DISCLAIMER: May contain content that is unsettling for some readers.

I locked my door sat down in a huff. My parents were out working, my brother was at a camp, and I had the whole house for myself. Finally, I had some time for myself, away from the busy, stressful world.

I sat on my comfy beanbag with a cup of my favourite honey tea, and my fluffy blanket. There’s nothing more relaxing than reading a good book in my room with some calm music.

As I was engrossed in my storybook, I felt something cold on my shoulder. I touched my sleeve, and noticed it was wet. I looked up, and noticed some water dripping down from the ceiling. ‘Strange’, I thought- it hadn’t been raining for two days.

Suddenly, the power went out.

“Great,” I muttered. Just in the middle of my free time.

I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight. I started walking down the steps towords the main outlet box. Suddenly, the attic door behind me swung open.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

I slowly turned around and noticed the swinging steps leading toward the attic. My brain repeated the words, ″TURN BACK YOU IDIOT” but I ignored it and approached the steps with caution.

I climbed up the attic and looked around. I don’t really come up here that often, and there were cobwebs everywhere. I felt a strange change in the atmosphere, it was almost... eerie.

That was when a sudden breeze started blowing indoors. I could not help but notice only one paper started flying around. It landed in an awkward angle next to an old lampshade. I trodded towards the paper. It was a newspaper cutting, dated 2000. I shivered as I read the headline;

‘GIRL AGED 15 FOUND DEAD IN WOODS’

The article talked about the body of a girl named Carla which was discovered in the woods on October 31st, today 20 years ago. The body had stab marks and the victim also seemed to have been strangled- murder. The article also linked this to the deaths of 5 other teenage boys and girls in the same month.

I was puzzled but I noticed something sticking out on the floor. I tugged at it, and the entire floorboard piece became dislodged.

There was a secret compartment.

⁽ˢᵒᵐᵉᵗᶦᵐᵉˢ,ᵗʰᵉ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ ʷʰᵒ ˡᵒᵛᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ᵐᵒˢᵗ ᵘˢᵘᵃˡˡʸ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵐᵒˢᵗ ᵗᵒ ʰᶦᵈᵉ⁾

With shaky hands, I picked up the chest which was inside. I slowly opened it, and I saw a cyan overcoat. But that was not what I noticed first. I could see a red stain blotch on it...

It’s blood.

I looked at the photo on the newspaper again. There was a picture of the girl before she went missing. She wore the exact same jacket.

What was a bloodstained jacket from a girl murdered 20 years ago doing in my attic?

There were sudden whispers in the air. I backed away to the wall. The wind started blowing, this time harder. the lampshade crashed to the floor. The whispers grew more intense. My heart was thumping wildly.

Suddenly, silence.

I looked around. The room was in a mess. There were shattered glass everywhere, and all the papers were scattered across the floor. Gathering up the courage I had left, I approached the chest. I could see a faint scribble which was not there before. It said;

AVENGE ME

The lights turn back on.

I hastily open the chest and check for anything else. I found a brown leather covered book. I opened it, and what I saw sent chills down my spine.

There were pictures of many girls and boys. Each one of them... were from the newspaper. Every page was a profile of them, including Carla... along with a lock of their hair taped on the bottom. There was a profile of every one, some said ‘Goes for tuition at 6pm on Saturdays’ and ‘visits aunt every month’. The only one that alarmed me most, was that there was a stamp on every page, each saying ‘ELIMINATED’.

I snapped some pictures and sent them to my friend. I told her I didn’t know what to do and she assured me she’d alert the police.

Were my parents... cold- blooded murderers? I looked at the last pages, and that was when my blood ran cold...

Name: Bryan

Status: Age 15, Katie’s brother.

First step: Successfully kidnapped.

Second step: Isolated in ‘camp’.

Final step: Eliminated at 5pm, 31 October 2020

Blood collected: Yes.

I gasped. My brother.They killed him. My parents... they are monsters.How could they betray my trust?

Suddenly, realisation struck me. If my brother was killed, that means...

I hear slow clapping. “Well done, Katie. You’re the first one that figured it out, you know.”

I freeze. I turned around, and saw my parents leaning against the wall, gently stroking a knife blade. I tried to scream, but I was choking on my own words.

