#Heart Surgery “We can’t afford that!” She yelled loudly, the sound riverbed throughout the small room. Not only was the room loud, but it was freezing as well. But not even the freezing temperature of the room could bother me, something much greater was paining me. The doctor replied, “I’m sorry, but I can’t lower the price any more than that, you’re just going to need to find another way to pay that” My wife’s face got red with anger, but blue with tears. Not only was she screaming at this point, but she was making a scene. But was that the most of our worries? I doubt it. Our newborn child was born yesterday. But she wasn’t in good health, she and her heart were suffering deeply and she was going to die by tomorrow if she wasn’t treated by then. However we couldn’t afford it, we were too busy paying for my chemotherapy. We could barely afford my treatment, but now we had to pay for our child’s heart surgery as well. Now she was on the floor, begging for the price to be dropped. I never thought I could see so much desperation on one’s face before, it was heartbreaking. On top of that, it was the person I loved. Seeing this much pain in someone so close to me was more painful than anything I’ve ever experienced. She has been arguing with the doctor for over an hour, and after all this I knew that we could never convince him to magically drop the price. We had to leave. I tried to comfort her, and tell her we needed to go home. But she wouldn’t budge. No matter how hard I tried she stayed there, crying and begging. I gave up and walked outside. I sat on the ground for another hour, thinking. I knew we couldn’t afford insurance, my treatment, and the surgery. My first and only child is going to die. I can’t live with that, seeing her beautiful eyes first opening up filled me with so much love and hope that I could never allow that to fade away. I knew what I had to do. After waiting forever, my wife finally came out the door. Her face was red, snot was rolling out of her nostrils, and hopelessness filled her face more than anything else. “Are you okay?” I knew she wasn’t but I needed her to know that I was still there to comfort her. She stayed silent, I guess crying and screaming for an hour sucked out all her energy. I know it would to me. I sighed and looked at the ground for a while. She eventually walked over and hugged me, crying a little more. I wish more than anything that I could tell her it was going to be okay, but it wasn’t. The hopelessness, sadness, and dread she was filling was exactly what she was supposed to feel. After around 10 minutes, she let go of me and leaned on the wall. She quietly said, “Why couldn’t we just have money? Why does that have to be the only thing standing between her and death?” I guess her turn for crying was over, my eyes filled up with tears because I knew what was coming. Our daughter… was going to be okay. I knew she was. I leaned into my wife’s ear and said “Come on, we should go home and sort things out. I have a plan that should keep her alive.” She seemed hesitant at first, but a little amount of hope brightened on her. We walked to our one room apartment, and got into bed and slept. All those emotions were enough to put me out for a week. She didn’t ask what could save her first, she was just so exhausted from crying so hard for so long. When I woke up, I almost forgot what had just happened and what was *going to happen* as well. Everything seemed like it was going to be okay, even though I knew it wouldn’t be. Waking up gives you that illusion sometimes, the tiredness somehow is enough to distract you from whatever is going on in your life. However, the thoughts came back later. She woke up after an hour of me being awake. I sat on the floor while she came over and sat next to me. We sat there in silence for a long time, just like at thehospital. The silence was broken when she asked, “You said you had a plan to save our daughter earlier, could you tell me what it is?” My stomach twisted, I knew she wouldn’t like the plan but I knew it is the only thing we could do. “The estimated time for my chemo to be done should end in a month, and that costs just as much as the surgery. Do you think you could take care of a child by yourself?” I saw that all the hope she had from earlier has vanished. Tears filled her eyes along with dread. “No. No. No, no no. Please… Don’t do this.” She started crying again and leaned onto me, burying her face in my shoulder. She begged again, telling me that she didn’t want me to do this and that she could never go on with me gone. I knew that she could never go on without me, but it would be much worse for her if her very own child were to die. I insisted that I be the one to die, not our child. Fathers are supposed to make numerous immense sacrifices for their children, I guess this was my sacrifice for my child. We cried together all night, barely getting any rest. I don’t even know if I cared if I died as much as I did about my wife. I don’t know how well she would carry on without me, she loved me beyond comprehension and she reminded me that everytime I saw her. Today was the day of the surgery, it was no longer the day the surgery was supposed to take place. After we took a loan from the bank, we paid the hospital to perform the surgery. It was a success, they saved our daughter. She was going to be okay, she was now going to have her whole life ahead of her, without me, alone with a widowed mother. I called the same hospital later that day, telling them to cancel my chemotherapy. They were confused and curious as to why, but it pained me too much to say, so I told them to just cancel it and stop asking questions. I didn’t know how long I had to live, it usually takes a few weeks for cancer to kill someone. But I knew that those final weeks wouldn’t be alone, I had my wife and my newborn daughter to be with me for the rest of my life. And that’s all I needed to tell myself to be happy.


There was once a man so delicately handsome. He possessed a face of the Gods- so boyish and beautiful that women fell in love by looking at him, opening their hearts at once. This boy was worshipped from an early age. Every female who laid eyes on him squeezed his cheeks, squealed with joy, lavished praise upon him. When this boy went to school, he surrounded himself with girls- too soft and sensitive to play with the boys. For, he didn't want to play sport, didn't want to 'earn' the respect of the other boys; He just wanted to be marvelled at and admired by the young ladies. When this boy became an adult, he couldn't concentrate on a thing. All he cared about was his own reflection and the attention it attracted. Why study at college, he thought, when my face affords me so much? Why strain and struggle like the other men- ugly, hairy peasants! And so he became a dropout, a drunk, a wanderer. He went from liason to liason, letting women worship him, while any sense of purpose evaporated from his heart. As time went on, he grew melancholy, empty. He began to hate himself, hate those who smothered him with compliments and kisses. He began to hate beauty and the physical world. And so he turned his back on it. He locked himself in his bunker for years, never seeing sun and talking only to himself, like a mad man. In those years he refused to care for his appearance. He rarely showered or brushed his teeth, and didn't shave once. He became an unkempt, ugly yeti. When he did go out for supplies, people made faces of revulsion and moved away quickly. At first, it hurt his soft heart, but then he began to love it. For, it was only then, for the first time in his life, that he could see himself through God's eyes and not the prying eyes of admirers. As he got more unkempt, more revolting to the point where he didn't think he could get uglier, he started to see God; he started to feel depth in his soul. He prayed night and day in a state of total bliss; he had never felt so content. After months of prayer, he started to see possibilities for a new life. "I want to live for truth, for depth. I want to connect with people's souls- nothing more!" He exclaimed. It was then that he became determined to re-enter society, to renounce his renunciation of the physical world. Now thirty-one and past his youth, he decided to shave and groom himself for the first time in years. "I can't go into the world looking like a derelict," he thought, "I must take at least a little pride". As he cut his dirty, out of control beard, however, the horrifying reality- a reality that he hadn't even contemplated- revealed itself. For he had thought that, now at thirty-one years of age, his face would have lost a lot of it's beauty- that the natural ageing process would have relegated it to an unremarkable face of a man close to middle age. But, as he clipped and clipped, his worst nightmare was realized. After many years and under all that hair, his face hadn't aged a day- it was still the glowing, godlike sculpture it had always been- arguably even more beautiful than before, as the beard and his reclusion had protected it from the blemishes of the sun. Now it glowed with a strikingness that was, like the sun, almost unbearable to look at for more than a short period. As he stared back at the chizzled visage that he had longed to lose, it seemed to taunt him and goad him. His passions were stirred; the familiar feelings of lust filled his entire body once again, like an old friend setting foot in his house and picking up a conversation from years ago. He called out to God but couldn't find him. For God and his beautiful face couldn't coexist, and the latter had totally eclipsed the former. The lust had just about totally engulfed him by now, and the prayers of recent months felt like a vivd dream that hadn't even occured. "Ah, to hell with God!" He shouted with a violent, lustful passion. "Why would I need God when I am in fact a God in human form! Just look at me" He looked again into the mirror at his superior physiognomy. "Surely this is the work of God himself. In this face, God has entrusted me with his spirit, his powers. God has elected me above the rest of our species. I alone have been given the permission to go forth in any way I please; With the powers of this face, God has essentially told me that anything I do is warranted, that any impact I make on people, they should feel grateful for." And with that, the dangerously handsome man left his house, intent on deception and manipulation. "Who needs God when one's face surpasses heaven itself!" He laughed, as the sunshine hit his bare cheeks for the first time in years.


