u/SundanceMC

Hey there, I’m Jon… and today I’m going to give you a really quick lesson on reading ancient Latin. Very exciting. So the first thing we’re going to learn are the words:

Anima pro anima

Don’t go cheating and translate it, though. Not yet. Trust me, I’ll know.
No, we’re going to do that together. It’ll be fun!
So we’ll start by getting the easy one out of the way. Pro… you’ll see that word a lot in the legal system: Pro rata, pro bono, quid pro quo. Pro is easy; pro means “for”. Or, more specifically, “for,” as in “in favor of.” So you have pro.
Next, you got the same word twice. Anima. Translated literally, it means animate; to have life. Specifically, it can also mean soul. So Anima. Not to be confused with *animus*. Very important to read it as “anima”, not “animus” when we get to reading it yourself.
Anima pro anima... good.

Now let’s try

Usque ad finem temporis

So we have ad, which generally means “at” or “towards”. Usque means “until,” temporis is “time”; hence why time is associated with the words temporal or temporary. And then finem, which is the “end of” something. Some of you die-hards out there might try to pull a fast one on me; slip in *finis* instead of finem. Finis only applies if the word “end” is usually the last word of the sentence, or “ad finem” (or “ad extremum” if you want to get technical).
So Usque ad finem temporis. Very good.

So now we want to say those two phrases together like so:

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

Say them out loud. Nice and clear for the people in the back. What? What do you mean you don’t want to read them?… Why not?… I see…
I mean, I get it. I know adding foreign words into your vocabulary might seem a little… intimidating. I assure you, though, it’s perfectly safe to read out loud…
You still won’t do it, huh.
…
Look I wasn’t going to tell all of you this… I have a confession to make. I’m not really a Latin teacher. Well I am, but that’s not why you’re reading this. See, I’m in a bit of a bind, and I need your help. Let me explain...

It all started when my friends and I went to this cabin in the woods. I think maybe it was somebody’s uncle’s old cabin, despite the fact that no one from our friend group actually had any uncles. Nevertheless, we were determined to make a weekend of it. “Terra incognita” as it were… incognita being unknown and terra being land.

I’m not quite sure who found the tape recorder with the gruff, yet authoritarian, voice of an old professor who was here before us. He was ranting and raving about a book: The Necronomicon, or something like that. He claimed that he found it when he was trying to look for a temporary substitute for the Kama Sutra. But when he started reading from it, bad things began to happen.
I’d be hard pressed to say who took the lead down into the cellar where we found the ancient book. But I remember being the one to tell them to open it; that much is true. Anyway, it was the same old story. Some words were read, some things started happening, some people were possessed by the foulest creatures of the demonic realm, et cetera. Five people were possessed, including myself. In search of how to undo this vile curse, we looked to the tape recording for answers. The professor explicitly stated that the only way of stopping these things was total body dismemberment and decapitation.

So, like the book advised, these people hacked, carved, strangled and chainsawed their way through each other. I would’ve opted for a group sit-down, believing that a calm and healthy reassessment of the situation would’ve sufficed. But I knew it was a lost cause the second I saw Becky plunging a lead pencil into Linda’s ankle.

Poor Linda.

As I watched these people I called my friends get possessed, get corrupted, and finally… kill each other, I reluctantly waited for it to be my turn to meet my eternal, albeit gruesome, slumber. However, for some strange reason, I was left unscathed, and at the mercy of this mighty supernatural force. The anticipation eventually outgrew what I thought would be a quick end. Alas, deus ex machina. Or should I say daemon ex machina? Instead of finishing me off, the demons offered me an ultimatum. They told me,

“We will not only spare your suffering, we will make you immortal. And far more powerful than anything before. Our only condition is that you lure hosts into this cabin and read from this book. Then, we will possess them, force them to do our bidding and, if there’s time, indulge in a body we have gravely missed.”
They call the people they want to take over their “hosts”. I told them I didn’t want to do it and demanded they let me go. They told me, “The only way to get out of this is to convince an outside party to recite a very specific set of words, verbatim, from the book. Then it will end your curse. And then we will free you.”

So I’m pretty much an ad hoc demon now. Well, more of a lost soul forced to do the bidding of the dark ones. It’s pretty much my job to spot any cars, hikers, insurance salesmen, et cetera, and put them in the right direction of the demonic book. Alas, I’m pretty much confined to a 200 yard radius around the book, the cabin, its surrounding woods, and a portion of the adjoining highway. I am confined, and by confined, I mean… it’s almost like I’m no longer a person. I have vision, I can hear, I can sense, but there is no physical ‘me.’ I’m essentially just a rapidly moving floating head with no body to return to.

Even though my reach is limited, however, I try to make use of it every chance I get. I have a variety of different tricks I use. The moving of the steering wheel of an unsuspecting driver is a good one. Knocking a tree onto the road so that any passersby will be forced to take the alternate route, which leads to the cabin- that one too. More often than not, getting these people to the cabin is the easy part. Once they’re here, once they see this beauty for what it is, curiosity kills the cat or, as I like to say, Sapere aude! Getting them to read the book, however, is the most difficult and delicate operation of the whole plan. The smart ones will look for it to be sure. It’s the stupid ones I worry about. And remember, my capacities are limited. So a lot of it is just me going around the house moving stuff around at night, opening the cellar door to lead them down it, whispering in the window to look for the Necronomicon, doing anything I can to lead them down into the cellar. Ergo, I can’t exactly walk up to someone and start vigorously shaking them, saying “Hey dummy! Come to this cabin!” I tell you, if I could put airport runaway arrows down, ones that lead directly to the Necronomicon, I would. Ha ha.

The problem is that a vast majority of cabin visitors will not read from this darn book. Some of them don’t even want to entertain the idea of looking for it. Those who do are immediately put off by the cover. The cover is a controversial subject, to say the least. The book is bound in human skin, including a face threaded onto it. Here’s the thing… I actually brought this up to a few demons in the office. I asked,
“Why the human face?”
They looked at me and said- and this is serious- “We did it like that so it wouldn’t get lost easily. Like if you’re at the airport and you get separated from your luggage.”
Swear to god I’m not lying!
So I replied, “Don’t you think it’s a little counterproductive?” I mean it’s a terrifying-looking book! I asked them if they wanted to give it a more modern, less haunting update to the cover, something a little more user-friendly. They pretty much laughed me out of the room. They told me that if some idiot teenager wants to read from a book with the skin of a human face as the cover and is wrapped up in protective barbed wire, then that’s on him.
I offered them the idea of making it look like an everyday book, to fool the hosts. Something nice, something pleasant-looking. They told me they’d let me know, but that’s usually just a nice way of telling me they’re not interested. I mean, honestly they’re fools to themselves. But what do I know.

So needless to say, it’s been difficult getting people to read the words. Sure, I lure them down there. The choice is theirs if they want to read from it. Same as it was for us. We heard the tape recording of the old professor ranting and raving about the Necronomicon. Thinking it would be a laugh, we went down there to see if the book actually existed. Upon seeing the ugly face, the barbed wire and the strange writings that looked like they were inked in blood, most of us decided that it wasn’t worth messing with, so we retired to bed. But old Kirk’s curiosity got the better of him, now, didn’t it?