I hear police sirens. My friend must have called the police. My father groaned and swore under his breath. “You called the cops on us, didn’t you?” he said, “Let’s just kill her first, honey. The cops won’t make it in time,” he told his wife.

I backed away, and tried to find any means of escape, but they blocked the exit.

“You know? It’s a pity, I thought we’d keep you,” my mother, or if that’s what I should even call her anymore, sneered, “It’s too bad you had to be the snoopy Nancy Drew. Now, you’ll join your little brother!“she laughed crazily.

She lunged towards me. I yelped and tried to dodge her. I felt something cold and sharp pierce my stomach. It’s funny, I never knew how a knife stab felt, especially in movies. Let me tell you, it feels nothing like that.

It’s funny how you don’t feel anything at first, but that’s when the pain kicks in. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, though.

DISCLAIMER: MAY CONTAIN UNSETTLING THOUGHTS.

I just started feeling a tingling sensation on my stomach . I touched my wound and I saw blood dripping down my palm. I started tasting blood on my tongue, and soon I was chocking on my own blood. I collapse on the ground. I’m losing my consciousness. All I see is the attic door bursting open and a bunch of cops barging in. My parents are in handcuffs.

My vision blurs. The last thing I see, is a figure looming above me, whispering, “Thank you.” It was Carla.

Darkness.

In my lifetime I have seen people come and go

and I want to embrace them all

in Times New Roman font, a nod

to my education, a final farewell in my last hour

while going back to relive just one moment, when

my creative writing professor

told us that to pass her class we needed

to read a single poem out loud,

at a public speaking event in which

I was at that bar downtown and

my lips shook reading my last few lines

at the open mic, screaming internally

without making a single dent

in the oncoming silence

a testament to my spiraling inner monologue

in my last hour, between a dusk and dawn

not willing to leave the earth

without a nod from the audience

I get up, grab a microphone one last time

and speak my truth, though my voice

shakes, eager to get the A

There are no riots

There are mostly peacful riots

If Joe Biden (D) is not elected, the rioting will get worse

Thus, the riots are all President Trump's (R) fault

The rioters are Joe Biden (D) supporters

The riots are still all President Trump's (R) fault

The rioters do not need to wear a mask

The rioters burn black own businesses

The rioters burn BLM supported businesses

But, the rioters don't spread the Chinese virus even when wearing a mask

The Democrat Mayors permit their cities to be savaged by rioters

The riots are all President Trump's (R) fault

The Democrat Mayors could stop the rioters if they wanted

The Democrat Mayors don't want to stop the rioters

President Trump posed in front of a savaged Kenosha proving there were riots in Kenosha

The Joe Biden (D) rioters, supported by Democrat mayors, destroy American cities

The media (D) announces the riots and rioters are all President Trump's (R) fault

In 2016, everything said against President Trump (R) was wrong.

In 2016, the Democrat playbook was full of lies

In 2016, the smartest woman in the world lost to a deplorable

In 2020, American voters will repeat 2016, despite the Democrats still blaming President Trump (R) for everything that is the Democrat's fault.

And people wonder why the American citizens are laughing.

when I see an airplane in the night sky

I think of the possibilities of nighttime

the opportunity, of being a person who can afford a red eye,

before current events made it so that

flying is a novelty, magical thinking

I don’t think about 2020

with its smoke across darkness, one way tickets

starlight that turns to dust in our hands

when I see an airplane in the night sky

I think of the past, people who weren’t sad

I wonder if maybe

home is not a final destination

Multicolored light reflections pulsated on Sam’s windshield. Orange and yellow from the cityscape. Blue and red from the police. Sirens blared and the police yelled for her to pull over, but Sam turned up the electronic beat from the speaker. Tears flowed freely from her eyes. She had to make a choice: keep driving and escape to a life of luxury. Or return home to see her son and daughter for a final time. If she did that, the cops would arrest her shortly after.

She thought, screw it.

She turned left and floored the gas pedal in her car. Sam was headed to her paradise.

The rumbling sound was palpable in the skies as it reverberated through my body. Finally, I had some luck. I had put all my hopes and dreams into the airplanes coming to save me tonight. My mission would tip the rebellion into our favor. I thought it was suicide to undertake it. But my brothers believed in me succeeding and were coming to save me from certain death or worse.