I plopped to my mattress, I’ve used Reading as a daily way to wind down for bed for years, I scanned a tower of books for tonight’s possible match. Mother creeped in and shut the door behind, trying not to wake the others. “How are you doing buddy” she whispered with a half smile, I could tell she was ready for bed and had already fitted her beige pajamas, not much of a surprise, work was hard for my mother and after returning home today the family were all aware of her exhaustion. “I’m alright, just thinking about reading something before bed”. I reached over toward my side table to snatch a few of my favorite solid color hardbacks. All but a few of my books had seen tough wear from my older brothers, previous owners, who had bequeathed the lot to me. I didn't mind the tattered covers, and would often imagine they were the writing of an ancient wizard’s spell book or maybe the account of a veteran Knight who had done his part in a great tale. She found her way across the room to take a seat at the lip of my bed. Her thick walnut hair flowed gently as she folded it behind one ear while inspecting a few of the novels I had laying across the maroon bedspread “Those are some good ones, how about this one James?” She lifted a smaller novel with a pirate on the cover. She saw the look on my face, and placed it back on the blanket I joined in the search but frowned, none felt worthy of being picked. “I’ve read them all so many times” I looked to my digital clock standing on my dresser across the room, I once had an analog clock there I loved dearly but with my current room configuration the digital my dad bought me last Christmas simply worked better, 9:45 getting awfully late “I think I’ll just get to bed,” I said yanking the edge of my blanket to my shoulders. My mom glanced back to me from reading the inside cover of Robin Hood and scooped the cluster of books from the twin bed. placing the books in a flush stack nicer than before “Alright then I think I’ll do the same”. I watched her leave, she turned and smiled, hitting the light as the door shut. It was dark, It was quiet, Just how I liked it. soft breezes spun around the tree branches beside my window keeping the fall leaves in a rustling shake. Nights like those help me compose myself. I thought about some of my books, they each had been read dozens of times, but what if tomorrow I Changed them, possibly added my own parts, that seemed intriguing at the time and I made a mental note for memory. I closed my eyes. WhRRR I sat up, the sound was not any ordinary noises of the nightly household or even anything I’d heard from our surrounding forest. WhRRR There it was again, It had a sudden metallic hum shaking the house ever so slightly, a rowdy rapid thump similar to the purr of the helicopter, father and I had seen a helicopter earlier in summer when attending the summer fair, although the Fair’s helicopter took a great build of strength to roar as loud as it had. Strangely this sound would fade as soon as it had come. “DaaaaD!” The shout echoed through the house, it was my brother Roger”s voice crying out for my parents, the commotion probably took him by surprise, maybe scared him, I wouldn't doubt it. I was shaken. “Dad, Daad” I shook off my sheets, the family was most likely awake after Roger’s shouts, might as well figure out what was going on. After a quick look the driveway seemed ordinary from my window, I tiptoed to my parents room each step creaking the walnut floorboards. It seemed peculiar to me they hadn’t gotten up to go check on Roger, he would shout in the night from time to time during the occasional storm, my parents would always check up on him although he often cried wolf. “Mom!” It was getting annoying quickly, I poked my head into the master bedroom, there was a small sliver of light along the edges of the blinds that kept the room from total darkness “Dad, mom hey” I whispered, staying in the doorway. An outline of the bed frame was visible with a squint. “Roger’s yelling for you” there was a moment of silence, I extended the door fully open. Had they really slept through that? WhRRR A shake came and I clutched the door knob and frame for stability. My chest felt a tightness of anger, it was bedtime and my parents intentionally not dealing with this had struck me the wrong way. “C'mon guys, go figure out what that is” I yanked the covers off my parents bed pulling them back. I was sick of fixing problems even though I was the youngest. The bed sat unmoving Silver sheets reflecting back at me and a couple of pillows lay sedentary, my parents weren't there. Strange, my mother told me she was off to bed just a half an hour prior. WhRRR The shaking came again, disorienting in the dark and this time having no door frame to catch I found my way into a stumble, stepping on my pajama bottoms and spinning as I tumbled toward the hardwood flooring. Throwing out my arms to take the brute force of the blow. My arms didn't connect, I had to open my eyes after an instant to find obscurity had encompassed me, enveloped in a soft darkness for which I was weightless within.


I never finish anything. I feel like the most inconsistent person on the planet. As soon as I start something I know that it will be a week, max, before I drop it and move on to another project. I have always been reasonably proficient at acquiring a lot of information quickly. But actually doing something with it? Not a chance, not gonna happen in my lifetime at least. My life up to this point has been a series of obsessions lacking a common thread. When I was a kid I was obsessed with sports, first basketball; I went from not knowing who Lebron James was when I was 11 to knowing by heart who won every championship for the past decade by the time I turned 12 (Lakers, Lakers, Lakers, Pistons, Spurs, Heat, Spurs, Lakers, Lakers, Mavs). This continued for many years, each year a new topic, and with it a complete disinterest in using my knowledge. In the summer of senior year of highschool I stumbled on a quote by Warren Buffett about his favorite investing book. *Wait who is Warren Buffet?* And so began a three year on again off again infatuation with value investing, the style of investing that revels in finding gold nuggets in the dirt and grime of American Capitalism. What drew me to value investing, as opposed to, say, currency speculation, was its intoxicating combination of aggrandizing elitism and monk-like restraint. What I *really* loved was the mess of contradictions that characterize its most famous proponents. Warren Buffet, is a jovial megalomaniac; Charlie Munger is an elitist vagabond. Still, although I conducted stock research in the manner prescribed and even found some worthwhile companies to invest in, I never pulled the trigger. It is with this backdrop of years of puzzling inability to take action, that I began running. I did not know a thing about running and still don’t. It is the only thing that I have stuck to consistently in my life. At first glance, running for fun seems like a fully actualized expression of self loathing. In its best light, it is a commitment to the classic ideals of discipline and self improvement. In its worst, it is nothing short of a voluntary, and unending torture. When you run, you are essentially exchanging pain now for a better, but indeterminate future. When you drag yourself outside at 1pm, 2pm, 9pm, you know that you are about to be in for a world of hurt. The pain deconstructs into at least three interrelated sources. First, there is the immediate physical pain; The fibers that lattice in your musculature groan, then yell in objection. Then, there is the condemnation, as the world comes together for a brief moment to stare at how much of a weird fuck you’re being. Finally, there is the dual pain of uncertainty about whether you’ll finish the lap and the disappointment that arises when you actually do. So why would a person ever do such a thing? Why do I try and do it everyday? Because it imposes order on life, it lets you build something, work towards something, see improvement and most importantly, it lets you chisel away the parts of yourself that you don’t like so you can become the person that you want to be. In short it allows you to get started.


Close to my home, there is this park that used to be a graveyard. Once all the graves were full, the city council planted grass everywhere, put a number of benches about, and declared it to be a park. I enjoyed visiting it to work on my book. I liked that very few people ever visited the park. I also liked the earthy smell of the park, the way the light splashed bright patterns on the floor, and most importantly, the many butterflies. I'd sit every day on one of the green benches with my notebook, scribbling out ideas for my book. I was writing a study on butterflies, with special focus on the Graveyard Princess - a rare, double stripped large butterfly that was only found close to graveyards. I had been working on the book for a very long time, but I was not getting very far. I had ideas, lots of ideas, scribbled all over the pages of the book, but it was hard to make the thoughts coherent. My home was nearby, a small, cosy house I bought with the money the insurance had paid me after I fell of a stool at the university. I enjoyed my job as a professor, but getting a few hundreds of thousands all at once meant that I could retire early. I found this little cottage, rented it, and lived off the interest that 353,000 dollars in the bank gave me. My only ambition was to finish the book, and get published by one of the major science presses. I wanted to tell the world about how the Graveyard Princess butterfly has built a symbiotic relationship with the mice that live under the gravestones, and how different their growth journey is from other butterflies. I wish I were skilled enough to capture the grace of their flight, and describe how the sunlight dances with them as they flutter over the scattered gravestones. But instead of writing, I'd walk around the park, searching for butterflies and making up stories for the various names on the gravestones. I had long, fantastic tales about how they lived, each story long enough to be a book on its own. I'd get lost in long moments, looking at little flying butterflies wandering about. I remember the day I first saw her. I arrived at the park, sat on the bench and got my sandwich out. The bread was still warm, the ham smelled delicious. I took the first bite, and raised my face to the sunlight and let it pour across my face. I opened my eyes, and she was there. A young girl with dark, stringy hair, standing all alone, dressed in old-fashioned clothes. She looked directly at me without saying a word. She was maybe 8, maybe 9 years old? I've never had children, so I can't really judge the age of children. Her big, dark-ringed eyes stared at me. Then she stepped towards me in strange, jerky and unnatural manner. I felt a chill come over me. My heart pounded. I pulled my notebook to my chest instinctively. I yelled out, half to her, half to anyone that was near and could rescue me: "What do you want?" She turned and ran off. Her running was odd. The park seemed to have got darker, and it looked like it would rain soon. I got my stuff and quickly left the park back to my home. That night, as I lay in my bed, I thought about that strange girl. I had never