Anyway, the statistics are shocking over how many people have shown up to this place and not helped. Once they see the book, 75% of them know better than to fool around, so they just turn around and walk back up the stairs. However… of that remaining 25%, 15% will look at the book, examine the book, maybe even cut the wires; nevertheless, they ultimately don’t follow through with reading from it. It’s usually some coward who wants to impress his lady friend by doing something extreme; she will proceed to hit him and tell him to cut it out, which, again, leads them back upstairs. Having said all that, it’s that 10% that will read the unholy chant. They will let their curiosity be their undoing, like Kirk.

Poor Kirk.

Once the chaos ensues and their friends slaughter each other, one or two manage to survive. Then, in an effort to reverse the process, will start reading more passages. And it’s that small demographic that can potentially give me a real shot at getting out. Alas, it always ends in possession. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. But
possession usually leads to murder. So much murder.

And the crazy part is, the demons don’t actually wish death or even physical harm on the hosts. Yet, these people all just kept… killing each other. I couldn’t believe it! At first, we thought they might’ve been accidents. We just assumed the hosts believed they took too much acid and jumped out a window or, in one case, tried to cut their own hand off with the electric carving knife. But it got to a point where it happened so frequently that we had to do some of our own investigating. We actually played the tape back to see if there was something there. And really, it was the professor’s fault! That egg head explicitly stated in his recordings that body dismemberment was the only way. In fewer words he essentially told them that he would rather see the hosts die than to to let the demons live their best satanic lifestyles.

So it’s been an endless cycle for the last few months. Reading, possession, dead. Reading, possession, dead. Rinse and repeat. And it’s gosh awful lonely. Any time I get close with another human being, it ends in seeing them mauled or impaled. It seems like the only company I get outside the unsuspecting hosts are the damn cultists. These random yohos who rudely visit here every year for what they call the Sacred Harvest; don’t ask me what that is ‘cause I couldn’t tell you. I don’t even think they know what it is themselves. We do have a lot of fun during this time, though. We like to involve ourselves in subtle ways, possessing them because they think it’s funny or automatic writing for the members who are fond of creative expression. And I almost forgot… we even have a children’s area, where we sing nursery rhymes backwards and get the kids into the arts and crafts by teaching them to make stick figures, which we hang up around the area. But I wouldn’t go too deep into the forest though, because - let me tell ya - the tree demons are freaky sons of guns. Every other day I hear about how they like to violate the women before they possess them, and it crosses a line if I’m honest with you. Granted, every demonic possession is taking the hosts’ bodies against their will, but… do they have to do it in the crudest possible way? It’s uncalled for. So yeah, stay away from the tree people…

Oh who am I kidding? This is awful. I hate it here! This is hell. I mean it has to be… right? It’s so mundane and repetitive; I can’t eat anymore, so there’s no point in fishing. I can’t branch out and explore new areas because I can’t travel outside the confined radius of the book. And where’s the respect? It’s always “Send Jon off to do this and “Send Jon off to the go that.” They say I’m a valuable member of the team, but who’s the one that has to scrub their blood off the walls? Who do you think has to plunge the demon excrement out of the toilet? Me, that’s who. You think this place cleans itself after every massacre? I have four graves to dig by next week! And to top it off, anyone who manages to come across the book and potentially free me of this curse is killed because of that idiot on the tape recorder! If only I could just… try to get one of the survivors to take the book with them when they leave, so they can read the words in the safety of their own home, but evidently that is forbidden as well. It’s miserable! I hate it here! It’s a nightmare. And these cultists are getting on my nerves. What, they think that just because they say some woman’s name three times in a mirror that one of us is going to come out and possess them? Get a grip!

I wish I could get out of here; I wish I was back home and teaching again. I wish I never saw my friends become what they did… forcing me to do what I did. And I wish I’d never even found this place… and that my life was back to normal. I want to fish again. I want to golf again! So please, I wish somebody, anybody, who sees this will read those ancient words and free me of this terrible curse. Hopefully someone out there does the right thing.

Don’t do it! Don’t read the words out loud! You have to help me, he’s not the real Jon. I’m the real Jon and it’s my body that this thing is controlling. I managed to regain control of basic motor function, but I can’t leave this chair to escape. So I don’t have much time. Reading the ancient words doesn’t end the curse at all. It merely transfers it. The Latin means

A soul for a soul
‘Til the end of time

A soul for a soul! Don’t read the words!

Umm ok. That was weird; I just blacked out for a second there. That wasn’t me. I don’t know who that was. Probably one of the other demons who doesn’t want to me to finish my tenure. Anyway, like I was saying. I’m the real Jon, and I wouldn’t believe that trickster. So once again the words are…

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

What is it now? … What do you mean you still don’t want to read them? … You don’t trust me? Why?… Well, it’s a lose-lose situation. If you believe me, then I’m finally out, and the demons will lose a reluctant member of their ghoulish army. If you believe them, then I’m stuck here, and you will forever have that on your conscience. The choice is yours.

Well… what are you waiting for?

Carpe diem

Hey there, I’m Jon… and today I’m going to give you a really quick lesson on reading ancient Latin. Very exciting. So the first thing we’re going to learn are the words:

Anima pro anima

Don’t go cheating and translate it, though. Not yet. Trust me, I’ll know.
No, we’re going to do that together. It’ll be fun!
So we’ll start by getting the easy one out of the way. Pro… you’ll see that word a lot in the legal system: Pro rata, pro bono, quid pro quo. Pro is easy; pro means “for”. Or, more specifically, “for,” as in “in favor of.” So you have pro.
Next, you got the same word twice. Anima. Translated literally, it means animate; to have life. Specifically, it can also mean soul. So Anima. Not to be confused with *animus*. Very important to read it as “anima”, not “animus” when we get to reading it yourself.
Anima pro anima... good.

Now let’s try

Usque ad finem temporis

So we have ad, which generally means “at” or “towards”. Usque means “until,” temporis is “time”; hence why time is associated with the words temporal or temporary. And then finem, which is the “end of” something. Some of you die-hards out there might try to pull a fast one on me; slip in *finis* instead of finem. Finis only applies if the word “end” is usually the last word of the sentence, or “ad finem” (or “ad extremum” if you want to get technical).
So Usque ad finem temporis. Very good.

So now we want to say those two phrases together like so:

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

Say them out loud. Nice and clear for the people in the back. What? What do you mean you don’t want to read them?… Why not?… I see…
I mean, I get it. I know adding foreign words into your vocabulary might seem a little… intimidating. I assure you, though, it’s perfectly safe to read out loud…
You still won’t do it, huh.
…
Look I wasn’t going to tell all of you this… I have a confession to make. I’m not really a Latin teacher. Well I am, but that’s not why you’re reading this. See, I’m in a bit of a bind, and I need your help. Let me explain...

It all started when my friends and I went to this cabin in the woods. I think maybe it was somebody’s uncle’s old cabin, despite the fact that no one from our friend group actually had any uncles. Nevertheless, we were determined to make a weekend of it. “Terra incognita” as it were… incognita being unknown and terra being land.

