way Vulture interacts with her. On Vulture’s bad days (if you read the previous post, that’s almost every day), she acts like Kid is a chore. She will snap at Kid, act like Kid is choosing to act out of maliciousness and make “tired mom” jokes that sound like she just flat out doesn’t like Kid. When I had liquor in the fridge, Vulture would ask if she could take a shot because, “I need it. She’s trying me today.”
Some choice quotes talking down about the kid:
“I’m being hard on her because she’s not using her words. Like I know she can. She just doesn’t want to.” This was what Vulture said to me after Kid kept trying to get her attention and wouldn’t explain what she wanted. Kid was just making noises at her and getting frustrated. Vulture full on shouted, “WHAT!” at her, then turned to me to try and explain why she shouted.
“This is the bad part about being a mom. She’s not letting me do anything right now.” This was said after Vulture cleaned her desk and was attempting to watch YouTube videos and play her Switch.
On her good days, Vulture will be that kind of smiling parent that does some art activities and engages with Kid in a way that’s more than just screaming. They color together. She offers Kid choices so Kid can have some control over what happens in her day, like, “Do you want bologna or fruit?” It has helped Kid become more vocal and even though she’s still speech delayed, she talks more and has a bigger vocabulary.
The house has a different atmosphere when OLB is home, compared to when Vulture is just watching Kid by herself. I’ve told OLB that I think Vulture is burned out. Her entire life is her disabilities and being a mom. She only has friends on Discord really, and OLB had to push her to start talking to them again just so she had someone to socialize with.
Old Doormat me pitied her at the beginning of our friendship. I tried being her friend. I tried to include her and Kid in a lot of things. My own mental health, my daily obligations, my gym schedule, and just me changing rapidly since 2020 altered my life, exhausted me, and left me unable to deal with Vulture talking a million miles a minute, info dumping about whatever she’s currently doing every single time I run into her. And as I shed my doormat self, I started seeing her clearly.
I told OLB once that if Vulture is truly burned out or if her health problems are causing that much trouble, Kid might need daycare or another caregiver to help. OLB is aware but can’t afford other care. He’s working for bottom of the barrel pay at a full-time job. Most days after work, he just wants to zone out to his own games in front of his computer but has to step in and parent both Vulture and Kid, because Vulture often needs help organizing through executive dysfunction to do something. Or, because she will call for his help.
There was one time where Kid climbed on top of her, and Vulture called for OLB – who was in the same room – to pull Kid off her. There are quite a few times where Vulture calls for OLB for help with Kid, and I’ve heard him say that he’s also busy too. One time he asked, “Why are you asking for my help when you’re closer?”
Z has offered to look after Kid at times because they don’t mind Kid being in our room or just hanging out. She has hung out with us when I also have the mental energy and the room is clean enough to accommodate a toddler crawling on everything. The problem that we both see is that our stepping in isn’t a full solution. She can spend a few hours with us, but ultimately after, she goes right back to Vulture and OLB. Vulture is the one who acts like being a parent is a chore.
There are times that OLB has snapped at Vulture for the way she gets on to Kid, emphasizing, “She’s just a child.” Their parenting styles are like looking at two entirely different planets and trying to find similarities. OLB is very much into the gentle parenting side of Tik Tok. He talks about breaking generational trauma. He’s usually gentle with Kid, explaining why she’s not allowed to do things like stand on top of her highchair or why I’m too busy to play with her as I’m zooming around the house in and out repeatedly some days. He has talked her down from meltdowns and keeps his voice even to where she can’t bounce off him to amplify her tantrums. He spanks her, but as a last resort, and then also talks to her about why the punishment happened. She will wail through everything and likely isn’t fully listening, but ultimately, I see him trying to work with her. He very rarely loses his actual temper with her.
Vulture is the total opposite. She yells at Kid, spanks with no hesitation and doesn’t explain why. One of Kid’s favorite games to play is “Block the door” when I’m trying to get through the house. She will block my bedroom door, cling to me, then circle around me as Vulture or OLB tries to distract her or lure her away by asking “do you want chocolate” or some other treat. Sometimes Kid just likes to play ring-around-the-rosie around my legs, as her parents try to grab her. I try to make it fun and seem like I’m not mad at her, because I’m never actually mad at her for blocking my way. Usually, I’m just in the middle of some arbitrary task or running an errand or coming back from the gym with my one remaining brain cell barely hanging on for dear life. I try to engage with her and play it off as a game because she’s not actually doing anything wrong.
Vulture has lured her away with chocolate and treats, with offers of food, with trying to get her to pick a show to watch. If that fails, she will come and fetch Kid by hand. One time involved yanking her physically off me and spanking her on the bare bottom because Kid was happy playing a game instead of listening.
The bare bottom is a thing, too. Because Kid used to live in soiled diapers for much longer than she was supposed to, she had constant diaper rash that she had to see the doctor for sometimes. She also didn’t want OLB or Vulture to change her diapers and would scream when it was diaper change time. I don’t blame her. The diaper rash hurt, and Vulture wasn’t exactly gentle with changing. Kid bled sometimes with the changings. So now, sometimes Kid will be dressed like Donald Duck in only a top to air out her bottom. Or because now, with the cloth undies, she will pee straight through them, and they just let her air out after.
Kid always smells a bit like pee. So does her room. And her bedding. After I pointed out that her bedding straight out of the dryer smelled like urine, OLB went about cleaning the washing machine with a machine cleaner, and bought scent beads to help cut the smell, after I told him that a little vinegar in the wash load will cut the smells down. Now her bedding doesn’t smell so much like urine, but it’s still there.
Her bedroom frequently smells like a public bathroom. It always looks like her bedroom has been turned upside down, with toys everywhere, her bed pushed to the middle of the room, the mattress on the floor. Books she was given were shredded, even the cardboard ones. There was straight up garbage left in her room because she was given food to eat there that had wrappers. It usually takes Vulture a full day of cleaning to get the room organized when she had the energy to do it, but she usually sanitizes with just a baby wipe, if she does at all. Maybe a pet cleaner sometimes.
There was one time where I was letting the dogs outside and I stepped in a puddle on the tile floor. That was when I realized that it was a pee puddle and Kid’s cloth underwear was dripping. I asked Vulture to clean the puddle up. When she asked to use my steam mop, she didn’t clean the cloth pad after, so when I turned the mop on next, it smelled like hot, steamed urine. I had to clean the mop pad off myself and rinse the pee out of it. When Kid again peed in front of the TV in her cloth undies, I told OLB that if they’re going to use my steam mop to make sure that the mop pad is rinsed off or it will smell like pee the next time it’s used, but he said he was just going to use his mop and bucket. Thankfully.
Because of the diet that OLB and Vulture has, Kid also eats like them. She gets a lot of macaroni, a lot of random odds and ends like pieces of bread, baggies of cheerios, sometimes fruit and vegetables. Lots of chicken nuggets and frozen instant food. Occasionally, Kid will have an interest in vegetables she sees us cook with or that she’s never had. Like once she insisted that she wanted to eat canned peas, until she tasted them. She chewed on a lettuce leaf and put it down, then asked for another one because she wanted to eat something, and it looked tasty to her.
The two halves of the household make separate foods now and keep out of each other’s food, but sometimes Vulture will give Kid some of the food I cooked because Kid saw my spaghetti noodles in a bowl and insisted on having them by way of tantrum. Instead of asking me if it’s okay (which obviously, I’d say yes, Kid can have some), Vulture just gave her my food and then told me after. Maybe I’m just projecting my own frustration, but it feels like Vulture uses Kid as a shield sometimes, to get food. Unless I have a specific purpose for food like what I put in my meal prep containers, I wouldn’t say no to Kid.
Kid’s diet makes me worried for her as she grows up. OLB is big and tall, over 6 feet tall and over 300lbs. They aren’t an active family at all. Kid drinks soda when they get fast food. She eats as much processed food as Vulture. Right now, she’s growing like a weed and is tall and actually has some power in her tiny limbs, which is most noticeable when she climbs you like a ladder, but her parents are gamers that just sit around. Her own screen time is almost as lengthy as theirs is.
I worry about Kid, constantly. Z does too. We have theorized calling CPS, or trying to adopt her, or just getting her away from Vulture. We have thrown around ideas about talking to OLB and convincing him that Vulture isn’t a good person for Kid. A lot of it has stayed in theory because the anxious part of me is still afraid to make life-altering waves like that. I second-guess and gaslight myself into realizing how bad things are, but then telling myself, maybe I’m just blowing it out of proportion. Maybe it's just something they have to handle. Maybe it’s something a first-time parent needs to learn. Maybe Vulture just isn’t feeling good that day. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
It’s a leftover of the doormat I used to be, and I know that. The tiny fragment of anxiety that tells me I’m blowing things up into too big a deal. The tiny fragment that escaped a toxic marriage and just wants peace after arguing every single day. The side that hates confrontation.
Maybe I’m just a plain ol’ coward. I don’t know yet. I just know my patience is running thinner with every passing day.
I don’t think I could convince OLB to dump Vulture. From what I’ve seen on the surface, they’re not openly affectionate. Vulture complains all the time that OLB doesn’t give her any physical affection, and she (unfortunately) tells me when they’re intimate, which doesn’t sound often. They almost look like they could be friends that are co-parenting. She calls him her husband when they’re out in public, and OLB has stated that he doesn’t want anything to happen to her, because he doesn’t want a single parent. I assume at the very least that he does love her, even though he sounds exhausted all the time. Z and I wonder if maybe he feels trapped.
OLB is good at asking for help if he needs it, although he hates being a burden to others. He will speak up if Vulture needs a ride to a doctor’s office, and he forgot to leave the car seat at home. I’ve driven to his work to pick it up after he messaged me asking if I could. They ask his family to babysit Kid if they want to go out and just have a good date or see a movie together. They are clearly capable of asking for help.
This is just an acceptable standard for both, or at least that’s the way it seems to me. Sometimes, I don’t truly know if OLB is aware of what Vulture does while he’s at work. He didn’t know that she used his 11-year-old dog as a vacuum cleaner to clean up spilled table scraps until I pointed it out and then he pieced together why his dog wasn’t losing weight on a reduced kibble diet. Sometimes I have pointed out things to him that he might not notice in the house chat.
I started keeping a log in Google Docs about things I notice, and Z and I talk about it in discord, so it’s not heard by ears that are too close to our bedroom. The log started helping me see that I’m not just blowing out of proportion and that in turn helped me come here to reddit. As a former doormat in recovery, I still have to tell myself that it’s okay to realize that something is wrong, and that I may need help getting my voice to speak up.
I haven’t worked since 2017, when my mental health took a sharp nosedive. Z is currently looking for work. Both of us are home all day exposed to Vulture and how she treats Kid. With my own daily tasks, errands, struggling with mental health, there’s still a side of me that berates me that I need to be taking care of Kid. Getting her up, making sure she eats. Pestering Vulture to get up. This is also where I tangle with the former doormat that still lives in me, because one, I don’t want to enable Vulture to get even worse. With someone taking the burden off of her, that gives her more free time to just sit back and game. It isn’t my job to make sure that Vulture is a good parent, yet somehow, I feel like it’s also my fault that she’s as bad as she is while I sit by the wayside and just talk about her behind her back. There are times where I have pestered OLB through discord about Kid crying, or how Kid is trying to beat the door down, or asking if Vulture is up for the day because I haven’t seen her up at three in the afternoon.
I started speaking up when I noticed something that’s off. I call this the “cheese incident.” We had a block of cheese that was cut in the wrapper and not in anything else, so the exposed end got all hard and inedible. I cut it off and threw it away. Vulture made her way into the kitchen because Kid saw me cutting cheese and wanted some.
Vulture: Who threw away that cheese?
(SHE PICKS IT UP OUT OF THE TRASH CAN)
Me: Yeah, it’s got that hard bit
Vulture: So? I know someone who will eat it.
(She calls Kid over)
Me: But it was in the trash.
Vulture: It’s okay, I cut off the part that was touching the trash.
Me: Dude, that’s fucked up.
Vulture: (hesitating now) Should I not?
Me: That’s probably going to make her sick again.
(Kid has been sick back-to-back at this point)
Vulture: Okay, then I won’t.
(To this day, I don’t know if she threw the cheese away or ate it herself, and I’m afraid to ask)
That was the point where I started pointing out that what she’s doing is problematic. It’s a slow process, but it’s helped me put the doormat side of me away again. I’ve explained to Vulture that Kid isn’t crying to be malicious, she just can’t express what she wants. Especially with Kid’s speech delay! Kid gets frustrated fast when adults don’t understand her, and the wailing begins. There’s no maliciousness behind it, just frustration. Or how Kid doesn’t like being told “no” because she doesn’t always understand why. Strangely, every time I call something out, she doesn’t really have much of a fight against it.
But why am I having to say it in the first place?
There’s little things that just rub me the wrong way in how they interact. Sometimes Vulture will call Kid over in the same way you’d call a dog. Repeatedly. Sometimes Vulture, in a state of migraine or other illness-related grouchiness will scream at her “Leave me alone!” and OLB will have to fetch Kid. One time, Z told me that Vulture outright mocked her crying by making her own crying noise.
What’s awful to watch in person is that when Vulture’s mom or siblings are over, Vulture is suddenly a doting mom who isn’t perpetually exhausted or loudly complaining about how her “everything” hurts. She talks in an overly sweet voice to Kid. It unsettles me with how two-faced it seems. OLB, Vulture, and Kid go have dinner with OLB’s family every Sunday evening, and I can’t help but wonder how two-faced she is there, as well. Some of OLB’s family doesn’t like Vulture to begin with.
Slowly, I am losing patience at how Vulture behaves, especially with the Kid. I had to un-gaslight myself, start logging her behavior, and talk to other people to really see it for what it was. I told multiple friends about it and we all generally have the same consensus that Vulture is just an unfit parent. If her chronic illnesses are truly interfering with her life that much, she shouldn’t be the majority caregiver through the day. But it’s not like OLB would be able to work from home or be the stay-at-home parent. In a perfect world, I would be able to help more as well, but I’m barely the “fun” aunt. I’m barely equipped to help care for a three-year-old. Hell, most days I’m barely an actual person.
Kid deserves better.
Bottom line, Kid deserves better than what this house can give. I am upset with myself over my lack of action, but the logs have only been growing bigger. Every day, the doormat dies a little more.
Vulture herself though, will likely always be a side show. One thing that Z pointed out to me was that, as the doormat I used to be, I would give everything to help someone even when I was mentally exhausted. I enmeshed myself too much into the lives of my friends because I loved making them happy and making their lives easier. It’s gotten me into some awkward territory with Vulture, because some things were interpreted as more than friendship.
You ready to cringe more? Because the next part is going to deal with polyamory, the desire for open relationships, and the main reason why Z despises her – and that’s putting it mildly.
Take a moment to un-cringe yourself. It ain’t over yet.