seen her before - and what was a girl that young doing alone in a graveyard park? I knew that people avoided the park for a reason, but the very thought of ghosts was silly. It was probably just a lost, little girl who was more scared of me. And I had actually yelled at her. She probably ran home to tell her parents scary stories about the horrible man in the park. I resolved to apologize if I ever met her again. I did not see her again, though I kept watch. I looked closer at every child who wandered through the park, but most had that blank, innocent look that normal children have. None of the dark, haunted look that I remembered. I even strode quicker once to look at the face of tiny old woman creeping through the park, and she looked back with two tired eyes in a sea of wrinkles. I apologised and left. I sat at my bench weeks later, examining a giant butterfly perched on a bent twig, when a small voice beside me spoke: "What type of butterfly is that?" I startled backwards, my heart thumping. Beside me, the little girl sat, face white as snow, black stains on her face that looked like soot. My voice caught in my throat. It seemed like the entire park had gone silent. I could not hear a single bird. I answered, my voice a bit shaky. "It's a red monarch butterfly, very close to the end of it's life cycle, you can see that by the characteristic loss of the tactile setae on the outer wing edges". She was silent for a while, looking down at the butterfly. "Tell me more", she said, softly. I fell into professor mode, my droning voice calming me down. I spoke about the different flying insects and how they had formed an eco-system in the park. I spoke about the beetles, the birds and who predated on whom in the park. She nodded, seriously, never saying a word. When the church bell rang at 6pm, she jumped off the bench and ran away, leaving me mid-sentence. Now that I had time to observe her, I saw that the reason she moved so jerkily was that she had probably broken a leg sometime in the recent past. It had not healed well, almost like she had never been taken to the hospital. I was pleasantly content, in a mellow sort of way. It had been so long since I spoke about butterflies to anyone. She had been fascinated, she had asked questions in her small light voice, and had laughed loudly when I told one of my many butterfly jokes. (Q:Why did the father throw butter out the window? A: He wanted to see a butterfly) I enjoyed the day. I hope she enjoyed it too. She came back the next week, and I showed her more insects in the park. We'd go through the trees, discovering butterflies. I showed her how the moths hid themselves, and where the termites had their little nest. We walked through the park, like father and daughter, I did most of the speaking, while she asked all of the questions. Soon she was coming almost every day to visit. I barely wrote anymore, most of the time, I'd just wait for her to come the graveyard, so I could explain to her. She did not tell me much about her home, but sometimes she came to the park with a swollen lip. Once I asked her how come her parents let her leave all the time, and all she said was: "They are long dead. And my uncle does not care what I do during the day." She grew older. She became a teenager. Quiet, smart, fierce. She loved the insects almost as much as I did. She brought books to me, we studied them together. Maybe I was supposed to be a talker, not a writer. I was not writing, but it was the happiest time of my life. In the evenings I would read my textbooks, and look for something interesting to prepare for her the next day. I'd draw out parts of the park we could visit, and what little creatures we would discover. And I'd wake up every morning happy. One day she told me she would be leaving to the university. She would be studying Botany. I stood, up prouder than any father could ever be. I admit it, I cried. I remembered how she was when she arrived. A small bony child with the haunted look. Now she was a thin, tall teenager, fiercely intelligent. She'd be fine out there in the world, I knew. "Should I come with you?", I asked. She smiled that gentle smile and replied. "It's obvious that you can't come with me, isn't it?" We walked slowly around the park. This day, for the first time, she did not ask any questions. When she left, I continued to visit the park every day. But it was not quite the same. The place felt dim, there were fewer insects. I continued to scribble my notes, but explaining them had made me feel so alive. Having someone to talk to had really made a difference. But I kept coming back every day, kept trying to put words to my book. But it was even more difficult now. She came back after seven years. Her hair was bright red. There was sparkle in her eyes, and bounce in her step. She smiled often and easily now. Her face was no longer thin, and her stomach was big with child. She sat beside me on the green bench, silently, like the first day we met. Then she wordlessly brought out a book - on it was a picture of a butterfly on a green bench. The title was bold: "A study of graveyard butterflies". Her name was first, and below that, my name. Co-author, John Walter. I smiled the happiest smile of my life. She reached across the bench and hugged me - the first time she had ever touched me. In that moment, I saw the park as she saw it, it was bright, colourful, filled with people running around and screaming. Cars honked, and all around was the loud buzz of a city. We walked one last time around the park. We stopped at a certain gravestone, I had never noticed, or maybe never wanted to notice. Professor John Walter - 1950 to 1983. Satisfaction flooded my body, and I felt like everything was right about the world. I had finally written that book - and my name was going to live on. Someone would remember me. The park started to fade, and the last thing I saw was a large butterfly landing on the corner of my gravestone.


# Gooooood Morning, /r/ShortStories! You may have noticed a fancy new feature running on this sub called Serial Saturday! So… what is it? Serial Saturday is a weekly challenge for serial writing and we’re now three weeks into this brave new world of writing themed beat assignments for our own original universes. If you’re brand new to and thinking about participating in Serial Saturday, welcome! Feel free to dip your toes in by writing for this challenge or any others we have listed on the beat schedule at the bottom of the post. # New to /r/ShortStories and Serial Saturday, but want to join in the fun? We appreciate all contributions made to this thread, and all submissions are of course welcomed, whether it addresses a previous challenge or the current one. We hope you enjoy your time in the community!  ***Do I need to write for all the previous challenges in order to participate?*** Nope! You don’t need to catch up by writing for each of the previous assignments, feel free to jump right in wherever fits for you, with whatever assignment or theme fits for you, and post it on the current thread with a link to whichever previously posted challenge you choose to start with. Wherever you start, take a look at our inaugural Serial Saturday post for some helpful tips. ***Can I start a serial off based off one of my*** /r/writingprompts ***responses or another short story I've started?*** Yep, you sure can! Make sure you provide a link to where that story can be found on your own profile/sub, or here on shortstories. ***If I write for the previous challenges independently, where should I post them if I want to write on the current thread with the current challenge?*** Make sure that if you did write for any previous challenges, link them at the bottom of your post to wherever you choose to post them so someone can read the previous challenges if they choose. If you want to jump right in with us on the current challenge you can post your independently written responses to the challenge on the corresponding thread, on your own profile/sub, or on /r/shortstories itself. Keep in mind we only read your most current challenge responses at campfire, and that each thread allows for one submission per author. If you post to the previous challenge threads you are not required to play catch-up with the 2 comment crit rule, though it is required moving forward. # So what are the goals of Serial Saturday? The ultimate goal for SerSat is to help serial writers launch and land their planes. Lots of writers want to tell their stories but aren’t sure how to actually write the dang things *and finish them.* That’s where Serial Saturday comes in. For this first cycle we’re running a shortened cycle of challenges that will end the third week of November. November is also NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and it may be hard for everyone to keep with it in those last three weeks, but we also don't want to cut short a cycle for people who may *not* do NaNo, so this schedule hopefully can mitigate some of that dicey-ness as well as stay mindful of upcoming holidays. After the new year we'll start with a more fleshed out challenge cycle, with more assignments that will extend SerSat by about 5 to 10-ish weeks. Each post will address how these challenge assignments can apply to both conflict heavy and non conflict heavy stories. Just as a note, anyone can earn a fancy “completed serial banner” on the sub based on the Saturday feature with only 8 installments, so there's no problem with anyone picking and choosing what assignments suit their story. The idea in releasing this schedule is that it should help participants prepare better for upcoming arcs and how they plan to address them. If you prefer to wait to brainstorm until each beat is assigned that is totally ok, too! **The Rules:** * In the current assignment thread submit a story that is between **500 - 750** words in your own original universe. * Submissions are limited to ***one*** serial submission from each author per week. * **Each author should comment on at least 2 other stories** during the course of the week. * That comment must include ***at least one*** **detail** about what the author has done well. * Authors who successfully finish a serial lasting longer at least 8 installments will be featured with a modpost recognizing their completion and a flair banner on the sub. * Authors are eligible for this highlight post only if they have followed the 2 feedback comments per thread rule. *Yes, we will check*. * While content rules are more lax here at /r/ShortStories, we’re going to roll with the loose guidelines of "vaguely family friendly" being the rule of thumb for now. If you’re ever unsure if your story would cross the line, feel free to modmail! \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Reminders: * Make sure your post on the assignment thread also includes links to your previous installments if you have a currently in-progress serial. Those links must be direct links to the previous installment on the preceding Serial Saturday post or to your own subreddit/profile. * Authors that complete a serial with 8 or more installments get a fancy banner and modpost to highlight their stories. * Saturdays we will be hosting a Serials Campfire on the main voice lounge. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and share your own thoughts on serial writing! We start on Saturdays at 9AM CST.