I’m not quite sure who found the tape recorder with the gruff, yet authoritarian, voice of an old professor who was here before us. He was ranting and raving about a book: The Necronomicon, or something like that. He claimed that he found it when he was trying to look for a temporary substitute for the Kahma Sutra. But when he started reading from it, bad things began to happen.
I’d be hard pressed to say who took the lead down into the cellar where we found the ancient book. But I remember being the one to tell them to open it; that much is true. Anyway, it was the same old story. Some words were read, some things started happening, some people were possessed by the foulest creatures of the demonic realm, et cetera. Five people were possessed, including myself. In search of how to undo this vile curse, we looked to the tape recording for answers. The professor explicitly stated that the only way of stopping these things was total body dismemberment and decapitation.

So, like the book advised, these people hacked, carved, strangled and chainsawed their way through each other. I would’ve opted for a group sit-down, believing that a calm and healthy reassessment of the situation would’ve sufficed. But I knew it was a lost cause the second I saw Becky plunging a lead pencil into Linda’s ankle.

Poor Linda.

As I watched these people I called my friends get possessed, get corrupted, and finally… kill each other, I reluctantly waited for it to be my turn to meet my eternal, albeit gruesome, slumber. However, for some strange reason, I was left unscathed, and at the mercy of this mighty supernatural force. The anticipation eventually outgrew what I thought would be a quick end. Alas, deus ex machina. Or should I say daemon ex machina? Instead of finishing me off, the demons offered me an ultimatum. They told me,

“We will not only spare your suffering, we will make you immortal. And far more powerful than anything before. Our only condition is that you lure hosts into this cabin and read from this book. Then, we will possess them, force them to do our bidding and, if there’s time, indulge in a body we have gravely missed.”
They call the people they want to take over their “hosts”. I told them I didn’t want to do it and demanded they let me go. They told me, “The only way to get out of this is to convince an outside party to recite a very specific set of words, verbatim, from the book. Then it will end your curse. And then we will free you.”

So I’m pretty much an ad hoc demon now. Well, more of a lost soul forced to do the bidding of the dark ones. It’s pretty much my job to spot any cars, hikers, insurance salesmen, et cetera, and put them in the right direction of the demonic book. Alas, I’m pretty much confined to a 200 yard radius around the book, the cabin, its surrounding woods, and a portion of the adjoining highway. I am confined, and by confined, I mean… it’s almost like I’m no longer a person. I have vision, I can hear, I can sense, but there is no physical ‘me.’ I’m essentially just a rapidly moving floating head with no body to return to.

Even though my reach is limited, however, I try to make use of it every chance I get. I have a variety of different tricks I use. The moving of the steering wheel of an unsuspecting driver is a good one. Knocking a tree onto the road so that any passersby will be forced to take the alternate route, which leads to the cabin- that one too. More often than not, getting these people to the cabin is the easy part. Once they’re here, once they see this beauty for what it is, curiosity kills the cat or, as I like to say, Sapere aude! Getting them to read the book, however, is the most difficult and delicate operation of the whole plan. The smart ones will look for it to be sure. It’s the stupid ones I worry about. And remember, my capacities are limited. So a lot of it is just me going around the house moving stuff around at night, opening the cellar door to lead them down it, whispering in the window to look for the Necronomicon, doing anything I can to lead them down into the cellar. Ergo, I can’t exactly walk up to someone and start vigorously shaking them, saying “Hey dummy! Come to this cabin!” I tell you, if I could put airport runaway arrows down, ones that lead directly to the Necronomicon, I would. Ha ha.

The problem is that a vast majority of cabin visitors will not read from this darn book. Some of them don’t even want to entertain the idea of looking for it. Those who do are immediately put off by the cover. The cover is a controversial subject, to say the least. The book is bound in human skin, including a face threaded onto it. Here’s the thing… I actually brought this up to a few demons in the office. I asked,
“Why the human face?”
They looked at me and said- and this is serious- “We did it like that so it wouldn’t get lost easily. Like if you’re at the airport and you get separated from your luggage.”
Swear to god I’m not lying!
So I replied, “Don’t you think it’s a little counterproductive?” I mean it’s a terrifying-looking book! I asked them if they wanted to give it a more modern, less haunting update to the cover, something a little more user-friendly. They pretty much laughed me out of the room. They told me that if some idiot teenager wants to read from a book with the skin of a human face as the cover and is wrapped up in protective barbed wire, then that’s on him.
I offered them the idea of making it look like an everyday book, to fool the hosts. Something nice, something pleasant-looking. They told me they’d let me know, but that’s usually just a nice way of telling me they’re not interested. I mean, honestly they’re fools to themselves. But what do I know.

So needless to say, it’s been difficult getting people to read the words. Sure, I lure them down there. The choice is theirs if they want to read from it. Same as it was for us. We heard the tape recording of the old professor ranting and raving about the Necronomicon. Thinking it would be a laugh, we went down there to see if the book actually existed. Upon seeing the ugly face, the barbed wire and the strange writings that looked like they were inked in blood, most of us decided that it wasn’t worth messing with, so we retired to bed. But old Kirk’s curiosity got the better of him, now, didn’t it?

Anyway, the statistics are shocking over how many people have shown up to this place and not helped. Once they see the book, 75% of them know better than to fool around, so they just turn around and walk back up the stairs. However… of that remaining 25%, 15% will look at the book, examine the book, maybe even cut the wires; nevertheless, they ultimately don’t follow through with reading from it. It’s usually some coward who wants to impress his lady friend by doing something extreme; she will proceed to hit him and tell him to cut it out, which, again, leads them back upstairs. Having said all that, it’s that 10% that will read the unholy chant. They will let their curiosity be their undoing, like Kirk.

Poor Kirk.

Once the chaos ensues and their friends slaughter each other, one or two manage to survive. Then, in an effort to reverse the process, will start reading more passages. And it’s that small demographic that can potentially give me a real shot at getting out. Alas, it always ends in possession. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. But
possession usually leads to murder. So much murder.

And the crazy part is, the demons don’t actually wish death or even physical harm on the hosts. Yet, these people all just kept… killing each other. I couldn’t believe it! At first, we thought they might’ve been accidents. We just assumed the hosts believed they took too much acid and jumped out a window or, in one case, tried to cut their own hand off with the electric carving knife. But it got to a point where it happened so frequently that we had to do some of our own investigating. We actually played the tape back to see if there was something there. And really, it was the professor’s fault! That egg head explicitly stated in his recordings that body dismemberment was the only way. In fewer words he essentially told them that he would rather see the hosts die than to to let the demons live their best satanic lifestyles.

