Bedside Press Puns

Each press is meant to change it from dim to bright but it stays the same until it turns off after the 4th touch.

I tried a brighter bulb but the only difference is that it flickers on the last 'brightness'.

Is it faulty or is there something I could be missing?

[Chapter 1] ; [Previous Chapter] ; [Wiki + Discord]

Chapter 47 – Bent and shaped, but not broken

A deep darkness loomed above him, seeming like an endless abyss that he might accidentally fall into if he wasn’t careful.

However, in reality, it was just a very high ceiling in his unlit room, so far above him that it remained out of sight as he stared upwards.

Still, he felt himself being pulled towards it. Of course, he knew that was just a feeling, but that didn’t help him shake it in the slightest. The darkness looked empty. Calm. Comforting.

He had done little but stare into it since the day he had held his speech, and with it, sent his call for help out to the galaxy. Many things must’ve happened since then, he was sure. A reaction from humanity. Outcries from different worlds. Outreaching from multiple news-organizations at the very least.

But he was kept in the dark about it. The only reason he knew it was happening was that there was absolutely no possibility that it wasn’t. Still, he was kept in the dark, as someone dealt with it in his stead.

His ‘instructing’ had also been put on hold for the moment, likely because his ‘instructors’ had their hands full with the fallout of the recent announcements.

All the better for him. It left more time for him to gaze into the darkness, trying to let his mind be consumed by it.

That way, he didn’t have to deal with his own failure. And that was just it. He had failed them. He had failed to keep them safe by playing along, simply because he could no longer bear it. Failed to save them from a danger they were only in because he had failed to get them off the station and out of danger earlier. Because he had failed to use his opportunity on the station, wasting time with imbecilic plans implanted into him during his darkest times, which he had failed to resist. And all because he had failed to see what was happening to them before it was too late.

A perfect storm of his own failures, and the only one who likely wouldn’t be suffering from it was himself.

Yeah, he would take the darkness over that, even if he felt himself slowly withering away all the while. His limbs, the ones that remained at least, hurt from their lack of use, his muscles screaming to be

Meeki As Promised!

Chapter Twenty Six: Take My Love, Take My Land

“The sky… is falling…” Nodrin says, their mind yet to process what apocalyptic spendor plays out above.

Metal crafts without the need of any sort of large balloon or gas sack fly in the air at impossible speeds and perform incredibly sharp turns. The initial dissenting demon-bringers coated in red are beset by far more aggressive crafts in a vast array of different shapes. Like mythical beasts of old they fluidly soar, expelling breaths of blur and orange flames that travel faster than fireworks.

Red crafts that have yet to touch down on the city streets start to flee back into the sky as their assailants utterly annihilate them without an ounce of mercy.

“They’re… not from underground…” Meeki mutters in awe just before a red craft explodes above, sending its fractured carcass down towards the couple.

Nodrin takes hold of their bondmate and leaps toward a narrow alleyway. By the skin of their fangs the two barrel between buildings just before the craft impacts. The thing blisters the street tearing up cobblestone like a shovel through gravel. Flames burst forth in concentrated plumes from several cracks in the craft’s exterior, followed by an internal eruption. Buildings adjacent to it are overcome by a shockwave carrying liquid flame and molten alien metals.

Unable to withstand it, the building just on the couple’s left caves in upon the street. The two crawl ahead through the alley as they are soon blinded by clouds of hot ash and dust. Holding on to one another they press on until they feel a solid wall blocking the way forward. A dead end within this increasingly unbreathable air. They stagger up against it, feeling for any footholds to climb up, but have no such luck.

Looking back, Meeki considers the risk of going back to navigate through the wreckage. But the heat alone coming from that direction alone dissuades such an option. Out of desperation she takes out an arrow and stabs it into the wall to perhaps make her own footing, but the stone surface only suffers a scratch. Even though Nodrin is up against her, she can barely make out their silhouette. She wants to say something, apologies for drawing them into this chaos. That out of all the Gratt they could have bonded with, it was she who they followed.

She reaches her head

Previous | Yuletide Special | Next

---Disclaimer: this issue contains discussion of fictionalised, bigoted ideology and slave trading. If either of these things will upset you, please read no further---

---Light breaks---

I’m lying down…

I open my eyes, already knowing where I am.

I see Dr Gato… he looks, different? Clearer somehow?

“Where’s Victor?!” I say, panicked.

Wordlessly, he extends a, six fingered, paw to the foot of my bed.

There he is beside Qorak, asleep on a bedside perch, my hero!… My brave boy… sleeping in a chair, bent such that his head rests below my feet.

Feet?

I raise my right leg… didn’t my right leg get cut off? And Victor's hand? And my left eyes were gouged out?

I look to Gato “You saved my life.”

He curls his tail in negation.

“I saved his life. Your injuries were so severe and your constitution so frail that I was ready to pronounce you beyond help… The Shings saved your life… it seems Terran medicine has a heavy emphasis on trauma… though, I can’t imagine why(!)”

“Was that a joke, Gato?!”

“Perish the thought... Anyway, the Shings stabilised you and MacLeod built you a prosthetic leg and eyes and advised the Shings as they attached them… it took her only [an hour] to design them from scratch… Apparently, fixing the damaged ship ‘burst the dam’ and now Kwijj and Sha’anza are frantically telling anyone who’ll listen that she’s ‘gone full Terran’ in her engineering… Victor had to go into the regen tube… he was not happy when he woke up and saw his life’s collection of scar tissue wiped away. I managed to keep my head attached to my body by explaining that it was the only way to save his life and reattach his severed hand… You, unfortunately, would have died from being placed in a Terran regen tube… hence the prosthetics. I have no clue why you would make sure we had one for Terrans but not for yourself… so you’re stuck with the prosthetics until we can make port, for longer than a week, somewhere with a R’qali appropriate regen… or you buy one for the ship... Also… since the ships’ AI was restored people have been noticing that it has been somewhat strange…”

“Strange? Strange how?”