As a kid we would go to upstate New York on vacation to meet up with extended family members. My Grandparents owned a house which was passed down from their parents. I loved playing with my cousins. The area was completely remote. You had to drive a mile down a private road to get to the house. We went at least once a summer, but that tragically ended in the later 1980’s when two of my uncles and my nine year old cousin vanished one day. As I recall the story, my whole extended family about 30 people were staying the weekend in the house. Some of the older kids would sleep in tents outside because there just wasn’t enough room and the kids liked camping as well. It wasn’t uncommon for my uncle’s to look for an excuse to get drunk and pretend to hunt deer. We were all city dwellers and none of my uncle’s really knew anything about hunting rather than put bullets in rifle; aim at deer; and shoot. One Saturday afternoon, my two uncle’s and cousin ventured out into the woods. Typically, they would get drunk and return after a couple of hours. That Saturday, they didn’t return. I recall about supper time the adults joking that we will see them returning through those woods at anytime with no deer. As nighttime approached and still no signs of their return, then I remembered the mood had changed and the adults started to freak out. The adults went out searching for them. I remember being able to hear my family members yell their names through the woods. Eventually, the police arrived and they formed a search party. They searched all night and the next day with no sign of them. We extended our stay at the house so my parents could assist in the search. We stayed for a week and there was still no sign of them. We went back to NYC and my dad would go back to upstate NYC every weekend to search for them. Understandingly, we stopped going there as a vacation retreat. Two years went bye, then five years went bye, then eventually 20 years with no bodies being found. There was nothing. No clues at all. It really changed everything in my family. None of the adults ever seemed happy again. Fast forward to just a few months ago, I was perusing through free horror movies on demand. You know the ones where you have to watch commercials and really weren’t good enough to be featured on say Netflix. I read the previews for one of the movies and it was eerily similar to what happened to my uncle’s and cousin. I decided to watch the movie and the coincidences were extremely unsettling. There was a long road to the house, there was about the same amount of people who were at the house that Saturday, even to the smallest of details on how three of my male cousins would play on this large boulder in back of the house. I was glued to the tv because this was literally going to explain what happened to my lost family members. Then it eventually got to the part, where one of the locals who lived in the woods kidnapped the three of them and sadisticly killed them. I immediately phoned my brother and in turn he contacted the rest of the family members. Eventually, we contacted the police and they interrogated the writer of the movie. Based on the police investigation, it was determined that the actual writer who took credit for the screenplay didn’t write the movie. He actually payed a ghostwriter through bitcoins for his ideas on Reddit. My family and the police watched the movie for any clues on where the bodies could be. Another search party was assembled and the bodies were found buried in the basement of a remote cabin about 10 miles from my grandparents upstate house. The whole family was just perplexed. Who wrote the movie? Who knew all of these intimate details of our family? The police were unable to figure out who sent the story through Reddit. The ghost writer went through great lengths to hide his computer/phones IP address. My whole family went through every possible suspect including everyone in the family. Everyone agreed it couldn’t be anyone in the upstate house that day. Then, weeks went bye and I must of watched the movie two hundred times and still no suspect. Then one day,I was watching old home movies and something extremely sinister occurred to me. My grandfather back in the early 1980’s would draw lines. He would draw the lines on paper, on wood with the pointed end of nails, basically on anything as a nervous tick. Then after my uncles and cousin disappeared he stopped doing it, so I completely forgot about it. Those lines were important because I remembered seeing two of them in an indiscreet area on the inside door of the cabin. I knew I really had to sit and think before I accused anyone of anything. Then, I came up with a possible scenario. My grandfather told my two uncles and cousin to go to the cabin and he would meet them there. Then, when the search party went out to look for them, my grandfather went out on his own to the cabin and killed them. My grandfather then went back to burry the bodies in the cabin. I explained the scenario to the rest of my family and most of them agreed with me and were in shock and horror. My grandfather was dead so he couldn’t be held accountable, but I knew the motive. He wanted the upstate house for himself. My grandparents were the only ones who continued to visit the house after my uncles and cousin vanished. Still the mystery remains,who actually wrote the story? My grandfather was dead when the writer of the movie received the story from the ghost writer. I don’t think whoever wrote the story was actually involved in the plot or the actual murders. I think the ghost writer just wanted to tell what they knew. Talking to the rest of my family, they remembered my grandfather veering off from the rest of the search party only to return hours later. They also remember my grandfather returning from one of the searches covered in sweat and dirt. Everyone who was there that week corroborated those events regarding my grandfather and everyone agreed it was virtually impossible for anyone to have assisted my grandfather. Also, everyone agreed that someone who was there that Saturday was the Ghostwriter. Potentially, even my grandmother, which would really be dark because there was actually bitcoins exchanged for the story.


Left or right? left or right? I have played this game a hundred times. Which way do I go? where can I hide? No matter my choice he always seems to be there, waiting. He’s too fast to outrun, and even when I hide he can find me within seconds. I’ve only been able to fend him off so far by accident. The last time he caught up to me I was able to grab a handful of hair and scratch at his face. He scurried away quickly, but will have recovered soon, he heals too quickly to do any lasting damage. I must make the choice while I still have the time. Left or right? To the right is the long hallway. That direction could lead to temporary shelter in one of the openings along the way, but that is only if I can make the stretch of the hallway without him finding me. If I go left the room opens up, and there is more room if I need to defend myself. However, the floor can sometimes be slick, it’s impossible to tell if there will be water on the floor. Right. I’ll go right. I’ve gotten faster I can make the length. I hear a noise behind me. Could it be him? Has he recovered yet? I can no longer hear his labored breathing. I turn to go right but as I do, I see a shape out of the corner of my eye. A shape twice my size, moving at unbelievable speeds. In desperation I turn left I head towards the open room, rushing around the corner as fast as I can. I see an opening, a pathway out of the maze leading to open air. If I make it before he catches me then I can escape. As fast as I can I move towards the opening hoping that he doesn’t see me move, hoping that I’m quiet. I can see freedom, I can see green, I see my way out. I put on a final burst of speed and slam headfirst into a glass wall. The sound of my body crumpling against the glass is loud enough to draw attention. His body emerges from the shadows of the room before. His eyes are wide, and his crazed grin gets even bigger as he lets out a laugh of delight. This is it. There is nothing I can do. Head still aching I try to stand, using the glass wall as a support. If he is to get me then I will give him a fight. I stand on my shaking legs, trying to rise with dignity. My heart pounds as he races toward me, I barely have time to raise my hands in front of my face when I feel the full force hit me. I am pushed to the ground, his body crushing mine. The weight is impossible. I cannot move. In desperation I find my voice- letting out a cry, hoping beyond hope that someone, anyone, will hear my voice. A scream fills the air. “What’s going on over here?” A woman walks into the dining room and sees her children on the ground in front of the screen door. Her toddler jumps off his sister and looks away shame-facedly. “Benjamin, how many times have I told you, Baby Gwen is too little to wrestle with. Look, you hurt her, she’s crying because you scared her,” The mother says as she scoops up the bawling infant in her arms “Saw-ee Mama,” The boy looks apologetically at his mother “No, don’t apologize to me, apologize to baby,” “Saw-ee Baby” “Thank you buddy, now please, be more careful next time”.


# Happy Saturday, serialists! Welcome to Serial Saturday! \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ ***New here?*** If you’re brand new to and thinking about participating in Serial Saturday, welcome! Feel free to dip your toes in by writing for this challenge or any others we have listed on the handy dandy ! We appreciate all contributions made to this thread, and all submissions are of course welcomed, whether it addresses a previous challenge or the current one. All submissions are of course welcomed. We hope you enjoy your time in the community! Take a look at our inaugural Serial Saturday post for some helpful tips. You don’t need to catch up by writing for each of the previous assignments, feel free to jump right in wherever fits for you, with whatever assignment or theme fits for you, and post it on the current thread with a link to whichever previously posted challenge you chose to start with. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ # This week it’s all about Enemies. Let’s talk about enemies. An antagonist or enemy is . It’s what divides your protagonist from what they want at the same time as driving forward the story. Enemies have goals, wants and needs just like protagonists, and figuring out what they’re after can be just as important as figuring out what a protagonist is after. A compelling story uses the antagonist to connect conflict to the overarching theme. Antagonists or enemies don’t have to take center stage in a story, but they should give a protagonist a reason to continue towards their own goals. An important thing to keep in mind is that the most compelling adversarial characters have their own motives, morals and beliefs. In their own POV . Enemies can come in a lot of forms, and your ‘enemy’ character approach may depend on the genre of story you’re writing. Is the enemy an asteroid barreling toward earth or Mother Nature, and the scourge of winter, or the ever-widening path of a furious wildfire? Maybe it’s just a sweet old lady who can’t remember to keep her overprotective, . Sometimes the scariest enemies are the ones we can’t identify. Serial killers leave calling cards or “signatures” but we may never find out who they are. Shadow puppet masters send henchmen while we never see The Big Bad’s face. Even though we can’t *see* those baddies doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feel their effects on the protagonist, or the world around them. Inherent emotional investment makes friends vrs friends super tasty, and give us a meaningful reason to empathize with a story. In this challenge you do not have to introduce a whole new character on the outset; you can take this time to allude to the forces at work against your main character without ever showing a new face, but we should be able to identify as an audience what your protagonist is up against. Things to think about for this assignment: Who is the enemy of your main character? What do they want? Can the main character be ‘their own worst enemy’? Are you writing an antagonist that fits the world they’re in? What kind of environmental factors influence your antagonist? What influence does your antagonist have on their environment? **\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*** **You have until \*next\* Saturday, 9/5, to submit and comment on everyone else's stories here. Make sure to check back on this thread periodically to lay some sweet, sweet crit down on those who don't have any yet!** \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* # Top picks from last week’s assignment, The Calm Before The Storm: **Fan favorite with the most votes:** /u/Ryter99, . This week the **Smoking Hot Challenge Sash** goes to an author that nailed the spirit of the assignment: /u/JohnGarrigan, And honorable mentions: /u/Mazinjaz, . /u/Errorwrites, \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ **The Rules:** * In the comments below submit a story that is between **500 - 750** words in your own original universe. * Submissions are limited to ***one*** serial submission from each author per week. * **Each author should comment on at least 2 other stories** during the course of the week. * That comment must include ***at least one*** **detail** about what the author has done well. * Authors who successfully finish a serial lasting longer than 8 installments will be featured with a modpost recognizing their completion and a flair banner on the sub. * Authors are eligible for this highlight post only if they have followed the 2 feedback comments per thread rule. *Yes, we will check*. * While content rules are more lax here at /r/ShortStories, we’re going to roll with the loose guidelines of "vaguely family friendly" being the rule of thumb for now. If you’re ever unsure if your story would cross the line, feel free to modmail! \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Reminders: * Make sure your post on this thread also includes links to your previous installments if you have a currently in-progress serial. Those links must be direct links to the previous installment on the preceding Serial Saturday post or to your own subreddit/profile. * Authors that complete a serial with 8 or more installments get a fancy banner and modpost to highlight their stories. * Saturdays we will be hosting a Serials Campfire on the main voice lounge. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and share your own thoughts on serial writing! We start on Saturdays at 9AM CST. **Don’t worry about being late, just join!** There’s a *Super Serial* role on the Discord server, so make sure you grab that so you’re notified of all Serial Saturday related news! **Join the** **to chat with prompters, authors, and readers!** Previous constraint: Have you seen the ? No? Oh boy! Here's the current cycle's challenge schedule.