So it’s been an endless cycle for the last few months. Reading, possession, dead. Reading, possession, dead. Rinse and repeat. And it’s gosh awful lonely. Any time I get close with another human being, it ends in seeing them mauled or impaled. It seems like the only company I get outside the unsuspecting hosts are the damn cultists. These random yohos who rudely visit here every year for what they call the Sacred Harvest; don’t ask me what that is ‘cause I couldn’t tell you. I don’t even think they know what it is themselves. We do have a lot of fun during this time, though. We like to involve ourselves in subtle ways, possessing them because they think it’s funny or automatic writing for the members who are fond of creative expression. And I almost forgot… we even have a children’s area, where we sing nursery rhymes backwards and get the kids into the arts and crafts by teaching them to make stick figures, which we hang up around the area. But I wouldn’t go too deep into the forest though, because - let me tell ya - the tree demons are freaky sons of guns. Every other day I hear about how they like to violate the women before they possess them, and it crosses a line if I’m honest with you. Granted, every demonic possession is taking the hosts’ bodies against their will, but… do they have to do it in the crudest possible way? It’s uncalled for. So yeah, stay away from the tree people…

Oh who am I kidding? This is awful. I hate it here! This is hell. I mean it has to be… right? It’s so mundane and repetitive; I can’t eat anymore, so there’s no point in fishing. I can’t branch out and explore new areas because I can’t travel outside the confined radius of the book. And where’s the respect? It’s always “Send Jon off to do this and “Send Jon off to the go that.” They say I’m a valuable member of the team, but who’s the one that has to scrub their blood off the walls? Who do you think has to plunge the demon excrement out of the toilet? Me, that’s who. You think this place cleans itself after every massacre? I have four graves to dig by next week! And to top it off, anyone who manages to come across the book and potentially free me of this curse is killed because of that idiot on the tape recorder! If only I could just… try to get one of the survivors to take the book with them when they leave, so they can read the words in the safety of their own home, but evidently that is forbidden as well. It’s miserable! I hate it here! It’s a nightmare. And these cultists are getting on my nerves. What, they think that just because they say some woman’s name three times in a mirror that one of us is going to come out and possess them? Get a grip!

I wish I could get out of here; I wish I was back home and teaching again. I wish I never saw my friends become what they did… forcing me to do what I did. And I wish I’d never even found this place… and that my life was back to normal. I want to fish again. I want to golf again! So please, I wish somebody, anybody, who sees this will read those ancient words and free me of this terrible curse. Hopefully someone out there does the right thing.

Don’t do it! Don’t read the words out loud! You have to help me, he’s not the real Jon. I’m the real Jon and it’s my body that this thing is controlling. I managed to regain control of basic motor function, but I can’t leave this chair to escape. So I don’t have much time. Reading the ancient words doesn’t end the curse at all. It merely transfers it. The Latin means

A soul for a soul
‘Til the end of time

A soul for a soul! Don’t read the words!

Umm ok. That was weird; I just blacked out for a second there. That wasn’t me. I don’t know who that was. Probably one of the other demons who doesn’t want to me to finish my tenure. Anyway, like I was saying. I’m the real Jon, and I wouldn’t believe that trickster. So once again the words are…

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

What is it now? … What do you mean you still don’t want to read them? … You don’t trust me? Why?… Well, it’s a lose-lose situation. If you believe me, then I’m finally out, and the demons will lose a reluctant member of their ghoulish army. If you believe them, then I’m stuck here, and you will forever have that on your conscience. The choice is yours.

Well… what are you waiting for?

Carpe diem

Hey there, I’m Jon… and today I’m going to give you a really quick lesson on reading ancient Latin. Very exciting. So the first thing we’re going to learn are the words:

Anima pro anima

Don’t go cheating and translate it, though. Not yet. Trust me, I’ll know.
No, we’re going to do that together. It’ll be fun!
So we’ll start by getting the easy one out of the way. Pro… you’ll see that word a lot in the legal system: Pro rata, pro bono, quid pro quo. Pro is easy; pro means “for”. Or, more specifically, “for,” as in “in favor of.” So you have pro.
Next, you got the same word twice. Anima. Translated literally, it means animate; to have life. Specifically, it can also mean soul. So Anima. Not to be confused with *animus*. Very important to read it as “anima”, not “animus” when we get to reading it yourself.
Anima pro anima... good.

Now let’s try

Usque ad finem temporis

So we have ad, which generally means “at” or “towards”. Usque means “until,” temporis is “time”; hence why time is associated with the words temporal or temporary. And then finem, which is the “end of” something. Some of you die-hards out there might try to pull a fast one on me; slip in *finis* instead of finem. Finis only applies if the word “end” is usually the last word of the sentence, or “ad finem” (or “ad extremum” if you want to get technical).
So Usque ad finem temporis. Very good.

So now we want to say those two phrases together like so:

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

Say them out loud. Nice and clear for the people in the back. What? What do you mean you don’t want to read them?… Why not?… I see…
I mean, I get it. I know adding foreign words into your vocabulary might seem a little… intimidating. I assure you, though, it’s perfectly safe to read out loud…
You still won’t do it, huh.
…
Look I wasn’t going to tell all of you this… I have a confession to make. I’m not really a Latin teacher. Well I am, but that’s not why you’re reading this. See, I’m in a bit of a bind, and I need your help. Let me explain...

It all started when my friends and I went to this cabin in the woods. I think maybe it was somebody’s uncle’s old cabin, despite the fact that no one from our friend group actually had any uncles. Nevertheless, we were determined to make a weekend of it. “Terra incognita” as it were… incognita being unknown and terra being land.

I’m not quite sure who found the tape recorder with the gruff, yet authoritarian, voice of an old professor who was here before us. He was ranting and raving about a book: The Necronomicon, or something like that. He claimed that he found it when he was trying to look for a temporary substitute for the Kahma Sutra. But when he started reading from it, bad things began to happen.
I’d be hard pressed to say who took the lead down into the cellar where we found the ancient book. But I remember being the one to tell them to open it; that much is true. Anyway, it was the same old story. Some words were read, some things started happening, some people were possessed by the foulest creatures of the demonic realm, et cetera. Five people were possessed, including myself. In search of how to undo this vile curse, we looked to the tape recording for answers. The professor explicitly stated that the only way of stopping these things was total body dismemberment and decapitation.

So, like the book advised, these people hacked, carved, strangled and chainsawed their way through each other. I would’ve opted for a group sit-down, believing that a calm and healthy reassessment of the situation would’ve sufficed. But I knew it was a lost cause the second I saw Becky plunging a lead pencil into Linda’s ankle.

Poor Linda.

As I watched these people I called my friends get possessed, get corrupted, and finally… kill each other, I reluctantly waited for it to be my turn to meet my eternal, albeit gruesome, slumber. However, for some strange reason, I was left unscathed, and at the mercy of this mighty supernatural force. The anticipation eventually outgrew what I thought would be a quick end. Alas, deus ex machina. Or should I say daemon ex machina? Instead of finishing me off, the demons offered me an ultimatum. They told me,

“We will not only spare your suffering, we will make you immortal. And far more powerful than anything before. Our only condition is that you lure hosts into this cabin and read from this book. Then, we will possess them, force them to do our bidding and, if there’s time, indulge in a body we have gravely missed.”
They call the people they want to take over their “hosts”. I told them I didn’t want to do it and demanded they let me go. They told me, “The only way to get out of this is to convince an outside party to recite a very specific set of words, verbatim, from the book. Then it will end your curse. And then we will free you.”