The doctor pulled the needles out of the patient one by one. John’s favorite classical music played from the overhead speakers. Bright lights shown to give the client in the soul room as much exposure as possible. John removed the final needle from patient’s back. The syringe it fed into was filled with pure white liquid, the substance of souls.

The fluid was extracted from the nearly dead human body. John looked at the patients back and it was pocked from the punctures of medical devices. His job was to slowly extract the essence of a person right as they were passing the plane from life and death. John’s own soul removal had been as if was being boiled alive and stabbed to death. The removal process consisted of pulling away everything it meant to be human at an atomic level. The small breaks ripped apart bonds at this low level.

The liquid result was then injected into an ethereal husk. This allowed a human to enter the afterlife. The transfer to the new form was even worse than the removal process. Without pain, there was no future.

“That movie was amazing” I said as I unlocked the front door of my apartment. “Oh my god, yes it was” she said with somewhat of a giggle. I closed the door and secured it with both the deadbolt and chain. I turned around and there she was hands folded in front of her. Her head slightly tilted to the left. I could see that she wanted me to take her. I took my left hand gripping her hair from behind her head pulling her face into mine. I kissed her lips. I turned her head and kissed her neck and bit it gently with my teeth. She bites her bottom lip as I whisper in her ear “I need it now”. I press my member against her pelvis (she feels its firmness, she can feel it throbbing?) Her temperature spikes, I pull her in tighter applying more pressure as I run my tongue up her neck to her chin, to her lips as she leans into me. She closes her eyes to savor the moment. She wraps her arms around my neck placing one of her hands on the back of my head welcoming my tongue into her mouth. She pulls my tongue in deeper as if she were drinking through a straw and let out a muffled moan. Hard and rigid pressed against the back of my zipper. I decided not to wear underwear she searches and feels for it with her thigh while simultaneously pressing her pussy against my leg. I can feel the heat from her pussy, the moisture is enough to soak my jeans her hips wind a little as she teases me with a little grinding I pull back on her hair and turned her around. Now I’m pressed up against her from behind. I slide my hand underneath the bottom of her tshirt. My hand climbs underneath the wire of her bra and I squeeze. I pinch her neck gently with my teeth, guiding my hand from her hair around to the front of her neck she pushes her ass into me, her body language begging me to go further......

I take her hand and lead her to my bedroom my bed extends from the corner sitting centered in the room I silently point to where I’d like her to sit. I pull out my phone and link it via Bluetooth to the Sonos speaker positioned on my night stand and que up a nice romantic playlist that I had crafted specifically for this type of adventure. The air rich with the aroma of lavender permeating from the oil lamp on my dresser. I again I reach my hand behind her head grabbing a fist full of her already bothered hair forcing her to look up at me meeting her deep dark brown eyes consuming her soul with my other hand I caress her cheek and with my thumb I part her lips slipping it gently inside of her mouth. She welcomes it in. I can feel the warmth of her tongue as she wraps it around my finger she pulls it in deeper. She then takes her hand and starts rubbing the surface of my jeans softly along the shaft of my dick. Her eyes open wider, longing. Eagerly she unfastens my belt, unbuttons my jeans and pulls down my zipper. I pull her to her knees on the wood paneled floor maintaining the intensive eye contact not allowing her to look down. “Pull it out” I say to her. She slowly strokes it as she exposes it. I shift my stance so that my pants slide down past my knees. I remove my thumb from her mouth and place it in my own to savor her elegance. “Just the tip” I say to her. “ just the tip for now. She kisses and flicks the underside with her tongue ever so gently, teasing me while staring up at me with a soft puppy dog stare. She raise my shaft and runs her tongue all the way down and gently kisses my balls. “That tickles” I think to myself. She takes her free hand and cups them from underneath wrapping her lips around them and sucking them into her mouth and moves them around in her mouth with her tongue. She sucks them I’m more and with a “plop” releases them. I watch as she drools. She proceeds to run her tongue up the length of my shaft and slowly takes every inch of me into her throat, she gags a little and slurps up all of the spit she was about to loose. She backs off slowly and again takes all of me gradually speeding up the pace. She reaches both of her hands around and grabs my ass pulling me in deeper, faster, deeper, faster until I explode filling her throat with hot cum. She swallows it and continues to suck out every last drop as my body trembled with ecstasy.

“You want to see it again?” I asked with a smug yet satisfied grin.