Am I the asshole?
I am a 28YG and my former “friend” is a 28F. We met in college at a creative non fiction workshop and when I first saw her, I was impressed by how ugly and poor she was, and yet how she also had a connection to Yale. “Caroline,” I thought to myself, “while you absolutely should judge a book by its cover, especially since sometimes all there is to a book is its cover, sometimes even the ugliest books can have things you can glean from them. Like how you can still harvest organs even from a patient euthanized upon the tableaux.” Out of the goodness and charity of my heart, I approached her. I looked her over. My eyes (green that day) took in the grubby ponytail and frumpy clothes. I sighed. “Wear shoes,” I said flatly. I considered this a kindness as I wasn’t sure what the customs of her people were. I think she grew up at a house juxtapositioned between not one, but two Dunkin Donuts. This thought made me hesitate. I turned back to her. “Also, wear pants.”
Things went pretty well from there, until the Christmas where she gave me the Yale plates. The first time she came over I showed her box of my Yale treasures, watching closely of course to make sure she didn’t steal anything. That year for Christmas she gave me three dinner plates with the Yale crest on them, with “fuck it” written in Sharpie on them. A month later, however, I had an absolute emergency situation pop up. I was in a bind because I hadn’t gotten my allowance yet, but I needed money for the basic essentials like cocaine and truffle butter. So I posted the plates on eBay with the description: “original Yale plates with “fuck it” scribbled on them by Meryl Streep during her time at Yale.” I posted them for $150, then realized I would have to pay someone to take them to the post office because I didn’t know how, so I changed it to $175. They sold pretty quickly to a user named merylfeetlover6969. Anyway, when my friend asked me what happened, I smoothly lied and said they were stolen. It was airtight and I’m such a good liar that she immediately bought it and never brought it up again.
Fast forward a few years and I began my career as an influencer. My friend helped a little but I built my career out of thin fucking air by myself. In fact, I will lay out here exactly what captio- {ERROR: this paragraph has been mostly for length as the file was too large to upload.} Natalie suffered all the consequences of being friends with an addict and never got to reap any of the benefits of knowing the young woman recovery made me.
Where things really went wrong was when we went to Amsterdam. I met this guy with a bike that I really wanted to take to my apartment with me, but I had this absolute hag (again not my opinion! Just basic science I didn’t MAKE her ugly) clinging to me. And also a boyfriend but that’s hardly relevant. I encouraged my friend to flirt with the bartender until finally she decided to stay and have an “adventure” with him. “Thank god,” I thought flatly. “He’s so cute” I said out loud, then gave the signal to the stranger I had met. I climbed onto the back of his bike and directed him to our AirBnB. Pretty soon after we arrived I heard my friend knocking and saw my phone buzzing, but I was in the middle of hooking up with this stranger so I ignored her. What’s one night on the streets of Amsterdam alone? What could possibly go wrong? She’s always whining about wanting exciting things to write about, I figured this would be one of those things that oh I don’t know she could write about one day in an expose article for someone like The Cut. At noon I sent the stranger out the back door and came down to get her. She was really upset for some reason and kept yelling at me! I was shocked. She was clearly fine! I was the one who was going through a tough emotional time trying to forgive myself for cheating on my boyfriend! And yet she had the audacity to make it about herself. At this point I was pretty sure the friendship was over, but it was a few months before we finally stopped speaking.
TLDR: my supposed FRIEND is upset because I abandoned her alone in the streets of Amsterdam to sleep with a stranger and cheat on my boyfriend. Even though she was clearly FINE and I was the one struggling with unavoidable emotional turmoil at the time. So - AITA?