“Strange like this!” chirps the Computer’s voice, cheerfully, over th

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Previous | Interlude | Interlude II | Interlude III [1/3]| Interlude III [2/3] | Interlude III [3/3] | Interlude IV [1/2] | Interlude IV [2/2] | Next

---Disclaimer: This chapter contains moderate allusion to NSFW activity, I haven't enabled the NSFW tag as I don't believe it's that bad but, if there's any doubt, turn back, now! There will be no Pancakes in the main sequence but they will be served in the upcoming Interlude (which will be skippable without missing relevant plot). Without further ado, enjoy!---

---Self-Restraint---

“You’re all wrong and, if you can’t see it, you’re fools!” I say insistently.

A chorus of opposition comes back. Not a single one of them sees sense.

I take a scoop of my dilute Terran wine into my beak before swallowing it back.

“You just don’t get it! There are millions of them! They hunger for our flesh! They bite us and then we become one of them! How can you say that zombies are less threatening than we are?!” complains Dhawan.

“I can say it because it’s true! A Terran zombie is just a Terran with EVERYTHING that makes you Terrans a force to be reckoned with gone! They’re slow, they’re stupid, they don’t plan, they don’t coordinate, cooperate, communicate, they can’t track you over land, they can’t mentally keep track of objects not currently in their awareness, they can’t trap, they can’t deceive, beguile, betray, they won’t hold a grudge, they can’t make tools, usually can’t use tools, they’re often depicted as being physically weaker than standard Terrans and, the biggest thing is that, they have no sense of self-preservation at all! An animal can learn to recognise a gun and

It doesn't hurt her, it doesn't bother her...but thats probably because she doesn't know, and I feel horrible about it but the things we've done are too incredible to risk losing by telling her.

It started about a year ago, we've been together for three. She's always blessed with the ability to fall asleep quickly while I'm lying in bed with my mind racing.

I laid there as usual and thought about the day, thought about things that bothered me, things I liked and didn't like, literally anything. I even thought about the cartoons from the 90s like rocket power. You remember that show? With the shoebies! Or Rocos modern life? "I'm nauseous, I'm nauseous"

Then I think about feeling nauseous...and I'm now I'm anxious. I'm anxious about being anxious. Then I force my mind to empty. I try to imagine pure blackness, devoid of picture or sound. Like death. Death...can you imagine, whats it like?

All of that

All of that was the exact line of thinking that made it all possible. It was a domino effect of thoughts that culminated with a simple question.

What's it like?

That's the first time she spoke, or rather, someone spoke through her.

"It's cold" She said.

I inhaled sharply because her voice caught me off guard in the darkness of the room.

"I'll turn the heat on." I whispered while sitting up, obviously thinking she, was saying she was cold...then she continued

"And it's quiet. Mostly."

This, was a strange thing to say for her because we always sleep with Sleep sounds. The room was never quiet since neither of us liked sleeping in pure silence.

In the dark of our bedroom, with the blankets over my lower half and my chest rising and falling as my heart rate picked up I started to think she was just talking in her sleep for the first time.

"Baby..." I gentle touched her shoulder, she was on her side with her back to me. She let out a long sigh, longer than any natural sleeping sigh.

"Its dark. But not regular dark...I can see things... in the dark." She said.

Now I felt strange, I felt cold and nervous, i narrowed my eyes to try and see what she was talking about but there was nothing, just us in the mostly blackness of our bedroom.

"What...what do you see in the dark?" I asked her.

Then slowly she turned, the blanket slid from her chest, and in the low light from the moon coming through the curtains I could see that her eyes were still closed.

She was still asleep. But again she spoke.

"Everything, it's all here, but things ar

I was fresh out of college, ambitious, hard-working and in debt.

I applied for hundreds of jobs and attended dozens of interviews, all while working the night shift at a twenty-four-hour convenience store.

But I kept hitting the brick wall of not having the right experience. It was so frustrating. I knew I could do ninety per-cent of what the job specs asked for. The other ten per-cent I was sure I could work out when I needed to.

It was a no every time though, and, it did not matter how many times I read on feedback emails that I was ‘very talented’ and the interviewers had ‘enjoyed meeting me’, each and every rejection sucked.

I did not need compliments I needed a damn job.

So, I wasn’t feeling very positive as I filled in yet another application form for a job I had seen online. It wasn’t even a proper job. It was for an internship with a research company, unpaid and for three months.

For the experience, I told myself as I fought to finish the form.

I finally did. Just before I had to leave for work I pressed ‘send’. Then I threw on my coat and hurried out the door. The shelves would not stack themselves.

The next morning I was dragging myself into bed when I noticed I had a reply to my latest application showing on my phone.

Thinking, At least the rejections are getting quicker, I almost did not read it. But my finger twitched and I opened – and, to my amazement, I was told I had been accepted onto the internship programme.

All I needed to do was read and accept the terms and conditions. But who does that, right?

I scrolled down and accepted, then rolled over and went to sleep.

The alarm on my mobile woke me at one in the afternoon. I couldn’t remember setting an alarm but obviously I must have. Then I thought: the internship. And rushed to look at the message again.

There it was: ‘Please arrive promptly at three p.m. for your induction’. This was followed by an address.

It was way out of town but thanks to the alarm I had time.

I am so on it, I told myself and hurried for the shower.

As it was, I was almost late. There was a line to get through the security checks at the entrance to the building. The place didn’t look anything special. It could have been a stock image brought up from a search for ‘big faceless office block’.