An alert pops up on my monitor. They call it an "alert" because it alerts us to something important but in reality it looks more like an email notification. I can even swipe to dismiss it. The "alert" tells me about seismic activity located near the center of town. It's my job to determine if any seismic readings are in fact earthquakes or... something else. Luckily I have some of the best technology known to man at my disposal. I type in a few commands which give me access to the five satellites hovering over the region. Almost immediately three satellites give me the details I need. Definitely not a quake. Well, not a natural one anyway. Sometimes this job is too easy. I take a sip of my coffee and hit a button to sound the alarm. Red lights flash all around the facility. Klaxon alarms blare at an almost defeaning volume. Notifications are sent to every single smart device in the building. There isn't a soul in the facility who isn't aware of the imminent threat. As soon as I hit the button, four highly trained pilots rush to their mechs. Right now they're going through pre-deployment procedures and within 5 minutes should intercept the target. I take another sip of coffee and pull up a live feed on my computer. This is the part of the job I love the most. Sure these attacks can be scary but we have the best pilots in the world defending us. That allows me to push that fear aside and fulfill my childhood dream of watching giant robots fighting giant monsters. The Kaiju first emerged 17 years ago right here in Kaijutown. Of course, it wasn't called Kaijutown back then. Back then it was simply known as Oklahoma City. Some people refer to that day as K-Day but I always thought it sounded silly. I just call it The Day Mankind's History Was Irrevocably Altered For The Remainder Of All Time. See, rolls right off the tongue. When the first Kaiju burst from the earth in the middle of downtown Oklahoma City there was, of course, shock and awe. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Immediately we knew two things: we weren't alone in the universe (or even this planet) and mankind would never be the same. The first Kaiju destroyed most of the city before it was stopped. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. The initial shock and awe soon gave way to anger and vengeance. The military was quick to react and after a bombing campaign that lasted almost 24 hours the Kaiju was finally brought down. So now we knew a third thing: they could be killed. Naturally the Kaiju corpse was studied for any vulnerabilities. It was quickly discovered they had very thick skin covered in some areas with armor-like scales. I remember seeing it on the news as a boy and thinking it resembled a large crocodile spliced with a T-Rex. When the second Kaiju emerged, we realized a fourth thing: the first Kaiju wasn't an isolated incident. Not only were we all now living in an Ishiro Honda film, but now we had to deal with multiple giant monsters living beneath the surface. The government quickly evacuated most of Oklahoma and began to devise additional methods to defeat the Kaiju. As luck would have it, halfway across the world Japan was working on an actual life-size Gundam. Initially they led the world to believe their Gundam could do nothing more than move a leg. When actual Kaiju started to appear, the Japanese government informed the United States government that their Gundam was more battle ready than previously thought. Naturally the US Government wanted all of the technology used to build the mech. Naturally Japan refused. Eventually an agreement was formed. The two countries would work together to build battle mechs, train mech pilots, and develop any additional technology needed to combat the Kaiju. Soon, other countries offered their expertise and technologies. Everybody wanted to be in the inner circle regarding this crazy new threat. Thus, the Allied Nations Kaiju Liberation Enforcement Service was born. Yea I know it spells ANKLES. I've told my boss. He told me to shut up. I continue to sip coffee as I watch the live feed. The Kaiju emerged from the ground just like all of the others. It gets it's footing then looks around. The four mechs approach, their metal chassis glistening in the sun. This is the 70th Kaiju attack since they first emerged 17 years ago. Well I guess it's unfair to call it an attack. We've gotten Kaiju fighting down to a science so this is just another Wednesday for us. Kaijutown has been abandoned for years which allowed ANKLES to build an impenetrable defense around a perimeter totaling 50 square miles. No Kaiju has gotten more than 3 miles before our mechs bring them down. I've been lucky enough to witness most of the takedowns right here from the command center at ANKLES HQ. The mechs reach the Kaiju and flank it from all sides. Shoulder mounted missiles are fired and a flurry of explosions blanket the Kaiju. It roars that ungodly roar they all do when they are first attacked. I can feel it all the way here at HQ. The missles should weaken the Kaiju enough for the deadly blow to be inflicted. All of our mechs are equipped with a special blade designed to penetrate the tough Kaiju skin. One of the mechs deploys their blade and strikes. This was it. This was the final blow. It would all be over soon. But... the Kaiju dodges the strike and grabs the mech's arm. Then it opens it's mouth and vaporizes the mech with what I can only assume was some kind of fire breath. I drop my coffee mug. This has never happened before. Kaiju don't have fire breath. The three remaining mechs pilots keep their cool but I can hear the fear rising in their voices. They just witnessed one of their teammates killed at the claws of a Kaiju. A fire breathing Kaiju. All of the mechs strike at once. Multiple notifications pop up across my screen. Everybody at ANKLES wants to know what's going on. Kaiju specialists are frantically recalling any information they have on these things and nobody can find anything about fire breath. In addition to that, this Kaiju seems to be faster and more agile than the ones before it. It is effortlessly dodging the blows from the mechs even returning a few blows of it's own. The mech pilots are well trained but it's been years since a Kaiju has given them this much of a challenge. Usually a shoulder missle attack and a blade strike seals the deal. Now the mech pilots are literally out there fighting for their lives. Another alert pops up on my screen. I almost dismiss it until I realize it's a seismic alert. Oh no. Not now. I type a few commands and the satellites confirm it. Another Kaiju is emerging from the earth. I patch into the mech's radio feed and warn the pilots. It's too late. The second Kaiju attacks a mech from behind with a vaporizing blast of fire breath. I can't believe what I'm seeing. The Kaiju must have... evolved. I have an idea but the area needs to be clear. I tell the two remaining pilots my plan and to evacuate the area. They acknowledge my message, land a few remaining strikes on the Kaiju and begin to run back to HQ. The satellites I use to track Kaiju seismic activity are also low-orbit defense weapons. Each satellite is equipped with a nuclear missle. Well not technically nuclear because there's no radiation but they do pack a similar wallop. I sweat as I type the commands I need to access the defense capabilities of the satellites. I stop for a split second when I realize these missles have never been deployed before. Today is definitely a day of firts. A notification pops up on my monitor from the head of ANKLES giving me the greenlight to launch. In my haste I didn't ask for permission so I'm glad they're covering all of our butts by giving me the required approval. I type the final command and the missle is launched. It takes 5 seconds for the missle to enter Earth's atmosphere and reach the Kaiju. The blast is blinding, the shockwave deafening. The entire building shakes and I have to hold on to my computer console to avoid being thrown to the ground. Once the explosion subsides, I sit down and sigh. I can't believe what has happened today. Two mech pilots killed. Evolved Kaiju. Me launching an explosive from space. This is definitely one for the history books. I wipe sweat from my brow and start to type up an after action report. There will be a lot of people studying the events of today for a long time. Halfway through typing the first sentence I freeze. My mind must be playing tricks on me. I could have sworn I heard a... there it is again. That ungodly roar. Impossible. I switch to a live feed of the missle impact area but there's still too much dust in the air. I switch to a thermal view and my heart drops. The two Kaiju are still standing and roaring into the sky. Alerts pop up on my screen. More seismic activity. This time it's off the charts. No no no no no. I pull up the satellite data and the blood drains from my face. More Kaiju are emerging. We've never dealt with more than one at a time before. Now there are at least a dozen in full view with more bursting out of the ground every few minutes. I sit back in my chair and tears form in my eyes. If the mechs and the missiles couldn't stop them then we're doomed. Soon the Kaiju break through our defensive barrier, tearing it down as if it were tissue paper. We deployed the remaining mechs. We deployed the remaing missles. It was of no use. There was now nothing standing between the Kaiju and the rest of mankind. For the second time in my lifetime, the Kaiju have risen.