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but the last few years have been wild for airline travel. It seems like not even a week can pass before a new viral video is circulating the internet, showcasing some idiot on a plane or airport screaming, shouting, and even starting fights with other passengers and flight staff for no apparent reason.
I’m sure it’s entertaining when you’re sitting at home and come across these videos while casually scrolling through Reddit or Twitter. You might laugh, or shake your head at the stupidity and not give it a second thought. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option when you’re the one on the job.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to call security to deal with a rowdy or straight-up violent customer in the airport over the last couple of years. Most of the time, the things that set people off are surprisingly minor and avoidable issues.
They want to board now but it wasn’t their turn so they start harassing me and my co-workers. Another passenger looked at them funny so they get into a screaming match. A baby is crying so the grown adult starts whining even louder. The person in front of them took the last chocolate donut with sprinkles from the airport bakery so they start throwing punches.
You would not believe the stuff I’ve seen. Needless to say, I got tired of it. Getting up to go to work, wondering what kind of unhinged maniac was going to make a problem for me lost its appeal. So, I started to look for a new job.
A few weeks into the job search, I began to get doubtful that I would find a suitable replacement. Seeing as my only tangible skills and experience were in the airline industry, I didn’t have much more than other airline jobs within realistic reach. Though I didn’t have a problem with relocation, if it meant I was going to end up in another major airport, I had no interest.
During one 3 am job search after my long shift at the airport, running on nothing but the jittery movements from the room-temperature coffee, I found a new job listing. One Pine Airport, a rural airport in the midwest. I sat up and took another sip of coffee. The pictures for the place gave an idea of the size and it looked tiny. Only a couple of runways, a single terminal, and a cute internal design reflective of the forestry that surrounded it. Perfect for me, I thought. I imagined there would not be nearly as many people to deal with.
I scrolled down to the job details and to my relief, it was for the exact same job I had already been doing. The only difference was that it required frequent night shifts. I had done plenty of night shifts before, but doing a few more of them made no difference to me. Surprisingly listed was the pay. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were offering more starting than I was being paid at the airport I had been at for over three years.
Now wide awake, I eagerly uploaded my resume, filled out all of the application questions, and even spent the next hour crafting an unnecessary cover letter. I headed to bed with the hope that my days at overflowing airports might be over. The next day as I was getting ready for work, I opened my phone to scroll through notifications and check emails.
To my disbelief, I had one from the job I had applied for only hours earlier. The manager at the airport, who had posted the job, requested an interview over Zoom. I quickly replied and we settled on a time during my lunch break that very day.
The first few hours of work breezed by and as I boarded flight after flight of passengers, I couldn’t help but think about the upcoming interview. When it came time, I was nervous as hell but my fears were diffused within the first minute. A bald, well-kept, and well-dressed man joined the meeting room and greeted me with a warm smile. He introduced himself as James.
I couldn’t have asked for a more friendly interviewer. He welcomed me and after some small talk and a few questions about my relevant experience, he gave an overview of the job's details, that being the same job I already had with better pay but more frequent night shifts. No problem with me. After affirming that I knew all the details of the job, James cracked another wide, friendly smile and asked an unexpected question.
“When can you start?”
I spit the out sip of coffee I had just taken back into the cup. I looked back up at James and tried to find the right words but I was unprepared.
“You uh… aren’t gonna give me a call back like later or something? Don’t you have more interviews and… and paperwork waiting to clear and, and…?”
James waved his hand dismissively at his webcam.
“You’re the only applicant we have, and we couldn’t have asked for a better one. As for the paperwork and such, we’ll figure that out when we figure it out. The job is yours, whenever you can start, that is. Preferably soon?”
Though the feelings of shock and confusion remained, they were pushed to the side by my excitement. Throughout the remainder of our conversation, James and I reviewed our schedules and set up a start date before ending the call. I sat back in my break room chair with a sigh of disbelief and a chuckle.
I am well aware that it is standard to give at least a two-week notice to your employer and moving across states for a job is supposed to take quite a bit of planning but I was dying to get out of my current job. Through both eagerness and maybe a little stupidity, we settled on a day only a little over a week away.
At the end of my shift that day, I let my manager know I had to be done in a week. Though she wasn’t happy, she assured me it wouldn’t be a problem.
My final day was nothing short of horrendous. A couple had come up, demanding and screaming that I refund their tickets for no apparent reason. On top of that, they still wanted to fly. After hearing that no, they would not be able to fly for zero cost, the husband, followed by the wife, both started shouting threats. Security was quickly called to the terminal.
As soon as they arrived, I checked my watch to find that my shift was over. I let out a sigh of relief and excitedly walked away. As deprived of sleep as I was, with a long and undoubtedly stressful drive ahead of me, I was still more energetic and in higher spirits than I had been in a long time.
Surprisingly, the drive went off without a hitch. I arrived earlier than expected and checked into the motel room I rented for the week so I had time to get the move figured out. After dumping a few boxes of personal items and a suitcase of clothes into the room, I turned off the lights. I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I energetically awoke that evening to prepare myself for my first shift. I quickly got dressed and started the drive in hopes of arriving plenty early. Naively, I hadn’t considered how my unfamiliarity with the roads would slow me down, and after a staggering amount of wrong turns, I arrived at the little airport with only minutes to spare.
The airport was even smaller in person than I had imagined it to be from the pictures. I quickly walked through the entrance and was greeted by the small team of security. After notifying them that I was there for work and that James had been waiting for me, they hurried me through without so much as a question. The security, the architecture, the beautiful scenery that surrounded it, nothing about this airport couldn’t have felt more welcoming.
I walked through to find the single terminal inside, devoid of any passengers, with James sitting behind a counter at the end. After a moment he looked up and upon making eye contact with me, his tired face lit up. I was about to apologize for my tardiness but didn’t have the chance as he rushed to show me the employee locker room where he had my new employee uniform and badge waiting inside my very own locker. He told me to get changed and to meet him outside right away.
I did as he asked and within a couple of minutes, I walked out to find him back behind the console at the counter, gathering his belongings. He noticed me approaching and glanced up, thanking me for showing up and starting so soon as he handed me a fresh cup of coffee. He also apologized for not being able to stick around long for my shift but he sounded sure that he wasn’t all that worried.
“I have to be going now, I’ve been on duty for 17 hours. I know you’re plenty familiar with our systems and software, you know what you’re doing.”
He assured me with a pat on the back before walking out from the desk. He turned and added
“It’ll be a quiet night for you anyway. No flights scheduled. Just sit back, relax, and uh... Oh yeah. Most importantly, I nearly forgot”.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a single sheet of laminated paper and held it in front of me.
“Give this a read as soon as you can. Go over it a few times if you need, don’t deviate from it”.
I took it but before I could even get a look, I noticed James begin to walk toward the exit, along with every single one of the security guards and the cashier who had just closed down the only shop in the airport. I then noticed that all of the scanners and metal detectors at the security gate were shut off. I started to panic.
“Hey! James? Where is everyone going?”
I shouted. The first words I had managed to speak to my new boss since arriving. He stopped and turned back again
“Oh yeah. Another thing I ought to have mentioned. Everyone except whoever is working the night shift in, well, your position takes off right around now. Don’t worry, security will be back sometime around 5 am. You’ve got this place to yourself. Grab a magazine from the little store in there if you get bored. Feel free to snag yourself a couple of snacks too”.
He began to walk away again before briefly turning and pointing at me.
“But before you do anything, read that list. You’ll need it”.
I stood, dumbfounded as I watched my new boss along with all of the other airport staff leave. I started to wrap my head around the fact that I had an empty airport to myself for 10 hours, with nothing to do and no one to deal with, all while I was getting paid the highest wage I had ever earned.