When my turn came I was asked to empty my pockets and walk through a body scanner. This was a fancy looking piece of kit and gave me a 360 degrees going over.

I felt kind of violated to be honest and, a

Hi everyone!

I’m a new nurse that started in august. I work on a medical step down unit with patients who are intubated, on drips, double pressed, and we run our own codes and intubations. Since being off orientation for 2 months, I have already been charge nurse. Most of our staff has left and I am one of the only nurses on nights. Often it is me and nurses floating from other units during a shift. I didn’t dislike my job when I first started, but now that I feel like I have no support and I am the only resource on my unit after only being a nurse on my own for 3 months, I’m feeling overwhelmed and ready to run away from bedside nursing. Is this normal? Does it get better? I am beyond anxious everytime I go into work and I’m just wondering if maybe I should look into other options. Thank you!

Thanks as always to BlueFishCake.

Other chapters

Part 3: Crumb

Chapter 23: Ask Me Anything

It felt like she’d only just closed her eyes when Ashley was shaken awake. The window was dark; she had no idea what time it was, though as she’d been up past midnight planning for the next day’s operations, she at least had a lower bound. One of the techs was standing over her, a cup of coffee in his hand. He passed it over as she sat up.

“Ma’am, we got a message you need to see. I can’t make heads nor tails of it, but it authenticated over one of our high-priority frequency-knocking sequences.” He passed a hand-scrawled sheet of paper over to her.

Ashley accepted the cup groggily, shaking her head to clear the cobwebs of sleep. “You have the authentication pattern?”

The tech nodded and pointed to a column of numbers on the side, each representing a frequency on which a signal had been sent, prefacing the message. She had a couple of patterns memorized, the ones that meant immediate danger, or that heralded a call from Central Command. This matched neither, which meant she needed her code book. She yawned. “Send an acknowledgement. I’ll be down in a minute.”

The ham radio network had turned out to be the Resistance’s most reliable means of communicating over long distances. Ashley didn’t trust the internet, and her organization moved frequently enough that getting a reliable connection often just didn’t happen before they had to move again. Having a network of reliable agents, spread out all over the sparsely populated area near the old Canadian border, each with a code book and a wireless set, had proved highly effective.

Even if it did mean occasionally being woken in the middle of the night to decode a secret message from an unknown source.

Ashley pulled her coat over her nightclothes and stamped her feet into boots. She pulled her code book from among the technical manuals stacked on her nightstand, and, coffee in hand, made her way to the makeshift command room. She dropped the code book on the table, and examined the sheet again.

With the code book, it didn’t take a long time to finish translating the message. “L taken by Imperial transport East-North-East. Enemies – killed 3 humans, wounded 1 Shil’vati, no prisoners. RM.” The problem was, who were L and RM? The ciphers they used were basic, by design, and whoever had sent this had taken the lessons of br

I didn't think.

There wasn't any time.

As I stepped onto the side of the arena wall, I felt myself get yanked back by my collar. I tumbled back onto the floor of the stands and looked up to see Headmaster Norah standing above me, her steely gaze piercing me like daggers.

"What were you thinking?" She asked.

"I've got to do something!"

"You're in no condition," she said coldly. "The plan is for us headmasters to keep it contained within the arena via seven-pronged barrier until the spectators have had time to escape. We will handle the monster then. If you want to help, then make sure our guests leave safely."

"Not a chance," I growled as I got to my feet.

"And what is it you think you can do?" She snapped at me.

"More than nothing," I answered before vaulting over the side and plummeting into the arena. She started yelling something at me but Edwin's voice boomed all around us as I landed and rolled with my momentum the way Fena had.

"Everyone remain calm. Please leave the stadium at the designated exits in an orderly fashion. I assure you, the beast will be contained until you're at a safe distance, and then dealt with by Galgia's most powerful mages. You are one hundred percent safe."

But that didn't account for everyone. Her screaming was making my stomach turn. I stared up at the beast– it was even larger than I'd thought. Tovin was still frozen in place on the ground as he watched the spectacle play out before him. I gritted my teeth and hurried toward him– I was going to need his help.

"Get up!!" I screamed as I picked him up by his arms. He found his feet beneath him and turned to see me staring him dead in the eyes. "Get it together!! I'm gonna need you for this!"

"Y-you fool!" He shot back. "What can we do against something like that??"

"Can you cast that spell again?" I yelled.

"W-what?"

"THAT SPELL!! THE BEAM!! CAN YOU CAST IT??"

He stared at me for a second before nodding, "Yes. Yes, I can cast it one more time. But it won't be enough for something of this caliber, you half-wit!"

"Through the eye," I asserted. "Its eyes are probably soft. Could you do it?"

"... Yes, but I'd have to get close."

"I'll distract it!" I yelled. "When all four of its eyes are on me, take it down!"

He stared at me for several seconds before I grabbed him by his shoulders, "TOVIN!! ARE YOU NUMBER ONE OR NOT??"

"ALRIGHT!!" He screamed back, slapping my hands away. "Alright. If you give me the opening... I'll try."

I didn't waste another sec

Alot of great jokes get posted here! However just because you have a joke, doesn't mean it's a dad joke.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT NSFW, THIS IS ABOUT LONG JOKES, BLONDE JOKES, SEXUAL JOKES, KNOCK KNOCK JOKES, POLITICAL JOKES, ETC BEING POSTED IN A DAD JOKE SUB

Try telling these sexual jokes that get posted here, to your kid and see how your spouse likes it.. if that goes well, Try telling one of your friends kid about your sex life being like Coca cola, first it was normal, than light and now zero , and see if the parents are OK with you telling their kid the "dad joke"

I'm not even referencing the NSFW, I'm saying Dad jokes are corny, and sometimes painful, not sexual

So check out r/jokes for all types of jokes

r/unclejokes for dirty jokes

r/3amjokes for real weird and alot of OC

r/cleandadjokes If your really sick of seeing not dad jokes in r/dadjokes

Punchline !