To understand a story such as mine you would have to go back to the beginning. To the room in which I spent most of my waking hours. To an outsider it would look to be a dingy, barren sort of box. What wallpaper remained was faded and peeling. For me, that room was a refuge. A sanctuary with a simple wooden dresser, a bed, and a few dolls scattered about the floor. An old quilt I liked to wrap myself in whenever I heard shouting. Which happened quite often.You see my stepfather was not a rational sort of man. And on those nights when he took to drinking(which also happened quite often) he became an angry sort of man. My mother and I would share a knowing look as she would tell me to go play quietly in my room. “No matter what you hear outside your door you must promise me that you will not come out.” Of course, I never did. Until one night when instead of the screams returning to muffled sobs, they stopped completely. The silence more alarming than any sound I could imagine. Immediately I knew. I would never hear my mother’s voice again.

Chop-A-Chop=A-Stick

Other than our hands, the oldest used utensil isn’t a fork or a spoon.

It’s chopsticks.

Apparently Chinese ancestors were the first who invented chopsticks. They did this by discovering that using two twigs is better for reaching into pots full of hot water or oil, rather than using hands or fingers. The earliest version of Chinese chopsticks were used for cooking about 6,000-9,000 years ago.

When you compare this to the fork (which didn’t hit the scene until the 1500’s), which was considered decadent and blasphemous when it was introduced to Venetian society in the 11th century. Chopsticks, the eating utensils of choice in parts of Asia, have no such scandalous past, although their history is just as interesting.

It was the ancient philosopher and vegetarian Confucius’s disdain for another common utensil, the knife, that may have helped cement the chopsticks’ role as China’s preferred food implement (and ensured countless embarrassing Western date moments in future millennia).

According to the California Academy of Sciences, which houses the Rietz Collection of Food Technology, chopsticks were developed about 5,000 years ago in China. The earliest versions were probably twigs used to retrieve food from cooking pots. When resources became scarce, around 400 BC, crafty chefs figured out how to conserve fuel by cutting food into small pieces so it would cook more quickly. This new method of cooking made it unnecessary to have knives at the dinner table—a practice that also jibed with the non-violent teachings of Confucius, as expressed in one of his numerous quotable quotations:

“The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse

and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table.”

By 500 AD, chopsticks had spread to Japan, Vietnam, and Korea. Early Japanese chopsticks were used strictly for religious ceremonies and were made from one piece of bamboo joined at the top, like tweezers. Contrary to the frequent Western misconception, Thais do not commonly use chopsticks.

During the Chinese dynastic times, silver chopsticks were sometimes used because it was believed they would turn black if they came in contact with poisoned food. This practice must have led to some unfortunate misunderstandings—it’s now known that silver has no reaction to arsenic or cyanide but can change color if it comes into contact with garlic, onions, or rotten eggs, all of which release hydrogen sulfide.

Other chopstick lore lingers. According to an article in a Malaysian publication, some Asians believe if you’re given an uneven pair, you will miss a boat or plane. An old Korean superstition holds that “the closer to the tip one holds a pair of chopsticks, the longer one will stay unmarried.” (So if you are looking to get married, drop the chopsticks.)

Aside from having a steep learning curve (if you haven’t mastered it, try a how-to video), chopstick use is also fraught with potential faux pas for clueless Westerners. If this Japanese survey is accurate, there are dozens of ways to offend, from standing chopsticks up in a bowl of rice (which is said to resemble the incense sticks at funerals) to “allowing tears of soup to drip from your chopsticks.”

Once you’ve got your technique nailed down, though, you might want to consider making it a regular habit: some people claim that chopstick use can improve memory—which will come in handy for remembering all those rules of etiquette.

Someone getting married, or graduating from school, a wedding anniversary? You can get chopsticks specially made for any occasion.

More Interesting Facts:

The earliest form of Chinese writing – oracle bones – was found. The inscriptions on animal bones had pictographic characters. The Shang Dynasty’s capital was Yin (Anyang) and its territory stretched between the lower reaches of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.

The Yellow River originated in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai province of Western China, it flows through nine provinces, and it empties into the Bohai Sea near the city of Dongying in Shandong province.

The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia (4,000 miles) and the third largest in the world.

In Japan … Adam L. Kern has suggested that Kibyoshi, picture books from the late 18th century, may have been the world’s first comic books. These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes. Some works were mass-produced as serials using woodblock printing.