As much as thinking about it delighted me, I turned my attention turned toward the sheet of paper I almost forgot I was holding on to. James said to follow whatever list was on it, so I figured I ought to take a look. I walked behind the airport counter and sank into one of the seats behind it. I took a sip of coffee and finally took a serious look.
A total of 6 rules were neatly spaced on the sheet.
Rule 1: All lights in the airport are to stay on at all times. If one is off, or if you are to accidentally turn one off, turn it back on as soon as possible. If a light seems to be broken or is out and unable to turn back on, calmly exit the area. Report the outage to James or maintenance when possible. Do not listen to the sounds. Do not listen to the voices.
Rule 2: Rule 2 pertains to rainy or stormy weather. If it is raining or storming outside, disregard rules 3, 4, and 5. They will not be a concern during these types of weather conditions. Stay inside at all times. Do not use the men’s restroom and avoid going near it entirely if possible.
Rule 3: Sometime between 11 pm and 1 am, a young woman will walk out of the women’s restroom. She will enter the terminal and sit, occasionally getting up to walk around or change seats. Her name is Elizabeth. She will attempt to make conversation but you must not reciprocate. You may look at her, you may give nonverbal communication such as a head nod, you may write as a means of communication, or you may shake her hand but do not speak to her. If you refuse to speak to her, Elizabeth should be gone within a few hours. If you happen to make such a mistake, go to the men’s restroom and wait for her to leave.
Rule 4: At around one or two in the morning, a janitor in blue coveralls will arrive at the front entrance. Crack open the door and ask for his name. If he says his name is Simon, let him in. If he gives you any name other than Simon, shut the door and lock it without another word and walk away. If the janitor is Simon, he will attend to the janitorial needs of the airport. If he asks to clean where you are standing, oblige him. Simon will not interfere with your duties otherwise. He is not hostile or dangerous. You may engage in conversation with Simon. He will leave the same way he came when he feels it is necessary.
Rule 5: At around 3 am, you may notice that a black and red Cessna Skyhawk has landed on one of the airstrips. You will never see it land, and you will never see it take off. It will just appear when you’re not looking. After spotting the plane for the first time, do not look at it again. Avoid looking in its general direction if at all possible. There is a picture of the exact plane displayed inside the terminal, behind the counter.
Rule 6: Later in the night but sometime before dawn, a group of men claiming to be from TSA may arrive at the airport. They will have their own key and let themselves in. Some could be armed. Often, they exhibit panicked behavior. They may search through the airport, sweep room to room, and ask questions. They are permitted to search anywhere in the main airport building that they please, and you may oblige to any questioning but under no circumstances are they permitted to enter the sky bridge. They will not enter without verbal approval and they cannot harm you.
After reading over it a few times, I set the laminated sheet down and leaned back further into my seat before taking a long sip of coffee, wondering what on earth I had just read. I hadn’t taken James to be the imaginative type. Most of all, I hadn’t taken him to be anywhere near the unprofessional type. Though as I thought about it, it was unusual how rushed this all was and how he left in such a hurry, leaving so few details.
I began to wonder if I was being pranked, I considered that maybe this was all some sort of messed up joke or setup. I ruled that out pretty quickly. This was, in fact, a real airport. I had done plenty of research by the time I got here. At least a few real flights were coming in or going out each day. James has been working here for years and I couldn’t think of a reason why he would jeopardize his job or reputation just to get a scare out of me.
After chuckling to myself at the absurdity of my situation, I decided to indulge and see what would happen. Maybe it was a “test” for me as a new employee. Maybe James wanted to see if I could follow orders.
After glancing at the list once more and realizing the impact rule 2 had on the number of things I would have to keep track of, I brought up my phone to check the forecast. Clear skies, not a chance for rain or storms all night. Great, I thought to myself. I had to watch out for these Elizabeth and Simon characters to show up and I suppose “not” be on the lookout for a random plane to appear on the runway.
I stood up and grabbed my coffee, walking to the glass panes. I took another sip from my cup while admiring the lit runways along the airfield. It sure was a pretty nice sight. As I was raising my cup to finish what was left, I began to hear the click of shoes on the floor somewhere behind me.
Startled, I spun around abruptly, dropping my cup and spilling the remainder of the coffee in the process. At the other end of the terminal seating stood a young woman, around her mid-twenties in my estimation. She was holding two large leather suitcases in each hand and had an old-fashioned sense of style with a skirt and heels. Most surprising was her stunning beauty and welcoming smile.
“Oh I’m sorry dear, didn’t mean to scare you”
She expressed with a sincere tone. I opened my mouth, ready to assure her that everything was fine but I stopped myself. I recalled the list. At this point, I was certain that she was here at James’s request, a paid actor determined to make me break the rules. I was more determined not to. Instead, I simply fixed my posture, straightened my uniform, and looked back with a smile.
She walked to the counter where she placed her leather suitcases on the ground before closing the distance between us.
“Looks like we’ve got this fabulous airport all to ourselves. I am Elizabeth”
She said, reaching out her hand. I shook it, but she didn’t seem quite satisfied.
“And your name?”
I continued to smile and lock eye contact. Her grin grew for a moment before she remarked
“You don’t seem to be much of a talkative one”
And with that, she turned and started to walk away. I returned to my seat behind the counter, watching her closely as I did. Elizabeth proceeded to the unattended airport shop and after a couple of minutes of looking over magazine covers and occasionally taking a peek inside, she returned carrying a small stack of reading material. She approached my counter before placing a National Geographic magazine in front of me.
“I figured you might like this one. Enjoy”
She said, winking before settling on a seat in the first row of the terminal, straight across from where I had been sitting.
Remarkably, her intuition was spot on. I may have lived in cities all of my life but I loved nature, despite how little of it I had gotten to see. National Geographic was a favorite of mine, one I had been familiar with and enjoyed on work breaks from time to time. Rarely was I given this long to be able to read. I was almost tempted to break the rule and thank her for her rather thoughtful act, though I didn’t. I stuck to the rule.
The next couple of hours were uneventful. Elizabeth and I read through our magazines, occasionally looking up at each other to exchange glances and smiles. Within that time, she had attempted to get me to talk at least half a dozen more times. I almost gave in when she asked me if I wanted another magazine.
At a little past 1:30, I could hear a knock at the front entrance. Elizabeth and I both looked before she remarked
“Oh, that must be the nice cleaner man”
With a giggle before returning to her magazine. I walked over to the front doors and sure enough, there stood a man around his mid-thirties, sporting a blue janitor suit waiting patiently at the door. I unlocked the door and opened it. As he took a stride to enter, I remembered the most important detail from rule 4. I closed the door halfway and sternly commanded
“Wait”
The man looked up at me with a surprised look. I asked him the question.
“What is your name?”
The man stared back at me as an innocent smile formed on his face.
“I’m Simon!”
He announced excitedly.
“The Janitor here. Did James let you know I was coming tonight?”
I stood there for a moment, thinking over the rule, before nodding my head and opening the door once again to let him in.
Once inside, Simon walked with purpose to the janitor's closet which was positioned near the men’s restroom. I followed him somewhat suspiciously for the next few minutes as he began to clean but I eased up once I got the feeling that he was just the janitor around here and that James made up the whole “ask for his name thing” to make into one of his rules.
I returned to my counter in the terminal and continued to read. Occasionally, Simon would pass by, off to do his duties in some part of the airport or Elizabeth would stand up to look at the various pictures and paintings on display in the terminal. A good half an hour of this would go on before Simon approached the terminal counter with his mop in hand. He seemed to be eyeing up the two leather suitcases Elizabeth had set there.
Assuming he wanted to clean where they were, I got up to move them. I grabbed each one by the handle but failed to lift them off of the ground. Confused, I stepped back to see if they were stuck on something. They were not. Just two suitcases, left right where Elizabeth had set them.
I tried to lift just one. Again, I failed. I tried both hands, putting my back and legs into it with all that I had. It wouldn’t budge.
I looked back up at Simon who nodded his head in Elizabeth’s direction. I turned to look at Elizabeth, who after noticing my stare, and my apparent inability to move her luggage, smiled and stood up.