I lasted about three years as a substitute teacher. I would fill in at this one school just about every day. The school was mostly made up of a minority population and the school was in a very impoverished area. It was nearly impossible for the school to keep permanent teachers. The kids really suffered from the lack of having a consistent teacher knowing the kid’s quirks and their idiosyncrasies. Also, unfortunately the teacher was the only assurance for some of the kid’s to see their basic needs were being met. I remember seeing the despair in a seven year old’s face, then I had to try to figure out how to make that kid feel comfortable for at least a short while. Sometimes just by giving the kid a snack would help. Other times nothing would help, because the kid was digesting whatever insanity they faced the previous night at home. I really wanted the kids to feel safe and it broke my heart seeing them unkempt, nervous, emotionally unavailable.... Some of the kids were so quiet that they were almost forgotten. The “bad kids” instinctually knew in order to get their basic needs met they needed to do something to garner attention. I class hopped all year long, but I would spend a few days at a time in each class. I finished my first year and had a sense of fulfillment that I made it through the whole year. The summer went by fast and the next year started. Now I felt like a seasoned veteran and I picked up on more trends of the school and the kids. I did the same thing as the previous year. I went from class to class. I was a little disappointed that some of the kids moved onto private schools or were switched to being home schooled, but ultimately it may have been in their best interest. A few weeks into the school year all of the kids knew who I was and I knew them. About half way through the year two of the students were taken out of the school to be home schooled. I learned this when I would take roll call and there names were crossed out from the list. I was surprised the two kids were being home schooled, because the two kids had issues with their basic needs being met. I tried to give the parents the benefit of the doubt because sometimes you could put the kid’s favorite food in front of them and they still wouldn’t eat it or you could hand them a tooth brush and unless you wanted to force their mouths open they weren’t going to brush their teeth. These two kid’s were somewhere in the middle, where they weren’t the worst as far as there needs not being met and they weren’t the best. They were quiet and just kind of blended in. I really couldn’t focus on the two that left, because I needed to focus on the kids still present and the problems at hand. However. I was left pondering about the two kids who were dis enrolled and left under the pretenses of being “homeschooled”. I was surprised their parents or guardians actually took the time to enroll them in a homeschool program considering what those two kids looked like on an average day. Once again the school year was winding down and unfortunately the summer flew bye and I was back at school. It was really cute that the kids remembered me from the previous year and I remembered them as well. I also wasn’t shocked that the school from grades one through eight only had one permanent teacher. There were multiple home room’s for each grade as well. The school did a horrible job at teacher recruitment and none of the new grads wanted to step foot in the school because of the impoverished area. I got used to parking my car up the street by an abandoned house that had no windows, but a kid right out of college couldn’t see past that or the virtual minimum wage pay. The only consistency the school had was the principle. She had been there for years. She had no time for nothing. she would interview one counselor / social worker only to see them leave after three months. The principle was always on the phone putting out whatever fire that needed to be addressed. It was so bad that I had to create my own lesson plans as a substitute teacher and the principle would blindly approve whatever I wrote down. The school was just complete and utter chaos. once again, right before christmas break during roll call, for one of the third grade classes, I discovered one of the kid's had dis enrolled from the school. Almost, the same MO, where the kid was one of those kid's that just blended in at this school, but would have every government run agency swarming to ensure the kid was ok at any suburban school. I checked the school records and the kid's reason for being dis enrolled was "homeschool" and once again I thought it was really odd a guardian would take that initiative. I wanted to learn the process for a kid to be enrolled as "homeschool". I learned that it only required that the guardian fill out the government form and for the school to keep a copy of the form. I managed to go to where the records were stored for the school. I found the "homeschool" forms for the two kids last year and the one kid this year. I was surprised on how formal the "homeschool" forms were filled out. i was expecting misspelled words with horrible penmanship. I made a copy of the forms because I had learned how horrible it was to retrieve anything from the school. Everything got lost or misplaced. During, the Christmas break I decided to follow up on the three students. The "homeschool" forms had their phone number's and their addresses. I felt extremely awkward and what I was doing wasn't completely legal. I wanted to avoid calling because what was I going to say "I was your kid's substitute teacher and ...". So what I did was I parked my car close to where the address listed was given on the form, which was also extremely awkward and besides the fear of being in my car in the neighborhood, I felt like everyone was watching me. I tried to give the illusion that I was in my car for a reason. I was always reading something with the hopes that the locals thought I was some kind of local authoritative figure or perhaps even that I was working undercover, which I sort of was doing. I sat in that car all day and I didn't see the “homeschool” kid at all. I did see a few grown ups come and go but I didnt see the kid. I decided to go to the next kid's house address that was listed on the "homeschool" form and pretty much with the same outcome and then onto the last kid's house with once again the same outcome. I just left it at that and the Christmas break was just about over. After, the first day back I decided to muster enough courage and actually call the "homeschool" kids. Two of the lines were disconnected and one of the lines rang and rang with no one answering. I couldn't just drop this at this point. I had to take it to the next step and and knock on the kid's door. I was beyond petrified on the reception that I would receive at the front door and to be honest some of the adults who I saw leaving the homes were down right scary. So, after school with my school ID in hand, I walked to the first "homeschool" address. I waited a minute before I knocked on the door to talk myself up and muster enough courage that I needed. I knocked and an adult woman answered the door and said "what do you want". I mumbled a few words of who I was and then asked how the kid was doing? she looked at me and said "There ain't no kid here" then I said "do you remember the last time you saw ... " she raised her voice "like I said there ain't no kid here" and slammed the door. I decided to go to the next two "homeschool" house's and once again I basically got the same responses. The next week at school I nonchalantly asked the other kid's if they seen or heard from the "homeschool" kids and each one pretty much said that before the kids left for "homeschool" the only time they saw them was during school time. So, now I was at a dead end. I had taken notes of all the steps I had taken. I reexamined the "homeschool" forms and pretty much saw what I already knew. The form's penmanship's were very similar. From reading hundreds of handwritten papers, I learned that everyone has there own style and even if you were to try to conceal a particular way you wrote the letter "A" eventually you would slip up in a word and revert back to how you would typically write. That's what I noted in the "homeschool" forms. They were all different but if you looked hard enough you would see similarities. I dug a little deeper and went to the main office to see if anyone recalled what guardian dropped off the "homeschool" form. I asked the guidance counsellor and she said "I just started two weeks ago ..." and then I just tuned her out. I was just sick of hearing that. At the end of the day, I reluctantly went to the principle. I knew what I was doing wasn't by the rules. It was probably border line illegal. I remember the principle's hair that day was in every direction and she just looked like she was at her last wit. I explained to her what I was doing regarding the "homeschool" kids and I basically asked her if she had any ideas. She didn't say a word and basically just shook her head no looking completely defeated. Then, the next week started and I went to the office and to drop off my lesson plan. I just happened to see a very poised woman who had to be in her early 70's talking to the guidance counselor. She caught my attention because she mentioned the word "homeschool". The woman had a very calming voice like a very liked kindergarten teacher. She was dressed very nicely and just overall looked very pleasant. almost like the Grandma you wished more of these kids would have. I finally felt relieved and a bit embarrassed. I rarely saw the kid's parents / guardians especially being the substitute teacher. But at least now, I was actually able to see the process with my own eyes. Now it's springtime and I'm doing my typical rotation throughout the school. One day I was doing roll call and one of the kids I saw a line through their name meaning the kid was no longer at the school. I remembered that kid. Pretty much the same MO as the previous "homeschool" kid's as being Quiet, emotionally not available, ... Basically, if I didn't see the kid's name with a line through it then I wouldn't know the kid was gone nor would anyone else. I went down to the records office to see where the latest kid went to. I found the file and saw the “homeschool” form. I looked at the form and once again the penmanship didn’t seem to fit the kid’s suspected home life. Once again, I saw the same pattern with the other three. The penmanship on the forms were almost intentionally made to look different. Once more, I was able to match the date on the form with the chance encounter with the elegant looking woman in her 70’s I had in the near past. Something just wasn’t right. I spoke to the guidance counselor and amazingly she was still employed, but she really had no additional information regarding the woman or the kid. Then, I pretty much followed the same steps as the previous three kids and came out with pretty much the sam results. The kid wasn’t at the address and the phone was disconnected. At this point, I really wanted answers and just some assurance the “homeschool” kids were ok. I thought to myself Let’s face it, it’s rare for one of the kids to move on to bigger and better things it does happen but it’s rare. If the four kids were dis enrolled because the parents moved and transferred schools, I would have been like ok that’s understandable and then I could just follow up with the new school’s if necessary. But with the last “homeschool” kid it was just literally days since the kid left to be homeschooled and no one at the address given on the form had any idea what I was talking about. I checked the initial school records for the “homeschool” kid’s when they first enrolled at the school. The forms were typically half hazardly filled out with a lot of information missing. A lot of times, the family members didn’t want to give away information because of whatever illegal activities they were involved in. The school rarely if ever checked if the kid was in the right school district. I'm not sure if it was because of just being disorganized or if the district really didn't want to cause any barriers for the kids to attend school. At this point, I had to go the police. I showed up at the police station and waited around for a couple of hours. Finaly, one of