Edit: this is not a post about NSFW , This is about jokes, knock knock jokes, blonde jokes, political jokes etc being posted in a dad joke sub

Edit 2: don't touch the thermostat

There was a ringing noise, somewhere in the world. That was a problem. Dr. Prescott had said, “no side effects” of course. He'd repeated it verbally, in writing, in forms, emails, phone calls, even a fax, often enough that the words had lost any form of meaning, just another drop in the sea of promises that Eliza most certainly did not believe. But she’d thought, if anything, that she’d wake up blind. Her hearing had never been on the table.

Eliza groaned. She tried to sit up, but a hand pressed against her shoulder, keeping her down. She was laying in a bed. The ringing noise was changing. It was misshapen. Unnatural. It was a dull roar now, as of…

Wind?

“Easy now, easy. That’s it. That’s it.” said a man. Soft and slow like he was talking an animal. Maybe horses. “How do you feel?”

Eliza lay easy, tranquil, as the man, Dr. Prescott, asked his battery of questions. Like he’d said before they put her under, she was wearing a blindfold. He hadn’t said anything about not taking it off.

But it wasn’t the first time someone hadn’t said, and for what they were paying her even Eliza could do tranquil. They could tranquilize her again for all she cared if that took away the noise.

Matured now on the edges of her consciousness, it still sounded like the wind. Eliza had never gone in for irony, you had to have something to appreciate when something else went deliciously wrong. Irony was people like the good doctor and his friends. Eliza thought that what she had hardly qualified her.

Three floors down, if they hadn’t moved her, a broken violin lay in a locker with her name on it. Broken, still, so Eliza didn’t give a shit about irony right now. Irony could fuck off until she was gone and the luthier's work was done. Until she heard the perfect, pristine notes that she’d grown up with and shaped her life around.

They could tranquilize her again. Fix it. Prescott owed that, at least.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Prescott said, the last of the questions for now.

In answer Eliza swung her legs off the bed, pointing herself towards the dull, windy roar that she still heard. They might have moved her, she thought. That meant her violin could be anywhere, a problem, but it also meant that the roar could be equipment, something for the surgery. Or a window open in a freak windstorm that Dr. Prescott was conveniently avoiding for some such “experimental” purpose. It could be anything at all, it could even go away when she opened up her eyes.

Eliza opened her eyes. The s

PART FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE

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Sunday

Having been asleep on his back, Boyd awoke to a weight landing on his abdomen with added pressure on either side, corralling him to the bed. His eyes shot open; his fists clenched, but before he came up swinging, Lucas leaned forward into view and gave him a light kiss. “Hey, sexy. Guess what day it is today?”

Boyd blinked but instead of answering, on his next inhalation, he filled his lungs to their full capacity and tensed his body, stretching to wake himself up without moving very much. In doing so, he allowed Lucas’ question to bounce around the cobwebs inside his brain, searching for the significance of whatever month and year this was.

As he expected, he came up empty. “What?” he asked, thankful that Lucas was kneeling on either side of his hips, supporting most of his own weight. Although Boyd didn’t need to go to the bathroom straight away, he was sure it would be a different story if two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle bounced on his bladder.

“What?” he repeated, when nothing still came to him.

Lucas grinned and leaned forward, dropping his elbows into Boyd’s pillow on either side of his head. The tight, maroon tank top he wore put his entire upper body on display. “Today’s ‘I get to spend the whole day with my sexy boyfriend’ day,” he declared, ending that statement with another kiss.

Oh, great. The fucker was in a playful mood, and Boyd hadn’t even had his first cup of coffee yet. “That’s true,” he agreed, giving himself a genuine all over stretch, this one causing him to smack his knuckles against the headboard. The sharp influx of pain had him snapping fully awake in an instant.

Lucas was smart enough to not laugh at his misfortune. “I was thinking we could go and check out some gyms since nothing else is open yet.”

Boyd stared up at him, then twisted his head towards his bedside table, where his phone sat sideways in its charging cradle with an app that doubled as his alarm clock.

Lucas immediatel

Do your worst!

I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately and that means scrolling through the ancient posts on my old tumblr. I came across one where I apparently copy + pasted one of Alex’s old myspace blog posts (there were a lot back in the day, mostly prose and poems; some lyrics from Therapy and Weightless are pulled from them). Thought I’d share here since I’m not sure if these were ever archived/screenshotted.

Not sure the exact date of this - I reposted it to my tumblr in July 2009 but I’m guessing it was originally written between 07/08.

—

“I had a long, goofy conversation several weeks ago with an interesting girl who I haven’t seen since, in a diner I have yet to revisit, but it stirred up some thoughts that I found pretty interesting. Maybe I’m just nuts. Anyhow, the discussion began on a simple basis; I inquired as to what her favorite color might be. She said she didn’t know. I replied, "How can you not know? Its a simple question.” – She paused, looking sort of surprised, as if someone had never pressed her for an answer before, and then replied, “Well… It changes… Today its yellow.”

I didn’t know what to say… I didn’t understand.

How can your favorite color just change?

What happened to yesterday’s favorite color?

If, on a whim, something of such esteem and value can be replaced with another, then on what grounds was it ever of any more value to begin with? When I was little, my favorite color was green. It stayed that way, no matter what I said to be trendy at the time (IE. 8th grade was my “black is such a raw and expressive pigment” phase, but everyone goes through that shit.) As of late, I’ve become more partial to blue - Light blue in particular, but that’s not that important. My point is that something happened that caused me to send green packing, and to fall absolutely head-over-heels for blue.