“Let me get that for you”
She insisted. With ease, she lifted both leather suitcases and moved them closer to her seat before lowering them, this time letting them drop a few inches. When they hit the ground, a boom echoed through the airport and I flinched in surprise. I looked back at Simon, who hadn’t seemed shocked at all. He just continued to mop.
I slowly made my way back to my seat, not taking an eye off Elizabeth for one second as I did. After a few minutes, she looked back up from her magazine, noticed my stare, and returned to her reading with a grin. She seemed to find my shock amusing. Eventually, Simon noticed my surprise as well. He paused his mopping and approached me before raising his head.
“I know, I know. Stick to the rules and everything will be just fine, trust me”
He stated quietly. I nodded my head in response.
Simon went back to his cleaning. A few minutes passed before Elizabeth had something new to say.
“What a remarkable aircraft!”
She exclaimed, looking out the glass panes facing the runways. I followed her gaze to the lone, black, and red airplane positioned on the runway. I turned around, looking at the picture displayed behind me. It certainly looked like a match. I turned back to the window and felt my heart sink. A silhouette of a person now stood next to the plane, facing the airport and the windows of the terminal.
“Stop looking at it”
Simon sternly muttered from behind me. I looked back at Simon who quickly cowered, seemingly ashamed to have raised his voice at me but I was grateful he had. I read over rule 5 again, specifically where it stated to not look at the plane twice. I murmured insults at myself under my breath but they didn’t have much room between my now heavy, frantic breathing. My eyes darted through the other rules. I chose to focus on that sheet of paper. At least it was something other to look at than the plane outside.
This went on for a good ten minutes or so and my breathing started to calm down. I had begun to pray in my head that whoever and whatever that was would go away when Elizabeth suddenly approached my counter. I snapped my head up in a jittery movement to make eye contact with her.
“I’m going to get some more reading material. Want another one of those?”
She asked, reaching a hand out to my National Geographic magazine. I looked up and nodded, forcing a smile. As She moved away, my gaze didn’t, and once again I found myself looking at the plane on the runway, the silhouette now standing hundreds of feet away from the plane, even closer to the building, and still staring in my direction.
Chills ran up my spine as I snapped my gaze back to my desk. I began to shake with fear and the manic breathing returned. Moments later, Elizabeth returned and placed a new magazine on the counter before running a hand over my shoulder, seemingly to comfort me. Simon then put his hand on my back.
“He’ll be gone soon and so will the plane. Just don’t look at it again”
He assured me.
“Mind if I clean here?”
He then asked.
I got up and walked to the end of the counter, watching Simon thoroughly clean the floor before I looked up and let out a soft
“Thank you”
He nodded and smiled back.
“What was that?”
Elizabeth asked. I turned towards her.
“Oh, I was just thanking Simon for-”
My error occurred to me before I could finish speaking. My eyes locked on Elizabeth as she stood up from her seat and her smile faded. Her eyes and nose began to bleed profusely as she started to sob, lightly at first, then hysterically. She let out a bellowing screech, a mix of pain and anger. She picked up one of her suitcases and hurled it at me, I barely dodged the ridiculously heavy object before it crashed into the wall behind me.
Luckily I was quick thinking this time and made a run for the men’s restroom recalling rule 3. She chased after me but I slammed the door shut in her face and locked it. Elizabeth pounded on the door with furious anger a few times but gave up quickly.
“So that’s how you dance, is it love? I can play that game”
She snickered before flipping a light switch outside of the bathroom. The clicking of her shoes faded away. A few minutes of silence passed before laughter started to become audible from the other side of the door.
One voice grew to two, two voices grew to three, three grew to ten. While others continued their now hysterical laughing, some began to scream. I crumbled to the floor, covering my ears as the voices went on, only stopped by another flip of the switch. Light beamed through the bottom of the door.
“It’s over now. She’s gone, and so is the plane. I’ve gotta be getting out of here soon”
Simon’s calm and friendly voice called out. I reluctantly exited the bathroom and followed him back to the counter, where he had prepared another coffee for me.
“Wish I could have done more there but you’ll come to find out that when Elizabeth gets angry, you just gotta let her do her thing”.
I looked up at him, still with my distraught face, at a loss for words. Over the next few minutes, Simon finished cleaning Elizabeth’s blood from the floor before putting everything back into the janitor's closet. He looked down at his watch.
“I better get out of here. Good luck with the rest of your night. I hope I’ll be seeing you soon”.
He said, letting out a sigh as he again looked at me in pity. I think he knew how shaken up I was. It was like he had seen people in my position before. Something told me he doesn’t have a choice on when he leaves. After I watched him exit the door, I returned to my seat behind the counter. I began to feel alone and afraid, but the loneliness wouldn’t last at least.
Only minutes after Simon left, the doors swung open and men in tactical gear, most of which had their faces covered in masks and goggles, rushed through the door. I sprung back up from my seat and watched as they did, with not much else I could do. They swept room to room, checking every nook and cranny at gunpoint, ignoring my existence at first.
As they cleared the entire building, the twenty or so armed men made their way to the terminal seating area. A lone man in a suit, whom I had not noticed enter, made his way to the front of the group.
“I’m with TSA, I’m going to need you to answer some questions for me”
He demanded. I nodded in affirmation.
“How many individuals have you seen in this airport since the security team left the building?”
“Besides myself, 2 Inside, one outside”
I answered confidently.
“Was the individual outside next to a black and red Cessna Skyhawk?”
“Yes”
I again responded confidently. The man in the suit nodded and paused for a moment before making another demand.
“We’re going to need to search the air bridge”.
I glanced back at the sheet of rules on the counter. Making sure I had read it right before. I took a step forward and straightened my uniform.
“No”
I replied. The man in the suit looked irritated.
“If you do not step aside and give us permission to search, I’m afraid I’ll have to detain you”.
Already tired and worn out, I wasn’t going to break the last rule. I decided to give a not-so-smart remark to the man in the suit
“Looking a little well-armed for TSA, wouldn’t you agree?”
He ignored my comment.
“Last chance, step aside”
“No”
Again, irritated by my response, the man in the suit turned to his right and raised his chin to give a signal. Gunshots rang out and I collapsed to the floor. I felt as though my life left my body before it all faded to black.
The next thing I remembered was the feeling of my hand gripping a water bottle. Then came James’s voice.
“I see you made it through the first night intact. Looks like you got to meet Simon. He’s a nice guy, you’ll get to like him. And Elizabeth, she’s…well, she’s something else, isn’t she?”
I opened my eyes and looked up at James.
“Am I dead?”
I asked in a raspy voice. James chuckled in return.
“No! No, you did great. You’re fine. It does, however, look like you might have been a little assertive to our undead TSA special forces wannabes. I would recommend sticking with the less aggressive tone and word choices, maybe I ought to edit that into the rules sheet… In any case, they can’t hurt you but they can still get a jump out of you, as you saw”.
Once again, I was at a loss for words. I slowly made my way back to my feet from the ground and looked at the sunrise over the airfield. James held out an envelope for me. I opened it, revealing a stack of crisp $100 bills.
“A little bonus for your first night. It sure is a lot to go through for the first time but I promise, you get used to it all”.
I turned to James with an angry look and finally spoke up.
“What the hell is wrong with you? What makes you think it’s okay to put someone through this without any warning? I'm done, keep your damn money. I’m gonna go call the cops”.
I started to walk towards the exit when James stepped in front of me.
“Look, I know it isn’t fair for you but it wasn’t fair for me either. It wasn’t fair for any of us. It’s not okay, I know. But what do you expect me to do? Someone needs to be here for the night shift. You wouldn’t believe any of this if I told you ahead of time. You would have thought I was some sort of nutjob and the police will think of you the same if you tell them. I needed you to see it for yourself”
James was starting to get worked up and stoppeto breatheth before continuing.
“This money is yours, no strings attached. You’re free to leave now and never come back, there will be no shame in it”
I also started to calm down but I couldn’t bring myself to look James in the eye yet.
“If you choose to stay, I’ll see you in my office to finish up your paperwork”.
And with that, James walked away. Facing the front of the airport, I watched the first passengers of the day come through the entrance. I just stood there for a few minutes. Whether I was ready for this job or not, I knew right then I sure as hell wasn’t going back to another overcrowded city airport.
I turned and headed for James’s office.