the detectives met with me. I could tell he was only half listening to me. I think when I said "substitute teacher" was when the detective became disinterested in what I had to say. I showed him the "homeschool" forms, which he didn't even look at. He said "where were you trained to decipher handwriting?" I kind of muttered in embarrassment. He must of looked at his watch 10 times for the five minutes I spoke with him. Eventually, I left and there was no business card given to me. He didn’t even say give me a call if you find anything else it was basically get out and thank you for wasting my time. I felt like I was punched in the gut. Nobody cared in what I found or had to say. It was the weekend and I had time to gather my thoughts. I have only been at this school for a short time and was able to pick up the "homeschool" pattern of kids basically disappearing. I said to myself there must be countless more “homeschool” kids possibly in this school alone. Unfortunately, the school didn't have a report, I could run to see what kids were dis enrolled as "homeschool". So I thought and I thought then I realized the only way was going to be looking through yearbooks. I decided to focus on the years and the grades of the kids I encountered and still should have been in the school. I took as many of the yearbooks I could from the School's basement department. I flipped through yearbooks and quickly ruled out any of the kids who were still enrolled at the school and I highlighted any kid that I didn't recall seeing Of the kids I didn't recall seeing, I found about 20 kids. Then, with the 20 names I painstakingly looked up the names in our schools record department. From the records, about 15 of the kids were listed as "transferred". I actually called the school's of the 15 kids and the kid’s were all fine. Then with the remaining five kids, I found something extremely unsettling. I saw the "Homeschool" form's in each one of the five kid's folders. I now had five additional "homeschool" forms. Two of the forms it looked like the writer either felt brazen or nearly just got sloppy. Though two of the forms were about five years apart, the penmanship had way to many similar characteristics. I figured I had to follow up with each of the five additional forms. As I suspected, at each address I went to listed on the "homeschool" form, no one had any idea what I was talking about. At this point, I had my folder with all the copies I made and all of my notes. I demanded to meet with the principal and she made available a time and date. I showed up tobthe meeting with my evidence in hand. I explained again to the principal what I uncovered and the additional five "homeschool" kids who had disappeared. She listened to what I had to say and then she said "who told you to do this?" I replied "Do what?" She said "snoop around files ... call parents ... who told you to do this?" I said no one. Then she said I violated multiple school violations and I wasn't allowed back in the school. She made me hand over whatever copies I made and whatever notes I had. I was now out of work. The school year ended. I worked in a retail store that summer that was just down right depressing. I figured with the new school year starting maybe I could find work at a different school in a different district. The school I applied for was just as equally as bad as the previous one. As long as I had a bachelors degree and no criminal record, then they would hire you on the spot as a substitute teacher. This year was going to be different. I was there to teach and to be nice to the kids and that's it. I was not going to be a detective, that was over and done with. The school year was breezing by and I was used to going from class to class. I wasn't looking for any patterns. I just did my assignment and then went home. Then it happened. I saw that elegant woman in her 70's. She was talking to the guidance counsellor at this new school. My head was in a different dimension. It was like seeing your dead grandmother. I was in complete shock. I just stood there. She had the same calming voice. She was dressed impeccably but not overly showy to draw attention to herself. I was frozen. I could tell she didn't recognize me. I saw her give the "homeschool" form to the guidance counselor and then she proceeded to exit. I snapped back from my shocked state and I popped my head into the principle's office and said "i'm not feeling well I have to go." Then, I quickly got in my car and I followed her. I drove for nearly two hours and eventually. she pulled into one of the nicest houses I have ever seen in one of the most richest neighborhoods that I had ever been in. She had a gate that opened and closed electronically. I stayed on the road for a little while just to take notes. There was zero evidence of any kids being on her property, but I did notice a pool company was servicing her pool. Eventually, I saw the pool van leave and I was able to get the name of the company. That same day, I called the same pool company and applied for a job. The pool company was desperate and I lied and told them that I was experienced and I owned my own business for years. All I wanted was to get the company's pool van so I could get through that woman's gate. Within two days the pool company gave me a van to drive and an assignment of where to go. It was a Saturday, so I didn’t have to worry about missing school. I ignored the pool company’s assignment and went right to that woman's house. I got to the gate and used the intercom and explained that we forgot to do something the previous day. She opened the gate and I proceeded to the pool area. I stood by the pool and was just trying to take in everything and was just looking for any type of clues for anything. I knew something just wasn’t right. I still saw no kids so she wasn’t a philanthropist trying to help underprivileged kids. I must of stood by the pool for a half an hour in my company issued pool uniform. The woman eventually came out and very cordially welcomed me. She just had one of those very calming voices and she was very hospitable. I made up some mumble jumble problem with the pool and then I started to do some small talk to try to get any information about her. I said “I’m going to try to get this pool fixed as quickly as possible so I could visit my child in the hospital”. I said that so she would say something like “yeah I’m a mother” or “l’m a grandmother”. I then went on and made up a story about my child having special needs and how involved I was in this non-profit agency and she had absolutely no follow up responses. It was like kids to her was a completely different planet. She maintained her nice demeanor the whole time and brushed off anything I said or was completely sympathetic to me for working in a non-profit company. I knew I didn’t have much time left and I really had no evidence of anything. Then, I realized I had to say something. I said “well let me get this done because I don’t want to have to drive two hours back here from ...” and I actually gave the school’s name. Then, I witnessed something that I have never seen before. I observed a sheep turn into a wolf within a blink of an eye. The cordialness was gone. She said “say that again.” She didn’t say it in her typical voice. It was like she just wanted me to confirm what I said. So I reiterated the school’s name. We both looked at each other and I said “who are you?” She just continued to look at me and I said “who are you?” She took off her wig and she now looked like someone in her 50’s. She gave me a death stare. She knew I uncovered her. I said “where are those kids?” She didn’t say “I have no idea what your talking about?” or “excuse me?” She then got on the phone, which she pulled from her blouse pocket and on the phone she said “come right now” and she looked directly at me the whole time like she was going to kill me. At that point, I felt extremely uncomfortable and thought I have all the information I needed. I got into the pool van and I manually forced the front gate opened and left. I was a little relieved that my hunch was right but I was also extremely afraid. Whoever that woman was she knew where I worked and even if I quit my job the school had my information on file. After returning the pool van I headed back home. I really needed a few days to compile everything I had and come up with a plan. I actually waited a week and decided to return to that woman’s house. I was shaking during the whole two hour car ride. From about a block away, I could smell the familiar scent of burnt ambers. As I pulled closer to her house, I realized that the house was completely burnt down. Nothing but ashes. I saw one of the neighbors jog bye and I asked what happened. Based on the story and the date the neighbor gave me, I realized the woman or somebody else torched the house right after I had left the week before. I asked the neighbor if he knew the woman who lived in the house and he said besides exchanging casual greetings he said he knew nothing. He said the house was so completely engulfed in flames there was no way of telling if she died in the fire. I never returned to that school or any other teaching job. All I had was a list of those “homeschool” kids. Months went bye and I figured would never hear anything again regarding those kids. Then, I was scrolling through the internet and I came across this court case, where a jail house rat was looking for leniency based on information she had. The jailhouse rat said that her cell mate confided to her that she sold her kid for drug money and she knew horrible things were going to happen to her kid, but she didn’t care because all she cared about was getting drugs. Continuing to read the story from the jailhouse rat, I started to dry heave, then I actually vomitted because the jailhouse rat mentioned the principal from the original school was involved in the child selling scheme.


Saturday. 7am. Alarm rings. I’m quick to spring out of bed, but that’s only to snooze the alarm and return to the fleeting warmth trapped under the blankets. 9 minutes later again the alarm rings. A pernicious cycle of getting up only to return immediately continues until 7:55 am. Admitting defeat, I knew I couldn’t snooze again. I growled walking to my desk. A mere 20 feet from my bed to the chair where I would spend the next 9 hours of my life wishing I was dead. I never was a coffee person. I sometimes wonder if that’s why the mornings always felt extra rough, though I wasn’t a fan of the jitteriness alternative either. On my desk were 3 monitors, 1 large one in the center and two slightly smaller ones on each side. The center and right monitors were reserved for my main working activities while the left one was reserved for the disquieting purpose of displaying the call queue. I sat in the chair staring blankly ahead. What began was a session of leering at the impending doom of what waits for me. Those early morning minutes were ones I hated the most. Knowing that there was a fresh young day ahead of me, ripe with opportunity, an abundance of possibility. Yet I could only see it through what felt like the window of a jail cell, reminding me that today would not be that day. No, instead I would be handed a day filled with anxiety, frustration, and unfulfillment. It was 14 minutes past 8. I still hadn’t moved. My morning routine consisted of me getting to my desk, doing the absolute bare minimum to sign into the computer, then doing nothing. Absolutely Nothing. Sitting there staring off into the distance. Or more often than not, closing my eyes and placing my head on top of my arms on my desk. Sometimes staring at the carpet beneath me other times remaining in the darkness surrounded by the silence. I was trying to escape. Trying to seek shelter from the world, from what was about to happen. Trying to bring back peace to my own mind and body. Trying to forget, maybe even just for a second, that I wasn’t here. The attempts were futile, only delaying the inevitable, or on some occasions making it worse. Then of course there were the tics (motor-tics). Moments where my whole-body twitches in an uncontrolled involuntary movement as if I was flinching from a gunshot going off in the next room. These began a few months back and would happen every so often when I lied down to sleep. But as my stress continued to grow so did the frequency. Eventually they even followed me from my bed to my desk. Whenever I was to place my head down and try to close my eyes the tics would chase me, making me realize that I can’t even escape to my own mind without being chased. On one severe occasion while placing my head down the phone next to me rang, causing me to flinch so dramatically it was truly painful. The way my body reacted had frightened me. I remember the overwhelming feelings immediately after of sorrow and remorse that I had ever let it get this far. That I hadn’t stopped this sooner or gotten help. I looked up at call queue. 