(Stay with me on this…)

Now, such a dramatic change in attraction doesn’t just happen - I mean shit, I know we’re only talking about colors here, but this kind of switch-a-roo has only happened ONCE in my entire life. Green ➡️ Blue. Just like that. Must mean somthing, right? Pablo Picasso went through a “blue period”, at which time he was broke and mourning the loss of a dear friend. There’s a similarity there somewhere.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am by no means depressed, nor do I have any reason to be, but perhaps color - every, individual hue, represents to each of us a state of being, and in turn, helps us to deal with whatever it is we may be goi

How the hell am I suppose to know when it’s raining in Sweden?

Mathematical puns makes me number

Ants don’t even have the concept fathers, let alone a good dad joke. Keep r/ants out of my r/dadjokes.

But no, seriously. I understand rule 7 is great to have intelligent discussion, but sometimes it feels like 1 in 10 posts here is someone getting upset about the jokes on this sub. Let the mods deal with it, they regulate the sub.

"What the hell were you thinking, Zanra?"

"I don't know, Damir. Maybe I was thinking that we're on a mission of discovery and personal injury is an acceptable risk."

"Of course, If it gains us knowledge." Damir stomped toward her as he spoke, each of his four foot pads emphasizing one syllable. Yet when it came time to touch Zanra's wound, his fingers became like feathers. She recoiled even from this and sent him storming around the medical bay, eventually tossing a tray of sterile instruments to the floor.

"Enough!," said a third voice.

Damir stopped his tantrum long enough to address the newcomer. "Stay out of this, Petra."

Petra picked up a fallen scalpel and examined its blade. "If only the blade of reason, could cut through this prideful lesion."

"We're not in the mood for poetry," said Damir.

Petra handed the scalpel to Zanra. "If he tries to touch you again."

"You should see how we touch when you're not looking," said Damir softly.

"What was that, little man?," said Petra.

"I said that I was trying to comfort Zanra. You'd know that if you ever bothered to ask."

Petra dismissed him with a click of her eye stalks but nodded for Zanra to explain.

Zanra hoisted herself onto the examination table and lifted her right rear leg. There, on the abdominal part of her jumpsuit, was a large blood stain.

"My god," said Petra.

"I told you!," said Damir.

Thanks to the sexual dimorphism of their species, Petra was twice Damir's weight and a meter taller. "Crawl back to your quarters," she said while towering over him.

Damir locked eyes with her, but his 150 centimeter height and 80 kilograms had no effect. After a few embarrassing seconds, he conceded to his diminutive status and left the medical bay.

In the male's absence Petra more closely examined Zanra. Off came the stained jumpsuit to expose the naked wound. "It's deep," said Petra. "I'm surprised that you aren't in terrible pain."

"The whole area feels numb, like when you get a local anesthetic."

"Cuts don't normally come with painkillers. What caused it?"

"I was in a chamber just off the main corridor connecting the eastern and western halls. In the middle of the chamber, surrounded by stone tables, was a black obelisk with six arms hanging radially and a crystalline orb on top. The orb was covered in symbols that reminded me of buttons. Thinking it was a control panel, I reached up and pressed a symbol. One of the arms sprang to life and—"

"Gouged a canyon in your side."

"It was such a

They were cooked in Greece.

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

He lost May

I met my husband when we were in college together. I was working on my bachelor's degree, helping out in the library for some much needed extra cash, when I first laid eyes on him. He was not the usual sort of man I fancied, more bookish than muscly. I found him charming in his own way, and we struck up a friendship. He told me he was a writer, was working on a book of short stories to submit to a publishing house. I offered to read them, and from that moment on, I became his biggest fan.

His stories were so...visceral. He wrote not as a writer but as a first-hand observer, and it wasn't long before his work was noticed. We were living together by then, our library friendship having blossomed into something more, and I could see how giddy he was when the letter came from Bordwin Publishing. When he read how they wanted to publish his book, I think it was the proudest moment of his life.

He kept writing for Bordwin, his stories finding a niche with the horror community. He also started selling his pieces to magazines and online sources, getting his name out there, and becoming more recognizable. As his fame grew, however, he still jokingly called me his biggest fan. I couldn't argue with him; I genuinely loved his work. He wrote the sort of stories than were genuinely terrifying and enticed the reader to keep reading until the very end. As his stories grew in number, I found myself curious about where they all came from. My husband, we'll call him Michael, was a mild-mannered fellow who had never really experienced anything horrific in his life. He described his childhood as benign, with no broken bones or funny uncles. His family was loving and doted on him constantly. He had never been without. He had never really suffered, and I found myself very curious about where all these nightmares came from in such a beautiful mind.

Then, over drinks one night, he told me.

He didn't like to talk about it when sober. He always said that discussing the "creative process" was boring or that his stories' technical aspect would bore me to tears. I wasn't fooled, though. Beneath his jokes was something colder, something fearful. So one night, I pressed him. He still didn't really want to talk about it, but I was persistent. Finally, after a lot of coaxing and some strong whiskey, he all but blurted his answer to me.

I wish now I hadn't asked.

"Its The Door," he said, and at that moment, he seemed almost afraid of his own words.

"The Door?" I asked, confused by t

I — II — III — IV — V — VI — VII

December 13th-15th 1989

I was drunk and under the influence of heavy sedatives. For a couple hazy seconds I was blissfully unaware of my situation. There was no research, there was no institute, there was no impending danger, yet, as my blurry vision sharpened under the harsh light of the bedside lamp my throat seized up with fear. Constantin Markarov was standing above my bed. There was a pistol in his hands.

He told me, in no uncertain terms, that if I tried to call for help that he would shoot me on the spot. He was doing his best to appear calm but the pulsing veins on his forehead betrayed his restlessness.