Desktop Users: Comment on this post and Click here to start a trade App Users, please include the following in your PM (Remember to comment on this post as well):

Type of card(s) and amount of each.

What payment method you accept.

How you acquired the GC and why you're getting rid of it.

BTC, Paypal^1, Apple Pay, Chime, Cashapp, Venmo, and Western Union
I only have Steam as a substitute for cash payments in gift card trades.

Want ↓	Cash or a Gift Card ↓	BTC ↓
Apple	60%⁴	NA
Amazon.ca	50%	50%
Amazon.co.uk	50%	50%
Amazon.com	70%	55%
Amazon.de	50%	50%
Amazon.es	50%	50%
Amazon.fr	50%	50%
Amazon.it	50%	50%
Amazon.jp	30%	30%
Arrow Films	65%	60%
Barnes & Noble	50%	50%
Baskin Robbins	60%	60%
Best Buy	60%	60%
BJ's (not BJ's restaurant)⁴	60%	NA
Bloomingdales	50%	50%
Burger King⁴	60%	NA
Clothing Shops (Small Boutique)	contact me	contact me
Dell⁴	60%	NA
Delta gift cards⁴	65%	NA
Delta Sky Miles⁴	PM me	NA
Delta Vouchers⁴	65%	NA
Dicks Sporting Goods ⁴	PM me	NA
Disney Plus	PM me	PM me
DoorDash	70%⁶	NA
Dunkin Donuts⁴	60%	NA
eBay	70%	70%
Fandango⁴	10%	NA
Five Guys⁴	60%	NA
Gamestop	60%	60%
Gas Station Cards⁴	PM me	NA
Grub Hub	70%⁶	NA
Gyft	70%	70%
Half Price Books	50%	50%
HBO⁴	70%	NA
iTunes⁴	60%	NA
J crew	40%	40%
JCPenney	25%	25%
Jersey Mike Subs⁴	60%	NA
KFC⁴	60%	NA
Khols	30%	30%
Macys	35%	35%
Magazines.com	40%	40%
McDonald's ⁴	60%	NA
Microsoft⁶	60%	NA
Moe’s Southwestern Grill⁴	60%	NA
Nintendo Eshop⁶	70%	NA
Nordstrom	50%	50%
Panera bread⁴	60%	NA
PSN⁶	60	NA
PSN Plus 12 month⁴	NA	NA
Saks Fifth Avenue	50%	50%
Sears	50%	50%
Sephora	50%	50%
Speedway⁴	80%	NA
Starbucks	55%	55%
Steam⁶	60%	NA
Subway ⁴	PM me	NA
Taco Bell	60%	NA
Target	50%	50%
Uber⁶	70%	NA
Urban Outfitters	50%	50%
Vudu⁴	50%	NA
Walmart	60%	60%
Wendys⁴	60%	NA
Xbox (gift cards)⁶	60%	NA
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (12 month/6 month/3 month/1 month)⁶	PM me	NA
Other Clothing Stores, Gas Stations, Grocery Stores, Restaurant, & Fast Food gift cards	PM me

¹ When paying via PayPal, I can only send payments via Goods and Services, thus you will be charged a fee. If you'd rather not face this fee there are plenty of alternatives. ² Larger denominated gift cards preferred. ³ PayPal is the only payment option. ⁴ I can't send less than $10 in crypto per Coinbase's rules.

What I don’t buy:

Amazon.au

Bass Pro Shop

buffalo wild wing

Canadian tire

Cold Stone

Dairy Queen

Fanatics

Google Play

Hilton Honors

Hot Topic

iTunes from anywhere but the US

Krispy Kreme

old navy/gap/banana republic

Patxi's pizza

PSN Canada or UK

publix

Raceway

Scheels

Shell Gas Stations

Spotify

Tractor supply

Xbox Canada or UK

Xbox live gold

Any fees are built into the price.
Important: before you send your codes please make sure your account is secure (if your password is twelve characters or less it's best to assume your account has already been compromised; your password should be eight randomly selected words, see 1 and 2). Scams where compromised accounts are used to leverage reputation to scam an unsuspecting user, used to steal codes during the middle of the trade, and steal unused gift cards the victim was saving for later are increasingly commonplace. If you have any concerns as to your account's security, please reset your password now and force logout of all sessions. Thanks

Desktop Users: Comment on this post and Click here to start a trade App Users, please include the following in your PM (Remember to comment on this post as well):

Type of card(s) and amount of each.

What payment method you accept.

How you acquired the GC and why you're getting rid of it.

BTC, Paypal^1, Apple Pay, Chime, Cashapp, Venmo, and Western Union
I only have Steam as a substitute for cash payments in gift card trades.

Want ↓	Cash or a Gift Card ↓	BTC ↓
Apple	60%⁴	NA
Amazon.ca	50%	50%
Amazon.co.uk	50%	50%
Amazon.com	70%	55%
Amazon.de	50%	50%
Amazon.es	50%	50%
Amazon.fr	50%	50%
Amazon.it	50%	50%
Amazon.jp	30%	30%
Arrow Films	65%	60%
Barnes & Noble	50%	50%
Baskin Robbins	60%	60%
Best Buy	60%	60%
BJ's (not BJ's restaurant)⁴	60%	NA
Bloomingdales	50%	50%
Burger King⁴	60%	NA
Clothing Shops (Small Boutique)	contact me	contact me
Dell⁴	60%	NA
Delta gift cards⁴	65%	NA
Delta Sky Miles⁴	PM me	NA
Delta Vouchers⁴	65%	NA
Dicks Sporting Goods ⁴	PM me	NA
Disney Plus	PM me	PM me
DoorDash	70%⁶	NA
Dunkin Donuts⁴	60%	NA
eBay	70%	70%
Fandango⁴	10%	NA
Five Guys⁴	60%	NA
Gamestop	60%	60%
Gas Station Cards⁴	PM me	NA
Grub Hub	70%⁶	NA
Gyft	70%	70%
Half Price Books	50%	50%
HBO⁴	70%	NA
iTunes⁴	60%	NA
J crew	40%	40%
JCPenney	25%	25%
Jersey Mike Subs⁴	60%	NA
KFC⁴	60%	NA
Khols	30%	30%
Macys	35%	35%
Magazines.com	40%	40%
McDonald's ⁴	60%	NA
Microsoft⁶	60%	NA
Moe’s Southwestern Grill⁴	60%	NA
Nintendo Eshop⁶	70%	NA
Nordstrom	50%	50%
Panera bread⁴	60%	NA
PSN⁶	60	NA
PSN Plus 12 month⁴	NA	NA
Saks Fifth Avenue	50%	50%
Sears	50%	50%
Sephora	50%	50%
Speedway⁴	80%	NA
Starbucks	55%	55%
Steam⁶	60%	NA
Subway ⁴	PM me	NA
Taco Bell	60%	NA
Target	50%	50%
Uber⁶	70%	NA
Urban Outfitters	50%	50%
Vudu⁴	50%	NA
Walmart	60%	60%
Wendys⁴	60%	NA
Xbox (gift cards)⁶	60%	NA
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (12 month/6 month/3 month/1 month)⁶	PM me	NA
Other Clothing Stores, Gas Stations, Grocery Stores, Restaurant, & Fast Food gift cards	PM me

¹ When paying via PayPal, I can only send payments via Goods and Services, thus you will be charged a fee. If you'd rather not face this fee there are plenty of alternatives. ² Larger denominated gift cards preferred. ³ PayPal is the only payment option. ⁴ I can't send less than $10 in crypto per Coinbase's rules.

What I don’t buy:

Amazon.au

Bass Pro Shop

buffalo wild wing

Canadian tire

Cold Stone

Dairy Queen

Fanatics

Google Play

Hilton Honors

Hot Topic

iTunes from anywhere but the US

Krispy Kreme

old navy/gap/banana republic

Patxi's pizza

PSN Canada or UK

publix

Raceway

Scheels

Shell Gas Stations

Spotify

Tractor supply

Xbox Canada or UK

Xbox live gold

Any fees are built into the price.
Important: before you send your codes please make sure your account is secure (if your password is twelve characters or less it's best to assume your account has already been compromised; your password should be eight randomly selected words, see 1 and 2). Scams where compromised accounts are used to leverage reputation to scam an unsuspecting user, used to steal codes during the middle of the trade, and steal unused gift cards the victim was saving for later are increasingly commonplace. If you have any concerns as to your account's security, please reset your password now and force logout of all sessions. Thanks

So basically i met this girl online and got her number. She seemed interested: se did an hour long call and I was the one who ended it while she wanted to keep talking.
We chatted for 3 days and she ghosted me twice:

First time was 2 data ago. I assume she just was not into me and so moved on. After 16 hours she reached out herself acting like nothing happened and she did not ghost me
Second time was yesterday. I sent my last message to her, she read them and has not answered.

For those who are wondering my last text were:
The best donuts are the one with chocolate.
My friend also confirmed it😌
Chocolate donuts >> every other type of donuts
I don't understand her hot and cold behaviour, should i just move on and ghost her back?

Peanut Butter contains protein and good fats which helps boost energy, prevent heart, and improve muscle growth, and strong bone density. It contained various types of essential nutrients required by the body. It is a natural source of many nutrients that can fulfill your daily need for nutrition.

Ø Nutritional value of Natural Peanut Butter (2 tbsp):

· Calories - 188 kcal
· Protein- 7.03 g
· saturated fats- 3.05 g
· Calcium – 17 mg
· Carbohydrates- 7.67 g
· Fats- 8 g
· Fibre- 2 g
· Magnesium – 57 mg
· Potassium – 189 mg
· Sodium – 152 mg
· Phospurus – 157 mg

Ø Nutritional Facts of Peanut Butter:

1) It is calorie-dense. However, most of the calories are part from unsaturated fats.
2) Zinc in nuts reduces age-related diseases and boosts the immune system.
3) Peanut butter contains phosphorus, It helps in muscle contraction and keeps bones strong.
4) It contains Minerals, Vitamins, Protein, fiber, calcium, fats, calories, sodium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Magnesium, and many more nutrients.
5) It is gluten-free, with Lower cholesterol, Natural ingredients, plant-based protein, and Vegan.