3 calls in queue. There was only one other employee working currently and he was already on a call for 8 minutes now. My second coworker wasn’t set to start working until 30 minutes later. But that was it. Just us three guys. Three soldiers in the trenches, set to stave off what felt like an unrelenting horde for the next 9 hours. I felt like I let the anticipation build up for long enough. I took the first call. It was a young gentleman that had a question that frankly had nothing to do with IT at all, but instead was suited more for HR. This was a common occurrence as no other department in the company had a support phone line other than IT. I explained to him in a detached tone that he would need to email the HR department with his inquiry and wait for a response from them. His tone changed from probing to one of irate with a hint of mistrust. As he explained to me that he had already done such thing and still received no such response his choice in words made it seem like he believed I knew the answer to his original question, yet I was withholding it for some reason. And that maybe he would be able to strongarm it out of me. But no, I did not. If I had I would have gladly told him it because I knew that would have been the quickest way to make him go away. I told him once more that only HR would be able to assist him and then ended the call. (2 min 11 sec) I waited for a bit before the next call. I always do now. When I had first started, I used to be able to churn out call after call. Seldom ever using the allotted 2 minutes of *after call wrap* (ACW — additional time after each call before the next to complete a ticket or paperwork). Though now I use every second I’ve got. I actually use more than I’ve got. A colleague early on taught me a trick to extend the ACW after a call for as long as I need to before going back into available or taking the next call from the queue. It was a handy trick but one to be used sparingly. If the use of it got too high it would prompt a conversation from my manager discouraging its use. But that only mattered back when I cared about my job. Let’s get one thing clear. I am not a good employee. I was. I might still be able to be. But currently I am not. I could care less if I am on time. I could care less if I am meeting metrics or standards. I could care less if I have 200 overdue tickets in my queue. Something has caused this apathy. Maybe its burnout, maybe it’s the fact that these are trying times the world is in currently, or maybe it’s because management doesn’t seem to care either. We have been severely understaffed since back in November when people began to leave our team. Help Desk is an entry position, so it’s not expected of you to stay there forever. Don’t get me wrong some do and end up stuck there for what feels like forever. But the idea is to move on at a certain point. The problem arose when all of these people left their positions, but the positions were never refilled. The size of our team continued to slowly decrease over the year all while we were entering the busiest period we had ever seen. Management doesn’t seem to care that we are understaffed and overworked. Or at least they don’t seem to be doing anything about it. I take the next call. It’s an older Hispanic man. He speaks in broken English. He’s having an issue with the time punch software and he can’t log his hours. He is one of our contractors down in the southern part of the state who works with the roofing teams. He is upset because this is the third time this week he has had to call us for support. *I am upset* because this is the third time this week he has had to call us for support. However, I empathize for this gentleman and the many like him at the company. He works in the field and fulfills a general contractor position. The most advanced piece of technology he uses is a 2010 Motorola Razr. Yet in order to do something as simple as clock in and clock out he has to navigate multiple sites and use two different usernames and passwords that he is expected to remember. This man never thought he would need a degree in computer science just to cash a paycheck as a roofer. I listen to him rant and afterwards I reset one of his passwords. He is able to log in now. He continues to spout about how he shouldn’t have to go through all of this and how all of this is a waste of time and that he shouldn’t have to remember two usernames and two passwords. I ignore him and ask him if there is anything else I can assist him with. He says no and hangs up the phone. (16 min 32 sec) The longer calls (anything over 6 minutes really) always seem to take the most damage on me. There’s something about taking 15 minutes to solve an issue that should have only taken 3 but couldn’t because you needed to over explain everything in the beginning and try to test every single aspect of it afterwards. All while you hold me hostage. Like a teller who you’ve made open the safe but you refuse to leave or let us go until you have counted every last bill inside. As if somehow there would be any different outcome based on the amount. You’ve got your money. Now leave me alone. I try to get up and walk away from my desk. But I’m not sure where to go. I know I’ll have to come right back, so why even leave in the first place? The chains only let you reach so far anyway. I try to cope the same way I do after every call, by either using my phone and scrolling for a distraction or placing my head down. I’m not sure what makes me put my head down on my desk the way I do. I guess I get a false comfort from it. I’m still a bit tired and with my head on the desk I start to doze. A tic hits me and I violently jerk. I can feel an increased pressure in my chest, but I can’t tell if its real or all in my head. I look at the clock. 9:00am. 8 more hours to go.


Originally written for the following prompt: >After accepting a steaming cup of coffee from their large green skinned co-worker and dodging past two dwarves discussing last night's game, they sat at their station right when the crystal lit up. "Magical Dispatch, what is your emergency?" \_\_\_\_\_\_ “Hey Gnash,” I said as I passed my supervisor. “How’s shift?” He *harumphed* a giant sized harumph my direction. I might have felt the whole of the comm center building tremble a little. “That bad, huh?” “It’s a full moon. What more is there to say?” The center trembled a little more from his grousing as he keyed up his crystal. “Units 956 and 947, copy a transfiguration with injuries.” That was my cue to sashay with a bit more haste to my console. A long shift could make Gnash an ogre in any situation. I mean. He is one. But *full moons* are a whole other stalk of beans. Sinking into my chair at my favorite console, I took a long sip of my coffee for a fleeting moment of zen. It passed all too quickly. Every other report crystal was lit up at the consoles around me, and the faint chime sound meant there were more calls holding, too. Time to plug in. I set my mug on the warming stone and swiped my spell chip over the headset dongle. As if calls waiting weren’t enough to ruin my moment of zen, my partner Luna was bound to. The tip of her conical hat waggled behind her scroll screens, clearly frustrated. Her quill scratched out a transcription that was surely of a caller who hadn’t taken a breath since the fall of Rome. “Ma’am! Ma’am! MAAA’AM!” Luna practically shouted into her mic. A couple heavy thumps meant she was banging on her desk in exasperation at her caller. “Ma’am, I need you to listen to me. Is the effigy changing color? Ma’am?” She huffed and the thumping sound came again. “Hung up on you?” I asked. “Of course. Nothing like calling Tilde-Star-Star and then hanging up on the crone trying to help you.” “Another goblin screaming ‘just get them here’?” “Mmmmmhm.” Her annoyance could have curdled butterbeer. The sparkling gem twirling above her scroll twirled faster as she hit voicemail on redial. “Well of course.” The gem suspended above her workspace winked out as she flicked the scroll over to Gnash. “You’re killing me!” The room rumbled with the boss’s displeasure as he stared at the new scroll. “Nope. That’s why they pay you the big ingots!” Luna shot back his direction, winking at me. I hid my chuckle behind another sip of coffee. Luna’s wide-brimmed headwear popped up over her scroll as she bounced forward to squint at me. “Hey, aren’t you off tonight?” “I *was.”* I sighed heavily. “But Jakub called out at dusk. Full moon.” “Ohhhh, bummer.” She didn't sound disappointed for me, though. In fact I would stake my first wand on the bet that she was glad she wouldn't be the only one on calltaking tonight. I didn’t mind. I’d prefer to work with Luna than some of the night walkers I could have been stuck with. “Yep." She wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. "You’d think he’d take the potion for--” “Iiiii know. But you know how New Age werebeasts are. Anyway, I don’t mind padding my coin purse and it’s supposed to be mostly cloudy tonight.” “Mmmmmmhm”. Her response brimmed with skepticism. My crystal shot out a beam of scarlet light accompanied by soft chimes. “So it begins.” I groaned and tapped the crystal, now blinking furiously. “Tilde-Star-Star, where is your emergency?” My quill floated up, scratching out the start of a new call for service. A distinctly thick accent sputtered in my ear. “Forbidden Forest, Grove Seventy Seven.” “Okay, and what’s going on there?” Nothing good, I would bet. The Forbidden Forest is dicey to visit at the middle of the month, let alone the end. The translator critter on it’s pedestal protested as I gave it a little nudge and raised my eyebrow. It’s feathered antennae twitched some wordless backtalk at me. Translating critters were notoriously dodgy in the twilight hours. Who could blame them though, really? The voice coming through my headset coughed nervously, but was clearer this time. “So, uh... my friend and I were totally not doing anything illegal but my friend has Witches Cough and I’ve been feeling pretty ill myself.” I sat up a little straighter. “How long has your friend been sick?” “I dunno, maybe… a couple hours?” Gnomes. Always can trust them to wait until it’s too late to call.“Not to worry, we’ll get some healers headed your way,” I reassured the voice. “Are there any spells or hazards we need to know about?” The answer tumbled out in a barely intelligible rush, despite my critter’s efforts. “Well I think we might have set off some tricky charms here, because one of my other friends here is running from a really, really mad pixie right now, and I think she’s summoning her family.” GAH! GNOMES! I wanted to punt the crystal. My fingers itched to pound my desk like Luna had only moments before, but I managed to remain still. *Why does no one lead with the most important details?!* Barely containing my irritation at the caller, I flicked the scroll flying away to Gnash with more force than strictly necessary. He rumbled again. “It’s gonna be one of the nights, Gnash!” I called as he started to key up his crystal. “What did I tell ya!” The floor shook a little harder. That’s when I really started to regret coming in. All the console gems started to spin and pulse colors at once. “Looks like the clouds cleared up,” Luna cackled. I swore a half-uttered curse under my breath. “Just my luck!” Reluctantly I tapped my crystal and recoiled as screams of a banshee hit my ear. “Ma’am!” I started, biting back another curse. As the wailing continued I made a mental note to come down with potion poisoning on the next full moon. A little case of Mutation Sickness could be easily faked. More crystals chiming interrupted the thought. Banshee or no, I was sure of one thing. It was the last time I’d pick up a werewolf’s shift during their time of the month.