He had come into my room to discuss my loyalty — not to Dr. Herkel but to the institute as a whole. Markarov broke into my room with a gun to gage whether I was willing to do the right thing to keep the dark knowledge safe. The quiver in his hands made it very clear what would happen to me if I was deemed unworthy.

He asked if I was going to tell Dr. Herkel about his plans. Still paralyzed with fear and sleep and the poison in my veins, all I managed to do was shake my head.

He asked if I was going to continue working within the confines of the institute once Herkel’s leadership would be usurped. With the threat of a gun in my face I wanted to shake my head yes, but my neck refused to move. More research, more research beneath the watchful eye of an organism I couldn’t comprehend — the suggestion was far too horrid. I wanted out. I wanted out and there was no way that I could lie.

Markarov took my silence for an answer. From the pocket of his coat he removed a syringe filled with a clear viscous liquid. It was far too dangerous for the institute to keep me alive, he said. The injection would put me out of

Two muffins are in an oven, one muffin looks at the other and says "is it just me, or is it hot in here?"

Then the other muffin says "AHH, TALKING MUFFIN!!!"

Don't you know a good pun is its own reword?

First of all, a really big Thank You to u/Zander823, without whom this chapter would be a lot crappier. If you don't know him, now's the time. Hop in for a good treat.

Second of all, sorry for the long pause. The problem is that I'm too good at everything I do, and the only thing I do is procrastinate. Anywoo, I'm continuing this now, albeit by my time.

Hope you like it.

First/Previous/Next

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I felt like shit. As I woke up, pain stung my whole body. I felt like I had been mauled and then tossed away by rabid dogs.

I sighed.

It hurt to breathe, but I forced myself to take deep breaths anyway.

Air in, air out. Air in, air out.

I looked around, recollecting what had happened. The last thing I remembered was falling down, and the giant snake. A dragon, maybe?

‘Man, dragons would be super cool,’ pondered a voice inside me.

I shook my head. There was something, jumping right there on the border of my mind, slowly slipping out of reach the more I thought about it. Like those dreams that are super-detailed and extra vivid, as long as you don’t wake up, after which it all fades to nothingness.

I had so many questions… I needed to know what had happened. I needed answers.

‘Isn’t there a way to call for someone?’ I thought, scanning the room, ‘What time is it? What day?’ my heart missed a beat at the idea of a coma.

I looked around for more than ten minutes, but found nothing that could help me, nor anything I knew how to use. Frustrated, I started ripping the medical devices off of me: The drip that was on my arm, the needle inside my vein, the electrodes on my chest, even that clothespin-thingie on my finger.

Hell, all that technology, and not a single damn button that read: “Press Button to Call People” on it!

As I tried to get up from the bed, slowly clambering to my feet, a flock of doctors and nurses and whatever rushed inside, transporting an… old, portable TV on a table with wheels?

Only as one of the nurses took out the pads on the sides, I recognized it as a defibrillator. When they saw me, they all relaxed, and the majority left the room, leaving only a doctor behind.

Maybe I imagined it, but I think I heard someone cussing at me down the hall.

“Good morning, Indestructible, I’m Doctor Sierra,” said

Context: I'm looking for the ideal music sketching device to mainly keep at my bedside table to be picked up instead of the mobile phone when bored. In theory, this would mean more music making and less GASing over stuff on YouTube which is where I tend to gravitate when feeling lazy and too far away from the studio. 🙈

I already have an MPC One as my primary music making device and I'm very very happy with it. About the only thing I really miss about it is the lack of true portability.

Hence this post: I'm looking for input from you all on your ideal device for the purpose of noodling on song and rhythm ideas. Some "requirements":

• After playing around with Koala and FL Studio Mobile, I'm convinced that I want a hardware device. It makes a massive difference to be able to press physical buttons/keys and it's too easy to just switch back to YouTube on the mobile phone.
• It needs to sound good enough that I'll want to sample the output and use in final productions (this rules out the PO-33 for example).
• It needs to be small and portable (as in, either battery or USB powered - no power bricks allowed).

To start things off, I'm GASing a little over the Roland TR-6S drum machine. It looks very capable with FM synthesis, drum synthesis and sample playback. I love that it's very small and can be powered with a USB power brick or AA batteries (would love it even more of it were usb-c). What it seems to miss is a rudinemtary ability to add a simple melody, so this would strictly be for drums and maybe the occasional accent tones/basslines. The intended use case would be to quickly come up with drum loops and maybe even basslines occasionally, and then sample those loops into the MPC One, chopping them up and building full songs around those loops. What I'd probably miss on the TR-6S is the ability to make a simple melody using a sample.

I'm also considering the upcoming JD-08 or JX-08, which are clearly more for melody sketches and sound design, not for making drum beats - I love sound design and playing chords so in many ways this would be an even better fit for me compared to a drum machine. What it shares with the TR-6S is the portability and immediacy with its step sequencer (just two tracks though), and I love that that it charged with usb-c, making it even more universally portable. The downside compared to the TR-6S is that it's bulkier and has a more limited sequencer - two tracks don't get you very far after all. I also don't know how essen

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

It first started a week ago. I usually wake up around 6:30 am or so, take the dog out to piss before getting my morning coffee. As I was standing outside waiting for him to finish, something on my left hand caught my attention. It was a light blue stain running around my fingertips. Just my middle finger and left index fingers.

I glanced over my hand. There were no other signs of the blue reside. Just the fingertips. Nothing on my right hand.

The dog finished and I went straight to the bathroom and started scrubbing. It took four or five rounds of soap and water before the blue started to fade.

I went to the kitchen and found my wife, showed her the blue stains, and asked her about them. She chuckled and replied, "Did you fall into a porta-potty?" I guess it does kind of look like that blue liquid.