1. High Sources of Protein:

Peanut Butter is a high source of protein. Which can help you to fulfill your daily need for protein. It contains plant-based protein. Which was natural & good for your body.

2. Healthy Fats:

One serving has 16gm fat, and ¾ of its part has unsaturated fat. It contains healthy fats which are good for your health.

3. Source of Vitamins and minerals:

It has vitamins B, E, B6, B12, and anti-oxidant properties. It includes many more vitamins which are needed for your body. Which can boost your immunity.

4. Sources of Vitamin B6 & B12:

This is a good source of vitamins. It contains vitamins B, B6, B12, and C together with zinc, and folic acid.

5. Potassium:

The potassium content in peanut butter can boost your energy or gives you energy for the whole day. this can be good for growing or improving your muscle strength.

Ø Health benefits of peanut butter:

1) Improves Muscle Growth:

It has a high source of plant-based protein. It can improve your muscle growth and helps to make your muscle strong & attractive.

2) Reduce the risk of diabetes:

The research can says you reduce diabetes risk by 30% with 1-2 tablespoons of regular consumption.

3) Improve Heart Health:

This is high in nutrients and calories. But, it does not contain trans fat. This can helps you to reduce cholesterol in your body. And helps for improves your heart functions.

4) Make Bones Strong:

It’s rich in calcium and magnesium, which can be needed for strong bones. This is a natural & tasty food for kids to develop & make bones strong at an early age.

5) Smooth Digestion:

It was content fiber. Which can help you improves your digestive function. It is the best natural food for improving your digestive system.

6) Bodybuilding:

This includes all nutrients which can be needed to build your body or muscle. Protein, Calcium, Fiber, Vitamins, Minerals, and many more nutrients in peanut butter helps you with bodybuilding.

Ø Beauty benefits:

1. Healthy Skin:

Peanuts contain potassium, magnesium, antioxidants, good fats, and fiber. It also has vitamin E and B12, which can perfectly nourish your skin.

2. Protect your skin and hair:

Nuts have biotin, a B vitamin. These beans also have vitamin E which nourishes and protects the skin from damaging UV rays.

TLDR: my boyfriend has barely spoken to me & has basically been avoiding me for two days because I was asleep when he got the call that his grandma was in the ICU at midnight despite me waking up five minutes after he left and dropping everything to drive 2 1/2 hours down there to be there for him. I’m trying to be understanding because his grandma is at the end of her life and I know that that is affecting how he is acting, but how much is too much when it comes to me and our relationship?
hi. i’ve been with my bf for almost a year. there’s things about our relationship that i love and things i don’t, but i thought we loved each other until the other day.
my bf is a very very hard working person who has created an incredible life for himself after a tough childhood/young adulthood. He’s not a lovey-dovey person, and I am. He made me feel so loved up until a few weeks ago, and now I feel like I don’t matter at all.
anyway, important to the story: I sleep a lot. I just need a lot of sleep to function. I’ll get sick without sleep and will occasionally accidentally fall asleep in the evenings. In the beginning of our relationship, my bf didn’t like this because he thought i might’ve been lying about what i was doing, but since we’ve been together, he knows i’m not lying, and my sleeping needs just bother him because he’s a person who can get 4-5 hours every night and feel great.
A few days ago, he expressed to me that it really bothered him how late i sleep (bc i stay up til 3am with him) and that he almost broke up with me for it. like told his mom he was going to but decided against it because “if that’s his only complaint about me, then it really doesn’t matter.”
I told him I’d work on the sleeping, but that meant that I’d have to go to sleep earlier. i know myself, if i get less than 8 hours, im useless all day.
Two nights ago, i fell asleep EARLIER at my boyfriends place at 10:30. he was outside with his friend. 1.5 hours later, he gets a call from his family that his grandmother is in the ICU and he needs to get to the hospital (2.5 hour drive) immediately. (we were told this could be a possibility earlier in the evening, but werent told to come down yet, so I thought it would be smart for me to get some rest so I could drive him or do whatever I needed for him and his family and not be exhausted)
Once he got the call, he apparently came into his bedroom and grabbed some things, but didn’t wake me up and just left (i’m close with his family and grandma and have gone to the hospital with them once prior, so it’s not really like it’s just because their close family was going)
His friend actually came and woke me up, telling me i should head down after my bf so i texted him because I didn’t want to intrude. he told me he didn’t want to speak to me (first time that’s ever happened) His friend told me that he really thought my bf needed me even if he didn’t say it and i wanted to be there for him even if it meant spending the night in my car. i packed him fresh clothes, bought $100 worth of waters, red bulls, and snacks for his entire family and set off.
When i got to the hospital 2h later, i sent him this text verbatim: “i’m here, i’m in the ER waiting room. obvi you don’t have to do anything, i’m just letting you know that i’m here, and that ill be here. i have food and waters and red bull if anyone needs anything. i’m so sorry. i love you.” he didn’t answer, but i didn’t mind because he was with his family and they thought they were gonna lose their mom/grandma.
After no word from him and waiting in the ER for about 20 mins, his mom came down and she was so sweet and so happy to see me. We walk together to my car to get all the food I brought and then walked up to their private waiting room in the ICU.
every person in his family gave me a huge hug, thanked me for coming, thanked me for the food and water, and were very happy to see me. My boyfriend said “hi“ gave me a side hug and then didn’t speak to me for the rest of the time we were at the hospital .
this was at about 3 AM, me and his mother set up the entire waiting room so that we could all sleep there. We slept until about 8 AM. me and my boyfriend we’re on opposite sides of the room. He got up and visited his grandmother again because she had stabilized and then he and I prepared to make the drive home because he is a business owner and can’t take days off.
Right before we leave, we go to Dunkin with his mom and grandpa and this man (my boyfriend) speaks to a nurse in Dunkin’ Donuts talking about his back tattoo more than he’s spoken to me in the entire eight hours I’ve been there. It was so awkward that his OWN grandfather was looking back-and-forth between me and him and giving me looks like “what the hell is going on?”
we get back to his business which I help him with and he barely speaks to me all day. I didn’t have an opportunity to speak with him about what happened because he had multiple people over throughout the entire day and then once everyone left, he stayed on the phone for about an hour with another friend while I made him dinner. He then asked for a second plate of dinner, which I had to cook from scratch and by the time I got back to him, he was asleep so i went to sleep too.
I woke up this morning to him, telling me he was leaving to go pick up some car parts a few hours away, and I’m upset by this because we always go on these little adventures together. my ex used to always tell me he didn’t want me around and then I found out he was cheating on me and so my boyfriend has always made it a very big point to be clear that he wants me with him, so maybe the fact that he didn’t invite me this morning is affecting me more than it should because of that, but it’s very out of character for him.
that’s basically it but he’s barely spoken to me in two days. He has never said thank you for anything that I’ve done over the past few days and he hasn’t even told me that he loves me when I’ve said it to him. i don’t know what to do.

She makes it so hard not to relapse. She yelled at me today saying I ate donuts that I don't even like. I only like the chocolate covered ones. I also have a bug right now and the only thing I can stomach is Jimmy Dean Sausage Pancakes, and she knows this. She said "well you ate four sausage pancakes yesterday." Acting like that was the reason I ate the donuts I dont like. I had also JUST woken up and immediately I was being yelled at. She accused me of lying, and when she found out my brother did it, she yelled at me to clean my room. She didn't even apologize or own up to the fact that she was wrong. She always does this. She thinks that because I'm the oldest, I should take the blame for whatever my brother does wrong. I told her a few minutes ago that I was cramping (I have the arm implant and haven't had my period in months), and I told her that pain killers don't work and I'm in a lot of pain, and she was like "I don't know" with an attitude. Like, I didn't even do anything wrong. My bad for being in pain? I just feel like I have no control, and I wanna hurt myself to feel like I at least have a LITTLE control over what I feel.

You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.

Desktop Users: Comment on this post and Click here to start a trade App Users, please include the following in your PM (Remember to comment on this post as well):

Type of card(s) and amount of each.

What payment method you accept.

How you acquired the GC and why you're getting rid of it.

BTC, Paypal^1, Apple Pay, Chime, Cashapp, Venmo, and Western Union
I only have Steam as a substitute for cash payments in gift card trades.

