#reality

“This is still dumb,” says George.  He holds up the stack of note-cards, squints at them through the flicker of the firelight.  “I mean, it’s real dumb.” Our campfire has started to burn low in the gathering dark, and the embers swirl up and away in a sudden gust of autumn wind.  I shiver, and I pause the video I’m recording long enough to pick up another log.

This story was archived and was sent to me by a 12-year-old woman from a small town in coastal South Georgia, near the Florida line, who just lost their family due to mysterious circumstances. Here’s their story: My parents have been gone for quite some time, and I always prayed for them to come home. I live alone, and I sat on the couch, holding my blanket until I saw my front door open slightly.

“Jalen, you sell drugs?” “What? No.” “Family sell drugs?” I laughed. “You for real right now?” His stoic face answered for him. “Not that it should matter, but I don’t really have a family. So, no, they aren’t kingpins in the drug game.” “Consider yourself lucky. No family is the way to go. No hassles. No buying gifts for ungrateful nieces and nephews who think just because you own a coupla properties, you’re Diamond Jim Brady. Gives me heartburn just thinkin’ about it.”

“Dude, SHUT UP!” “What?” “Yeah, he’s right so please shut up. You’ve been telling the same exact setup, it is always something like someone just hunting a guy down and then everybody dying. Be original for once.” My friend, let’s call her Lucy, said to Jake. I threw my head back and laughed as I put the melted marshmallow inside the s'mores, broke chocolate bars, and slid them inside of the graham crackers.

“That’s my childhood house.” I wasn’t turning down the street I grew up in. I wasn’t standing near the large oak in the front yard of the house where I’d lost all my baby teeth. I wasn’t sitting inside the kitchen, where, on my fifteenth birthday, I accidentally dropped the cake my mom had baked, which made my family laugh so hard that we shed tears. No. I was holding an oil painting at a Goodwill on the other side of the country. “That can’t be possible,” my husband said.

In the heart of the city stands an abandoned bakery. It is a high, sprawling complex of brick and granite, and its great smokestack still stands watch over the loading bays where fleets of gleaming trucks once began their journeys to supermarkets across New England.

You know my name by now; I don’t want to keep starting my posts like this, but... if you are new regardless, the name is Jay. After the L.P.I. incident and the death of Crane, there was something I found when I came back to Super Nintendo World that dated way back before the Junior Playtesting Program experiments. I found something old, something buried underneath layers of dust, rubble, and countless lies. Something I almost missed but am very glad I found it before anyone else threw it away.

Poster: DoomBathRoom033 Subject: Weird story (?) I found in my attic This is my first time posting on this part of the forums and if I'm breaking any of the rules please let me know! Quick background: my husband and I recently bought a house and we've been documenting our DIY adventures as we renovate it. Here's a link to the thread, check it out if you enjoy questionable design choices and photos of our superstar celebrity cat, Mr. Scratch!

Once again I am having trouble falling asleep, I feel as if I have been awake for hours now yet it’s always 12:00am. If time won’t go forward, I have to wind it forward myself. I placed my headphones in my ears and I played my favourite song on repeat; it seems to have worked, it’s 1:00am. I must have drifted off to sleep because I woke up, although something seems out of place. My headphones are not in my ears and other things from my room are missing. I hear growling coming from my closet; I…

To start off, the name’s Jay, and honestly, I never really wanted to tell this story. For years, I buried it deep, locked it away like a nightmare too awful to face. But now as I sit down and write this, I realize I owe it to the children who didn’t survive and to ones like me who still carry the scars. Looking back, I wish I had just relied on E3 and other events or just never went to anything Nintendo-themed at all.

I was driving down the highway to nowhere; I call it that because I haven’t seen a single thing for the past 3 hours. I was getting quite tired; I was bound to come across a rest stop eventually. Instead I stumbled upon a large metal gate with lanterns lit in the distance; I parked my car outside the gate and got out of the car. It said something above the gate but I couldn’t make out the words because they have faded away. Beyond this gate was a mildly lit building, it looked like a hospital…

I recovered from a coma I had a while back; I can’t recall the date, but I was driving back from a convenience store for groceries, and one of the overhead cables blew out and hit my vehicle, and then I woke up; it was somewhere like my own home but not really.

I usually don’t write my experiences down in journals like this. Typically, I’d prefer to just keep my unsavory memories in my head to let them rot away over time, which makes the pain easier to cope with. However, with everything that has happened to me recently, I’d feel guilty if I just let all those traumatic experiences simply be forgotten about, especially since they involve friends and people so dear to me… So, I shall tell the story of that godforsaken Airbnb and how it led me down a…

Last time we discussed the Not-human hypothesis, and since then, a discovery has been made that has been linked to these ancient humanoids. Though this one is rather unique, as it shows us how Neolithic and Paleolithic humans might have viewed and interacted with them.

ICON Systems Group TL-07: Neural Language Analysis Internal memorandum #TL510513 1A Dr. Elin Saber [Routing: Office of Internal Ethics Oversight] To: IEO General Director Hevlen Please, read carefully. I'm not sure how long I can keep my thoughts straight, or if they are even mine anymore.

I was 13 when I first tried to kill myself. The orphaned son of a dead drug dealer and an incarcerated illiterate, I grew up knowing nothing but neglect and abuse. I was on my third foster home in nine months when I first tried. Wolfing down a handful of Tylenol, I had no idea what I was doing.

Why does conflict happen most often with those we’re the closest with? You would think that because we love our family, friends, and colleagues so much that we’d understand each other enough that conflict wouldn’t be necessary. But now I realize that because we show each other our vulnerabilities and flaws is why most major conflict occurs. With strangers, people are reluctant to open up to them and try to actively avoid conflict constantly, unlike with those we know all too well. When I was…

Ah, Ms. Smith, I presume! Welcome, welcome, please take a seat. You look stunning. What is that sweet aroma I smell, hmm? Lemon Glace? Vanilla Quartz? Oh…just soap, you say? Regardless, it suits you to a tee. We are overjoyed to have you here with us tonight.

11:30 am. Dreary. Heartburn. Brain ache. Tired eyes giving way to a dull throbbing, but never drifting closed. We sat in silence around our monitors and typed, when suddenly, the office room silence was pierced by Lola’s break alarm. It blared its flat, electronic tone on repeat a few times until she stood up from her chair.