Fortunately, I work from home, so I could spend scrub my nails in the kitchen sink in-between work calls. By the end of the day, the blue had faded.

That evening, my wife was leaving town for work so I drove her to the airport. I'm not exactly sure why a company that is 100% remote requires employees to travel every quarter, but cash is cash. I saw her off with a kiss, and she reminded me to take those nighttime vitamins.

I drove home, brushed my teeth, and took the nighttime vitamins. Then curled up and fell asleep watching a YouTube video about how ancient aliens invented modern plumbing.

The next morning, the blue was back.

The same two fingers left middle and left index. Both stained blue.

More scrubbing. This time harder. I moved from hand soap to dish soap. By mid-day, my hands were dry and starting to crack, but the blue was almost gone. I needed to figure out what's causing it.

I ripped the bed apart and rifled through the sheets. Nothing. The bedside table just has a charger for my phone and my water bottle. So I checked the things I touch before going to bed. Toothbrush, mouthwash, floss, door handles. All normal. You never realize how much you touch until you try and track it all.

I looked at the dog. *Have you been licking my fingers in the middle of the night?* I forced his mouth open and look inside. Nothing.

The rest of the day was nothing noteworthy. Work. Dinner. YouTube. Nighttime vitamins. Bed.

The third morning is when freaked out. The blue stain now covered my index, middle, and ring finger on my left hand. I turned the entire house over. Anything I could think of that I touch. Handrails, every glass in the kitchen, drawe

And now I’m cannelloni

I think my wife cheated on me in college, but I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it. I would appreciate some help not freaking out.

I found it early on the third day of the project I thought would take an afternoon, wedged tight between a yellowed flipbook of baseball cards, nothing but nickel and pennybacks it would turn out, and a dry-rotted box of moth hole linens, probably worth more than the cards after a wash. I almost threw out the small plastic case along with the box.

It wouldn't have even caught my eye if I wasn't so desperately looking for something to make the purchase of the storage unit worth it, scanning everything.  Not a CD case, a floppy disk waited inside, piece of masking tape covering the front labeled F.T.A. I set it on top of the measly pile designated KEEP, right on top of the rickety rocking chair.

"Wow, real treasure there," my wife, Jane said, already wiping off the thin layer of sweat onto a sleeve. It didn't take long for these metal boxes to get hot in the Florida summer. "Might have some clipart on there or if you're really lucky, a fresh copy of Windows 95."

"That's how this stuff goes. You sort through all the junk until you find the one thing that pays for the auction by itself," I said, surveying the last bits of crap we had left to sort through.

"I love you, bun, but you got to realize there's a big difference between reality and reality tele-" she yelled as she threw down the box she was holding and started batting herself. A centipede worked through the handle hole and back into the void within. "Jesus, you're definitely going through that one!"

"It's some kind of game," I yelled from the office later that night. I'd managed to dig out the old floppy disk drive from the ancient computer left in the storage unit and was amazed when I managed to hook it up to my laptop with a little creative adapter use.

I waited to click the game.exe file and looked through the only folder. A bunch of files without extensions, all with random strings of digits, more than seems like should fit on a single floppy disk but I didn't actually remember how big they were. I just remembered the Oregon trail took two.

"Great, really hope it's worth the $500 you blew," Jane called from the kitchen. Her voice got raspy when she was tired. "Because nothing else here is. All this jewelry's fake."

Deciding an apology would just frustrate her more, I held my tongue as I clicked the exe, hoping whatever viruses there were too old to do a

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

[Part 1 here] [Part 2 here]

The dreams have gotten worse.

Since I started on the third tape it’s been hard to tell if I’m awake or still asleep. I’ve even cracked and had a drink to calm my nerves. Haven’t done that in over a year, well, not since my Father passed. He was a whisky man, which must of skipped a generation since vodkas been at my bedside all week. You’d never see him without a cuban in one hand, puffing away like some kind of aging locomotive, and a Rob Roy scotch in the other. Doctors kept telling him, year after year, that his vices would kill him one day. My father died at 91 with a smoke in his mouth and a bottle in his fist. No cancer, no stroke, no Alzheimer’s disease. Said it was just his time.

That geriatric curmudgeon is probably laughing at us all right now, God rest his soul.

If only he would’ve shared the importance of these tapes with me before he left. Instead he left this damn box here, this old fetid crate of cassettes which have been driving me crazy.

Well, let’s hope not. Since I’ve definitely been feeling close to it.

Each dream I dream starts out the same. The trees, the field, the sense of being watched by a thousand invisible eyes. Each time, every time, I hear my Fathers voice, clear as the day he died, saying the phrase, Appease her.

Unnerving, sure, but the last few nights have been a bit different.

There is a smell. An awful, terrible stink, one so pungent and putrid it makes my vodka soaked morning breathe smell like a bed of roses in comparison. You know how people sometimes have ultra vivid dreams, where the sensations are so real it’s hard to even realize they’re dreaming? Well, imagine that, but with every sensation being wicked and disgusting and cruel. What started as a scent of pine and earth, starts to erode into a stench of rotting flesh and animal dung.

And that’s not all. Near the end of my dream, if we’re still calling it that, there comes another voice.

Not my Fathers. Definitely not.

In a sickly, yet somehow comforting tone, there comes a woman's voice. She sounds old and tired, like someones grandmother would, but once the recollection of her words hit me, all sense of fragility and feebleness leave her.

It feeds, it grows,

Fingers, hands, feet, and toes.

After

[Chapter 1] ; [Previous Chapter] ; [Discord + Wiki]

Chapter 44 – The fate of the “late” James Aldwin

Several weeks earlier

[As the timer behind him slowly ticked down, James held eye contact with the face on the screen before him, only breaking it to shortly glimpse down at the sheet in his hand containing official answers to the test questions he was providing to his companion behind the camera.