So I’m pretty much an ad hoc demon now. Well, more of a lost soul forced to do the bidding of the dark ones. It’s pretty much my job to spot any cars, hikers, insurance salesmen, et cetera, and put them in the right direction of the demonic book. Alas, I’m pretty much confined to a 200 yard radius around the book, the cabin, its surrounding woods, and a portion of the adjoining highway. I am confined, and by confined, I mean… it’s almost like I’m no longer a person. I have vision, I can hear, I can sense, but there is no physical ‘me.’ I’m essentially just a rapidly moving floating head with no body to return to.

Even though my reach is limited, however, I try to make use of it every chance I get. I have a variety of different tricks I use. The moving of the steering wheel of an unsuspecting driver is a good one. Knocking a tree onto the road so that any passersby will be forced to take the alternate route, which leads to the cabin- that one too. More often than not, getting these people to the cabin is the easy part. Once they’re here, once they see this beauty for what it is, curiosity kills the cat or, as I like to say, Sapere aude! Getting them to read the book, however, is the most difficult and delicate operation of the whole plan. The smart ones will look for it to be sure. It’s the stupid ones I worry about. And remember, my capacities are limited. So a lot of it is just me going around the house moving stuff around at night, opening the cellar door to lead them down it, whispering in the window to look for the Necronomicon, doing anything I can to lead them down into the cellar. Ergo, I can’t exactly walk up to someone and start vigorously shaking them, saying “Hey dummy! Come to this cabin!” I tell you, if I could put airport runaway arrows down, ones that lead directly to the Necronomicon, I would. Ha ha.

The problem is that a vast majority of cabin visitors will not read from this darn book. Some of them don’t even want to entertain the idea of looking for it. Those who do are immediately put off by the cover. The cover is a controversial subject, to say the least. The book is bound in human skin, including a face threaded onto it. Here’s the thing… I actually brought this up to a few demons in the office. I asked,
“Why the human face?”
They looked at me and said- and this is serious- “We did it like that so it wouldn’t get lost easily. Like if you’re at the airport and you get separated from your luggage.”
Swear to god I’m not lying!
So I replied, “Don’t you think it’s a little counterproductive?” I mean it’s a terrifying-looking book! I asked them if they wanted to give it a more modern, less haunting update to the cover, something a little more user-friendly. They pretty much laughed me out of the room. They told me that if some idiot teenager wants to read from a book with the skin of a human face as the cover and is wrapped up in protective barbed wire, then that’s on him.
I offered them the idea of making it look like an everyday book, to fool the hosts. Something nice, something pleasant-looking. They told me they’d let me know, but that’s usually just a nice way of telling me they’re not interested. I mean, honestly they’re fools to themselves. But what do I know.

So needless to say, it’s been difficult getting people to read the words. Sure, I lure them down there. The choice is theirs if they want to read from it. Same as it was for us. We heard the tape recording of the old professor ranting and raving about the Necronomicon. Thinking it would be a laugh, we went down there to see if the book actually existed. Upon seeing the ugly face, the barbed wire and the strange writings that looked like they were inked in blood, most of us decided that it wasn’t worth messing with, so we retired to bed. But old Kirk’s curiosity got the better of him, now, didn’t it?

Anyway, the statistics are shocking over how many people have shown up to this place and not helped. Once they see the book, 75% of them know better than to fool around, so they just turn around and walk back up the stairs. However… of that remaining 25%, 15% will look at the book, examine the book, maybe even cut the wires; nevertheless, they ultimately don’t follow through with reading from it. It’s usually some coward who wants to impress his lady friend by doing something extreme; she will proceed to hit him and tell him to cut it out, which, again, leads them back upstairs. Having said all that, it’s that 10% that will read the unholy chant. They will let their curiosity be their undoing, like Kirk.

Poor Kirk.

Once the chaos ensues and their friends slaughter each other, one or two manage to survive. Then, in an effort to reverse the process, will start reading more passages. And it’s that small demographic that can potentially give me a real shot at getting out. Alas, it always ends in possession. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. But
possession usually leads to murder. So much murder.

And the crazy part is, the demons don’t actually wish death or even physical harm on the hosts. Yet, these people all just kept… killing each other. I couldn’t believe it! At first, we thought they might’ve been accidents. We just assumed the hosts believed they took too much acid and jumped out a window or, in one case, tried to cut their own hand off with the electric carving knife. But it got to a point where it happened so frequently that we had to do some of our own investigating. We actually played the tape back to see if there was something there. And really, it was the professor’s fault! That egg head explicitly stated in his recordings that body dismemberment was the only way. In fewer words he essentially told them that he would rather see the hosts die than to to let the demons live their best satanic lifestyles.

So it’s been an endless cycle for the last few months. Reading, possession, dead. Reading, possession, dead. Rinse and repeat. And it’s gosh awful lonely. Any time I get close with another human being, it ends in seeing them mauled or impaled. It seems like the only company I get outside the unsuspecting hosts are the damn cultists. These random yohos who rudely visit here every year for what they call the Sacred Harvest; don’t ask me what that is ‘cause I couldn’t tell you. I don’t even think they know what it is themselves. We do have a lot of fun during this time, though. We like to involve ourselves in subtle ways, possessing them because they think it’s funny or automatic writing for the members who are fond of creative expression. And I almost forgot… we even have a children’s area, where we sing nursery rhymes backwards and get the kids into the arts and crafts by teaching them to make stick figures, which we hang up around the area. But I wouldn’t go too deep into the forest though, because - let me tell ya - the tree demons are freaky sons of guns. Every other day I hear about how they like to violate the women before they possess them, and it crosses a line if I’m honest with you. Granted, every demonic possession is taking the hosts’ bodies against their will, but… do they have to do it in the crudest possible way? It’s uncalled for. So yeah, stay away from the tree people…

Oh who am I kidding? This is awful. I hate it here! This is hell. I mean it has to be… right? It’s so mundane and repetitive; I can’t eat anymore, so there’s no point in fishing. I can’t branch out and explore new areas because I can’t travel outside the confined radius of the book. And where’s the respect? It’s always “Send Jon off to do this and “Send Jon off to the go that.” They say I’m a valuable member of the team, but who’s the one that has to scrub their blood off the walls? Who do you think has to plunge the demon excrement out of the toilet? Me, that’s who. You think this place cleans itself after every massacre? I have four graves to dig by next week! And to top it off, anyone who manages to come across the book and potentially free me of this curse is killed because of that idiot on the tape recorder! If only I could just… try to get one of the survivors to take the book with them when they leave, so they can read the words in the safety of their own home, but evidently that is forbidden as well. It’s miserable! I hate it here! It’s a nightmare. And these cultists are getting on my nerves. What, they think that just because they say some woman’s name three times in a mirror that one of us is going to come out and possess them? Get a grip!

I wish I could get out of here; I wish I was back home and teaching again. I wish I never saw my friends become what they did… forcing me to do what I did. And I wish I’d never even found this place… and that my life was back to normal. I want to fish again. I want to golf again! So please, I wish somebody, anybody, who sees this will read those ancient words and free me of this terrible curse. Hopefully someone out there does the right thing.

Don’t do it! Don’t read the words out loud! You have to help me, he’s not the real Jon. I’m the real Jon and it’s my body that this thing is controlling. I managed to regain control of basic motor function, but I can’t leave this chair to escape. So I don’t have much time. Reading the ancient words doesn’t end the curse at all. It merely transfers it. The Latin means

A soul for a soul
‘Til the end of time

A soul for a soul! Don’t read the words!