Want ↓	Cash or a Gift Card ↓	BTC ↓
Apple	60%⁴	NA
Amazon.ca	50%	50%
Amazon.co.uk	50%	50%
Amazon.com	70%	55%
Amazon.de	50%	50%
Amazon.es	50%	50%
Amazon.fr	50%	50%
Amazon.it	50%	50%
Amazon.jp	30%	30%
Arrow Films	65%	60%
Barnes & Noble	50%	50%
Baskin Robbins	60%	60%
Best Buy	60%	60%
BJ's (not BJ's restaurant)⁴	60%	NA
Bloomingdales	50%	50%
Burger King⁴	60%	NA
Clothing Shops (Small Boutique)	contact me	contact me
Dell⁴	60%	NA
Delta gift cards⁴	65%	NA
Delta Sky Miles⁴	PM me	NA
Delta Vouchers⁴	65%	NA
Dicks Sporting Goods ⁴	PM me	NA
Disney Plus	PM me	PM me
DoorDash	70%⁶	NA
Dunkin Donuts⁴	60%	NA
eBay	70%	70%
Fandango⁴	10%	NA
Five Guys⁴	60%	NA
Gamestop	60%	60%
Gas Station Cards⁴	PM me	NA
Grub Hub	70%⁶	NA
Gyft	70%	70%
Half Price Books	50%	50%
HBO⁴	70%	NA
iTunes⁴	60%	NA
J crew	40%	40%
JCPenney	25%	25%
Jersey Mike Subs⁴	60%	NA
KFC⁴	60%	NA
Khols	30%	30%
Macys	35%	35%
Magazines.com	40%	40%
McDonald's ⁴	60%	NA
Microsoft⁶	60%	NA
Moe’s Southwestern Grill⁴	60%	NA
Nintendo Eshop⁶	70%	NA
Nordstrom	50%	50%
Panera bread⁴	60%	NA
PSN⁶	60	NA
PSN Plus 12 month⁴	NA	NA
Saks Fifth Avenue	50%	50%
Sears	50%	50%
Sephora	50%	50%
Speedway⁴	80%	NA
Starbucks	55%	55%
Steam⁶	60%	NA
Subway ⁴	PM me	NA
Taco Bell	60%	NA
Target	50%	50%
Uber⁶	70%	NA
Urban Outfitters	50%	50%
Vudu⁴	50%	NA
Walmart	60%	60%
Wendys⁴	60%	NA
Xbox (gift cards)⁶	60%	NA
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (12 month/6 month/3 month/1 month)⁶	PM me	NA
Other Clothing Stores, Gas Stations, Grocery Stores, Restaurant, & Fast Food gift cards	PM me

¹ When paying via PayPal, I can only send payments via Goods and Services, thus you will be charged a fee. If you'd rather not face this fee there are plenty of alternatives. ² Larger denominated gift cards preferred. ³ PayPal is the only payment option. ⁴ I can't send less than $10 in crypto per Coinbase's rules.

What I don’t buy:

Amazon.au

Bass Pro Shop

buffalo wild wing

Canadian tire

Cold Stone

Dairy Queen

Fanatics

Google Play

Hilton Honors

Hot Topic

iTunes from anywhere but the US

Krispy Kreme

old navy/gap/banana republic

Patxi's pizza

PSN Canada or UK

publix

Raceway

Scheels

Shell Gas Stations

Spotify

Tractor supply

Xbox Canada or UK

Xbox live gold

Any fees are built into the price.

Selling

I have:
$500 in Amazon (can be broken up) and am selling at

85%: WesternUnion

85%: btc

90%: Apple Pay or Chime

Here are my GCX Rep profiles with 932 trades worth more than $60,000:

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

Important: before you send your codes please make sure your account is secure (if your password is twelve characters or less it's best to assume your account has already been compromised; your password should be eight randomly selected words, see 1 and 2). Scams where compromised accounts are used to leverage reputation to scam an unsuspecting user, used to steal codes during the middle of the trade, and steal unused gift cards the victim was saving for later are increasingly commonplace. If you have any concerns as to your account's security, please reset your password now and force logout of all sessions. Thanks

You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.

Desktop Users: Comment on this post and Click here to start a trade App Users, please include the following in your PM (Remember to comment on this post as well):

Type of card(s) and amount of each.

What payment method you accept.

How you acquired the GC and why you're getting rid of it.

BTC, Paypal^1, Apple Pay, Chime, Cashapp, Venmo, and Western Union
I only have Steam as a substitute for cash payments in gift card trades.

Want ↓	Cash or a Gift Card ↓	BTC ↓
Apple	60%⁴	NA
Amazon.ca	50%	50%
Amazon.co.uk	50%	50%
Amazon.com	70%	55%
Amazon.de	50%	50%
Amazon.es	50%	50%
Amazon.fr	50%	50%
Amazon.it	50%	50%
Amazon.jp	30%	30%
Arrow Films	65%	60%
Barnes & Noble	50%	50%
Baskin Robbins	60%	60%
Best Buy	60%	60%
BJ's (not BJ's restaurant)⁴	60%	NA
Bloomingdales	50%	50%
Burger King⁴	60%	NA
Clothing Shops (Small Boutique)	contact me	contact me
Dell⁴	60%	NA
Delta gift cards⁴	65%	NA
Delta Sky Miles⁴	PM me	NA
Delta Vouchers⁴	65%	NA
Dicks Sporting Goods ⁴	PM me	NA
Disney Plus	PM me	PM me
DoorDash	70%⁶	NA
Dunkin Donuts⁴	60%	NA
eBay	70%	70%
Fandango⁴	10%	NA
Five Guys⁴	60%	NA
Gamestop	60%	60%
Gas Station Cards⁴	PM me	NA
Grub Hub	70%⁶	NA
Gyft	70%	70%
Half Price Books	50%	50%
HBO⁴	70%	NA
iTunes⁴	60%	NA
J crew	40%	40%
JCPenney	25%	25%
Jersey Mike Subs⁴	60%	NA
KFC⁴	60%	NA
Khols	30%	30%
Macys	35%	35%
Magazines.com	40%	40%
McDonald's ⁴	60%	NA
Microsoft⁶	60%	NA
Moe’s Southwestern Grill⁴	60%	NA
Nintendo Eshop⁶	70%	NA
Nordstrom	50%	50%
Panera bread⁴	60%	NA
PSN⁶	60	NA
PSN Plus 12 month⁴	NA	NA
Saks Fifth Avenue	50%	50%
Sears	50%	50%
Sephora	50%	50%
Speedway⁴	80%	NA
Starbucks	55%	55%
Steam⁶	60%	NA
Subway ⁴	PM me	NA
Taco Bell	60%	NA
Target	50%	50%
Uber⁶	70%	NA
Urban Outfitters	50%	50%
Vudu⁴	50%	NA
Walmart	60%	60%
Wendys⁴	60%	NA
Xbox (gift cards)⁶	60%	NA
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (12 month/6 month/3 month/1 month)⁶	PM me	NA
Other Clothing Stores, Gas Stations, Grocery Stores, Restaurant, & Fast Food gift cards	PM me

¹ When paying via PayPal, I can only send payments via Goods and Services, thus you will be charged a fee. If you'd rather not face this fee there are plenty of alternatives. ² Larger denominated gift cards preferred. ³ PayPal is the only payment option. ⁴ I can't send less than $10 in crypto per Coinbase's rules.

What I don’t buy:

Amazon.au

Bass Pro Shop

buffalo wild wing

Canadian tire

Cold Stone

Dairy Queen

Fanatics

Google Play

Hilton Honors

Hot Topic

iTunes from anywhere but the US

Krispy Kreme

old navy/gap/banana republic

Patxi's pizza

PSN Canada or UK

publix

Raceway

Scheels

Shell Gas Stations

Spotify

Tractor supply

Xbox Canada or UK

Xbox live gold

Any fees are built into the price.

Selling

I have:
$500 in Amazon (can be broken up) and am selling at

85%: WesternUnion

85%: btc

90%: Apple Pay or Chime

Here are my GCX Rep profiles with 932 trades worth more than $60,000:

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

Important: before you send your codes please make sure your account is secure (if your password is twelve characters or less it's best to assume your account has already been compromised; your password should be eight randomly selected words, see 1 and 2). Scams where compromised accounts are used to leverage reputation to scam an unsuspecting user, used to steal codes during the middle of the trade, and steal unused gift cards the victim was saving for later are increasingly commonplace. If you have any concerns as to your account's security, please reset your password now and force logout of all sessions. Thanks

Dunkin donuts hot chocolate nutrition facts

wordington dietary beverage

What I don’t buy:

What I don’t buy:

Ø Nutritional value of Natural Peanut Butter (2 tbsp):

Ø Nutritional Facts of Peanut Butter:

1. High Sources of Protein:

2. Healthy Fats:

3. Source of Vitamins and minerals:

4. Sources of Vitamin B6 & B12:

5. Potassium:

Ø Health benefits of peanut butter:

1) Improves Muscle Growth:

2) Reduce the risk of diabetes:

3) Improve Heart Health:

4) Make Bones Strong:

5) Smooth Digestion:

6) Bodybuilding:

Ø Beauty benefits:

1. Healthy Skin:

2. Protect your skin and hair:

You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.

What I don’t buy:

Selling

You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.

What I don’t buy:

Selling