“Hmmm…,” it sounded after a short silence. “Wasn’t it by producing product abundance?”

Nia looked justifiably unsure of her answer while slightly smiling at him through the screen. James didn’t even need to look at the answer sheet to correct her on this one.

“Well, that is one of three ways. And the least effective at that.” he explained. “The answer they are searching for, however, would have been Antisense-Expression.”

Nia moaned loudly and disappeared from the screen before him, presumably having wandered out of her camera’s field of view.

“How am I supposed to remember what methods they used for every single damn organism?” she exclaimed, still out of view, and James could hear her footsteps stomping around her room.

James shook his head, grinning, and put the answer sheet aside for a moment, to give the hothead some time to cool down.

“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”, he asked while searching the monitor for a sign on which side of her room she currently was. Then he continued, “After all, there are only, like, eight of them. And they are all pre-determined. It’s not like you actually have to learn anything, you just have to memorize it.”

Nia’s head suddenly popped back into view from the left side of the screen and she gave James an angered look. Her dark eyes fixated him through her long eyelashes. Her flat nose was slightly wrinkled and scrunched from her narrowing her eyes so much and she had to remove some braids, that had by now loosened from the tight knot she had tied her dark hair into, out of her face.

Then the rest of her body slowly came back into frame, as she sat back down in front of her camera and put her head in her hands while sighing audibly.

*“You’re saying that like it’s supposed to be easy,” she mumbled without looking back up at him. Jame

My father was a police officer.

One morning, he was acting strange.

I watched as he walked into the kitchen, wearing his uniform, headed for the coffee maker on the counter. He poured some into his favorite blue, ceramic mug, before sitting down across from me on the small, round wooden table.

He brought the steaming blue mug to his lips. The smell of fresh, hot coffee filled my nostrils.

It wasn't long before I noticed the bags under his eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.

Taking occasional sips from his coffee, he numbly stared out the window to the backyard. His dark, brown eyes seemed distant and filled with concern.

"Dad, are you okay?" I asked, worriedly.

The words seemed to make him snap from whatever trance he was in.

"I'm fine, kiddo." He sighed. "Just eat your breakfast."

It was more than clear that something was wrong, but I knew my dad. If he didn't tell me after I asked the first time, then there'd be no point in asking again.

So, I just nodded and went on to pour some more cereal into my bowl.

As a couple minutes went by, I watched as he pushed back his chair and got up from his seat.

"I gotta leave for work, buddy. I'll see you tonight." He chugged down the rest of his coffee and set the empty mug on the table, making a small thud as the ceramic hit the wood.

He barely even looked at me as he walked out of the room.

Later that night, I was woken up to the sight of my dad, sitting on the edge of my bed.

The room was dark, but the dim, yellow glow of the hallway light -- creeping through the crack of the slightly ajar bedroom door -- was enough to help me make out the serious look on his face, as he sat there, staring down at the floor.

Confused, I turned on my side to look at the bedside clock on my nightstand.

It read 2:45 AM.

I turned my eyes back to my dad.

Is he just getting home from his shift? I asked myself, perplexed.

After rubbing some of the sleep off of my eyes, I noticed he was holding his gun.

"Dad?" I muttered, my gaze fixed on the glock in his hand.

"You know that I love you, right, kid?" He blurted out, still staring down at his feet.

That caught me off guard. He and I hardly ever said that to each other.

Don't get me wrong, my dad and I had a great relationship. We just weren't good with that kind of stuff.

"Yeah…" I said, as I sat myself up. "I know."

Suddenly, a loud thud echoed from the living room, almost making me jump out of my skin. It sounded like the front door had been

We told her she can lean on us for support. Although, we are going to have to change her driver's license, her height is going down by a foot. I don't want to go too far out on a limb here but it better not be a hack job.

Now that I listen to albums, I hardly ever leave the house.

I met my husband when we were in college together. I was working on my bachelor's degree, helping out in the library for some much needed extra cash, when I first laid eyes on him. He was not the usual sort of man I fancied, more bookish than muscly. I found him charming in his own way, and we struck up a friendship. He told me he was a writer, was working on a book of short stories to submit to a publishing house. I offered to read them, and from that moment on, I became his biggest fan.

His stories were so...visceral. He wrote not as a writer but as a first-hand observer, and it wasn't long before his work was noticed. We were living together by then, our library friendship having blossomed into something more, and I could see how giddy he was when the letter came from Bordwin Publishing. When he read how they wanted to publish his book, I think it was the proudest moment of his life.

He kept writing for Bordwin, his stories finding a niche with the horror community. He also started selling his pieces to magazines and online sources, getting his name out there, and becoming more recognizable. As his fame grew, however, he still jokingly called me his biggest fan. I couldn't argue with him; I genuinely loved his work. He wrote the sort of stories than were genuinely terrifying and enticed the reader to keep reading until the very end. As his stories grew in number, I found myself curious about where they all came from. My husband, we'll call him Michael, was a mild-mannered fellow who had never really experienced anything horrific in his life. He described his childhood as benign, with no broken bones or funny uncles. His family was loving and doted on him constantly. He had never been without. He had never really suffered, and I found myself very curious about where all these nightmares came from in such a beautiful mind.

Then, over drinks one night, he told me.

He didn't like to talk about it when sober. He always said that discussing the "creative process" was boring or that his stories' technical aspect would bore me to tears. I wasn't fooled, though. Beneath his jokes was something colder, something fearful. So one night, I pressed him. He still didn't really want to talk about it, but I was persistent. Finally, after a lot of coaxing and some strong whiskey, he all but blurted his answer to me.

I wish now I hadn't asked.

"Its The Door," he said, and at that moment, he seemed almost afraid of his own words.

"The Door?" I asked, confused by t