Umm ok. That was weird; I just blacked out for a second there. That wasn’t me. I don’t know who that was. Probably one of the other demons who doesn’t want to me to finish my tenure. Anyway, like I was saying. I’m the real Jon, and I wouldn’t believe that trickster. So once again the words are…

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

What is it now? … What do you mean you still don’t want to read them? … You don’t trust me? Why?… Well, it’s a lose-lose situation. If you believe me, then I’m finally out, and the demons will lose a reluctant member of their ghoulish army. If you believe them, then I’m stuck here, and you will forever have that on your conscience. The choice is yours.

Well… what are you waiting for?

Carpe diem

A few days ago, I went to my computer, clicked on my search engine, and asked… “Why does my floor have one dark floorboard?” I had been doing some home renovating and I got curious. Instead of finding anything interesting it said it was due to the elements. But for some reason it didn’t scratch the itch that I desired.

So then I asked “Can basements have floorboards on top of them?” And it told me “Yes, floorboards can go over basements, but you must use the right materials and moisture protection because concrete slabs are porous and trap dampness.” Which explained the floorboard issue.

“What’s the difference between a basement and a cellar?” I proceeded to ask. It told me that basements are partially underground whereas cellars are completely underground.

Then, to solve my wood problem, I asked “Can cellars below ground effect the floorboards above ground?” In which it gave me the same response as the basement question.

Then I wondered if The Tell-Tale Heart was about the guy that put a dead body in the floor boards. Was it really his guilt or would the police just see a dark piece of wood, despite there being no basement, and deduce that there’s a body under there?

Then, second guessing myself, I asked “Is it Tell-Tale Heart or Tattle Tale Heart?” The search engine told me it was tell-tale.
And, just for the hell of it, I asked “What’s the difference between a tell-tale and a tattle tale?” The search engine told me “A tattletale is a person who reports someone's minor misbehavior to an authority figure to get them in trouble, while a tell-tale is a sign or clue that reveals something hidden.” But if a person reports the hidden truth coming out, why is it called a tale? And furthermore, why are these people called rats?

So I searched “Rat slang word: origin.” Apparently it was called this because rats would historically try to do anything to survive. And because of their reputation living in dark, hidden spaces, spreading disease, and acting sneakily, it makes them a natural symbol for untrustworthy behavior. So I wondered if it would make more sense if they were called rats because of their “tall tails.” Which adds another tale idiom into the mix.

On the subject of tails, I looked up some more interesting animal facts. Like how reindeer eyeballs turn blue in winter to help them see at lower light levels, young goats pick up accents from each other, horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other and African buffalo do, in fact, understand and display a voting system in their herd. Fascinating creatures the African buffalo! Apparently when a male wants to let the rest of the herd know where it wants to travel, it will stand up, look in one direction, and then lie back down. It’s amazing what kind of things you can find out.

As I moved out of that website, though, I noticed another little website called Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us. It was a short infomercial about how people can call up and get a rabbit hole installed.
“Tired of packing things away and not having anymore room to contain it?” An excitable announcer rhetorically asked. “Worried that everything will come out eventually no matter how hard you cram it down? Well come on down to Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us!”
The flashing lights and entertaining announcer was enough to keep me from clicking out of such a bizarre concept.
“We create rabbit holes for you!” The announcer continued. “There are so many uses for rabbit holes. Storage, living, recreation, capturing your enemies.” I found this quite strange, I thought rabbit holes were only homes for rabbits, as the word suggested.

So I asked, “Are rabbit holes legitimate?” And it said that rabbit holes are legitimate but you have to be careful not to fall into one. So naturally I asked “How do I prevent myself from falling down a rabbit hole?” The first result was another video commercial so I clicked on it. It was of a man walking in the park, then all of a sudden he disappeared from the frame, then it badly transitioned to a poor match-cut shot of him stuck down the hole. The only thing that was visible was his head sticking out of it from the chest up. “Honey I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole again.” Then I heard an announcer speak over the scene. The same voice as the one advertising the rabbit holes.
“Tired of falling down rabbit holes made by yourself or your neighbors? Losing your family due to frequent accidents?” It loudly asked. We then cut to his wife leaning down and telling him “I can’t watch you live like this, I’m taking the children.” I then heard the voiceover continue, “Try Tin Foil!”
“Wow, Tin Foil. Why didn’t I think of that?” Said the man in the hole.
“Simply place the tin foil over the rabbit hole…” the announcer explained, over an animated shot of the tin foil moving down over the hole. “And that’s it! Using the patented technology of reflection, you can see the rabbit holes coming a mile away! And if you do fall down a rabbit hole, that’s no problem either! Because the tin foil will get so hot that it will keep you warm overnight. And that’s not all! Because of its deflection technology, you can say and do anything privately without anyone signaling in and knowing what you’re up to. And because of its stylish design you can even make it into clothing!”
It then cut to the same man in the hole, only now he’d evidently fashioned the tin foil into a hat and could be seen wearing it.
“I used to worry about my enemies reading my thoughts when I’m asleep.” He said into the camera. “But thanks to Tin Foil, now I don’t have to.”
“You don’t need a wife to tell you to be careful falling in…” the announcer continued. “Or your friends calling you crazy, Tin Foil is the only thing you need!”
“Tin Foil is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” The man in the hole exclaimed.
“So try Tin Foil today!”
Followed by a disclaimer on the screen and a voice quickly stating “Side effects may include the very likelihood that you’ll fall into the rabbit hole anyway. Tin Foil may cause long lasting psychological damage. Use only as directed.” I turned off the ad. Rabbit holes? I don’t remember hearing about people falling into any rabbit holes. I remember my wife bringing them up here and there but I was never really listening.

So I looked up, “Rabbit Hole fatalities.” It came up with a website, a log of unusual deaths. It’s an A-Z list sorted alphabetically by the first letter of each death. Surprisingly “Rabbit Hole” was one of them. 100 years ago a man was walking down the street. He fell in and died. 20 years ago a vagrant was minding his own business took a shortcut to the bridge and fell in. Died. John E Masseldorf, dead. Richard Allanson, dead. But it wasn’t telling me how they died. The method. Lack of oxygen? Blunt force trauma? Exhaustion? And how did it happen? Did they take themselves out? I’ve always said that I can really tell a lot about a person by knowing how they would off themselves. For me it would definitely be a toaster in the bath, I’d even put bread in the toaster before I do it for no extra charge. I figured if I’m going out, it would be with a sense of humor. Not that I would actually do it. But every now and then, the fleeting thought would pass me whenever I saw my wife buttering the toast.
But whenever I see someone who did it on the news, they don’t specify how, exactly, they did it. They never do. Am I a sick individual for wanting to know that? Why report it at all if you’re not going to go full Monty? And what was with these damn rabbit holes?

So I clicked back on to the search engine home page and typed in “Tin Foil.” Nothing to rave about, invented in the 7th-5th century in China. But an interesting thing came up. “Tin Foil Hat.” How did they know? “Tin foil hats. People who wear them are often associated with paranoia, distrust, erratic beliefs.” What are they trying to say? That the tin foil hats don’t work? Are they a placebo?

So I typed in “Rabbit Hole… Tin Foil… Legitimate?” A couple of articles on the pros and cons of the tin foil, but what followed was a very interesting commercial.

It was of a man walking in the park. The same man as before, in the Tin Foil ad, but now he’s in this one, working for the competition. The world is short on informercial actors I suppose. What could only describe as an almighty force was then stopping me from asking “actors who frequently appear in informercials. Secret connection?”
The video continued with the multi credited informercial actor seeing a rabbit hole with tin foil covering it.
“Oh god I’m blind!” Cried the unnamed man who, in the past 5 minutes has not only spent most of his life in a rabbit hole, but has now had his retinas completely destroyed by tin foil reflecting off the sun.
“Tired of being blinded by rabbit holes and tin foil covering them?” The same announcer from the ads before.
“Sick of the outside world ruining your day?” The announcer continued while another scene showed a man being blinded and, in panic, fell into the rabbit hole anyway.
“Not convinced that tin foil is going to protect you from rabbit holes?”
It then cut to a woman with her thumb down and blowing a raspberry. And, now that I think about it, also appeared in one of the re enactment scenes in the rabbit hole ad.
“Try! Conspira See!” The announcer exclaimed. It was an eye drop preventative for, what I can only imagine to be, sudden blindness. The logo stuck out to me. It was a picture of a single tear drop above an eye, but the eye was also inside a triangle.
“Wow. Now that I’ve used Conspira See, I can see so much clearer.” The man in the hole said.
“Now you can fall into as many Rabbit Holes as you want without getting blinded. With Conspira See!” The announcer finished. Another disclaimer on the bottom of the screen with the same quick voice as before.
“Use only as directed. Side effects may included permanent eye damage and psychological collapse. Prolonged use for longer than a week is not recommended.”

What an odd commercial, I thought as I clicked away. I didn’t understand how I’d gotten this far. Conspira See? What a terrible idea for a preventative solution. Even the name was… wait a minute. Of course. It all made sense now. How could I have let my eyes deceive me this greatly? This eye drop ad was sending an encoded message. Now… I may have stopped taking my antipsychotics a week ago but I was still sane enough to rationalize that this wasn’t necessarily directly encoded to me. I’m not that egotistical. But what if it was an encoded message to anyone that got a rabbit hole? Or, furthermore, anyone that got stuck in rabbit holes? As I kept searching it all started to come together. The recycling infomercial actors, the rabbit holes, the tin foil, the Conspira See. And that’s when it hit me. Conspira See sounds a lot like the word “conspiracy”. Conspira See. Conspiracy?
My god, I thought. I’d done it. At first it seemed odd but why not? This was a conspiracy by Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us.
And not only that… the rabbit hole people, the tin foil people and the Conspira See people are all one and the same.
Think about it… They start the tin foil commercial out by assuming that their customers had already fallen into rabbit holes. Why were they advertising for that specific problem? Why didn’t they advertise tin foil for anything else? Same happened with the eye drops. Advertising these things for the highly improbable, yet oddly specific situation where you would be blinded by the tin foil? It’s almost like they made these ads as a direct response, or subconscious lateral move, to and for each other. Like it’s all there. They were forcing people to create their holes, trap them in there, then they would offer you a faulty product like tin foil as a way of funnelling money to keep the businesses afloat. Then, they would keep you trapped and helpless with nothing but tin foil and a Conspira See.

I had to see if there was any credence to this so I searched “Rabbit Hole controversies.” There was nothing. Nothing except a website for a news article that said “Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us in deep. Hundreds of angry customers accuse the infamous company of false advertising. Claims that they were forced to dig their own holes.” Well a lot of good that did, I thought. That didn’t prove anything… until I got curious. Dig their own holes?

So I decided to go back to something simple. I went back to the animal search, with that Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us ad link staring back at me. Then I started over. Rabbits. I put in “Which countries had an overpopulation of rabbits.” Believing that if I put holes on the end of it, it might get confused and wonder if I’m talking about the products or the literal holes dug by rabbits. It came up with a lot of places. China, (well that’s where tin foil originated) Australia, (infamous for their rabbit-proof fences) and some European countries. Nothing was solid enough other than sheer coincidences and straw-grasping. There must’ve been some kind of link to all this. Some small link to Europe that would solidify. Then I thought about the claims that the rabbit hole customers were forced to dig their own holes.

So I searched “Historical events where people had to dig their own holes” I typed next. Nothing but the gold rush and a couple of wars.
Hang on.
War.
So I changed my search to “Historical events where people had to dig their own graves.” A few European countries had a history of making their prisoners dig their own graves during wars. So how did that connect to Australia and China? And then it hit me in the face so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us were working with Tin Foil and Conspira See to make unknowing customers dig their own graves (rabbit holes) causing them to fall in and keep them there until they die, doing this as a form of population control. Overpopulation? Population control during the wars? The overpopulation of China? And what else was China overpopulated with? Rabbits. Another country? Australia. Things were getting clearerer. And although Australia had their rabbit-proof fences, maybe the rabbit hole people found this method barbaric, so they opted for a more humane approach. By leading them down rabbit holes. This is why in the commercials, they more or less implied that the customers had to either lead single lonely lives or cut off everything and everyone they held dear.
I know it sounds sounds crazy. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. And I even had my doubts when I immediately asked something else in the search engine.

“Am I a conspiracy theorist?” I began to type in. My wife used to call me that and I hated it so much. But she is no longer with us.
But before I hit send I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want anyone who was monitoring my search history to come across that question. They’d lock me away for sure. So I went for something more subtle.

I asked, “What are the signs of a conspiracy theorist?” A few classic buzzwords came up like paranoid, unable to accept reality, dangerous. But I ignored it because I didn’t think any of those adjectives applied to me.
I was about to ask “Are conspiracies real?” being ever-careful to not tip off any federal agents who may mark me down as “concerning” but then I stopped. And I thought… if the government can do that then why couldn’t the rabbit hole people do that? What if they had monitored my searches in the past? I’d be the first to admit I’d looked up some conspiracies before, so maybe they saw that and targeted my ads. But that would mean… no. No chance. If they had my search history then it’s very possible that they could’ve had my IP address, which meant that if they had then they had my home address. And if they had that then they were the ones monitoring and maybe even controlling what I was looking up! They wanted me to get stuck in my own rabbit hole!

They wanted me to get stuck in the rabbit hole by luring me into it using tin foil and Conspira See, eventually causing me to die. One less person in the population. Rinse and repeat. I found this because I was looking up animal facts, I looked up animal facts because I wanted to know why rats were dishonest, and I only looked up that because I wanted to know the difference between tale and tail. I wanted to know that because I was thinking of that Edgar Allen Poe story, and I did that because of the dark piece of wood that’s directly over my basement.
Oh my god.
They were there since the beginning… It all made perfect sense now. Since the dark piece of wood, everything was connected! They obviously saw my internet history for a while and tracked where I lived. And when the time was right they broke in, replaced my floorboard with an intentionally dark one as a sort of sick subliminal hint as to where this rabbit hole should go, causing me to go on the internet, ask why this was the case, leading me from one query to another. Every detour, every tangent, was specifically curated, tailor-made if you will, for one purpose that would eventually culminate in me getting stuck down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t get out of!
They were probably watching me as I was figuring this out.
Waiting… contemplating my next move. And if I tried to resist, they would force me down the rabbit hole. To get rid of me, to push me further and further away from the truth.
If I could see my wife now, I’d tell her that this wasn’t all for nothing. That my theories were valid, that everything I found out was currently happening and I was truly and completely powerless to get out of it.

And then I thought, “Well that’s enough internet for me today.” And stepped away from my computer. And then I began to unravel this rabbit hole theory, dissected the flaws and ultimately decided that I couldn’t let this exist in my life. Of course there was no Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us! That would be crazy… and I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
So I let it go and buried it. I then stepped outside and embraced the glorious rays of the sun, something I hadn’t seen in the last day or so due to my journey. I walked over to my lawn and quite literally touched the grass. I’ve heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find yourself spending too much time online. It was soothing. I felt great. I felt free.

Then, two days later. I went back on my computer, clicked on the search engine, and asked… “How do I get rid of the smell of rotting flesh coming from my basement?”

A few days ago, I went to my computer, clicked on my search engine, and asked… “Why does my floor have one dark floorboard?” I had been doing some home renovating and I got curious. Instead of finding anything interesting it said it was due to the elements. But for some reason it didn’t scratch the itch that I desired.

So then I asked “Can basements have floorboards on top of them?” And it told me “Yes, floorboards can go over basements, but you must use the right materials and moisture protection because concrete slabs are porous and trap dampness.” Which explained the floorboard issue.

“What’s the difference between a basement and a cellar?” I proceeded to ask. It told me that basements are partially underground whereas cellars are completely underground.

Then, to solve my wood problem, I asked “Can cellars below ground effect the floorboards above ground?” In which it gave me the same response as the basement question.

Then I wondered if The Tell-Tale Heart was about the guy that put a dead body in the floor boards. Was it really his guilt or would the police just see a dark piece of wood, despite there being no basement, and deduce that there’s a body under there?

Then, second guessing myself, I asked “Is it Tell-Tale Heart or Tattle Tale Heart?” The search engine told me it was tell-tale.
And, just for the hell of it, I asked “What’s the difference between a tell-tale and a tattle tale?” The search engine told me “A tattletale is a person who reports someone's minor misbehavior to an authority figure to get them in trouble, while a tell-tale is a sign or clue that reveals something hidden.” But if a person reports the hidden truth coming out, why is it called a tale? And furthermore, why are these people called rats?

So I searched “Rat slang word: origin.” Apparently it was called this because rats would historically try to do anything to survive. And because of their reputation living in dark, hidden spaces, spreading disease, and acting sneakily, it makes them a natural symbol for untrustworthy behavior. So I wondered if it would make more sense if they were called rats because of their “tall tails.” Which adds another tale idiom into the mix.

On the subject of tails, I looked up some more interesting animal facts. Like how reindeer eyeballs turn blue in winter to help them see at lower light levels, young goats pick up accents from each other, horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other and African buffalo do, in fact, understand and display a voting system in their herd. Fascinating creatures the African buffalo! Apparently when a male wants to let the rest of the herd know where it wants to travel, it will stand up, look in one direction, and then lie back down. It’s amazing what kind of things you can find out.

As I moved out of that website, though, I noticed another little website called Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us. It was a short infomercial about how people can call up and get a rabbit hole installed.
“Tired of packing things away and not having anymore room to contain it?” An excitable announcer rhetorically asked. “Worried that everything will come out eventually no matter how hard you cram it down? Well come on down to Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us!”
The flashing lights and entertaining announcer was enough to keep me from clicking out of such a bizarre concept.
“We create rabbit holes for you!” The announcer continued. “There are so many uses for rabbit holes. Storage, living, recreation, capturing your enemies.” I found this quite strange, I thought rabbit holes were only homes for rabbits, as the word suggested.

So I asked, “Are rabbit holes legitimate?” And it said that rabbit holes are legitimate but you have to be careful not to fall into one. So naturally I asked “How do I prevent myself from falling down a rabbit hole?” The first result was another video commercial so I clicked on it. It was of a man walking in the park, then all of a sudden he disappeared from the frame, then it badly transitioned to a poor match-cut shot of him stuck down the hole. The only thing that was visible was his head sticking out of it from the chest up. “Honey I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole again.” Then I heard an announcer speak over the scene. The same voice as the one advertising the rabbit holes.
“Tired of falling down rabbit holes made by yourself or your neighbors? Losing your family due to frequent accidents?” It loudly asked. We then cut to his wife leaning down and telling him “I can’t watch you live like this, I’m taking the children.” I then heard the voiceover continue, “Try Tin Foil!”
“Wow, Tin Foil. Why didn’t I think of that?” Said the man in the hole.
“Simply place the tin foil over the rabbit hole…” the announcer explained, over an animated shot of the tin foil moving down over the hole. “And that’s it! Using the patented technology of reflection, you can see the rabbit holes coming a mile away! And if you do fall down a rabbit hole, that’s no problem either! Because the tin foil will get so hot that it will keep you warm overnight. And that’s not all! Because of its deflection technology, you can say and do anything privately without anyone signaling in and knowing what you’re up to. And because of its stylish design you can even make it into clothing!”
It then cut to the same man in the hole, only now he’d evidently fashioned the tin foil into a hat and could be seen wearing it.
“I used to worry about my enemies reading my thoughts when I’m asleep.” He said into the camera. “But thanks to Tin Foil, now I don’t have to.”
“You don’t need a wife to tell you to be careful falling in…” the announcer continued. “Or your friends calling you crazy, Tin Foil is the only thing you need!”
“Tin Foil is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” The man in the hole exclaimed.
“So try Tin Foil today!”
Followed by a disclaimer on the screen and a voice quickly stating “Side effects may include the very likelihood that you’ll fall into the rabbit hole anyway. Tin Foil may cause long lasting psychological damage. Use only as directed.” I turned off the ad. Rabbit holes? I don’t remember hearing about people falling into any rabbit holes. I remember my wife bringing them up here and there but I was never really listening.

So I looked up, “Rabbit Hole fatalities.” It came up with a website, a log of unusual deaths. It’s an A-Z list sorted alphabetically by the first letter of each death. Surprisingly “Rabbit Hole” was one of them. 100 years ago a man was walking down the street. He fell in and died. 20 years ago a vagrant was minding his own business took a shortcut to the bridge and fell in. Died. John E Masseldorf, dead. Richard Allanson, dead. But it wasn’t telling me how they died. The method. Lack of oxygen? Blunt force trauma? Exhaustion? And how did it happen? Did they take themselves out? I’ve always said that I can really tell a lot about a person by knowing how they would off themselves. For me it would definitely be a toaster in the bath, I’d even put bread in the toaster before I do it for no extra charge. I figured if I’m going out, it would be with a sense of humor. Not that I would actually do it. But every now and then, the fleeting thought would pass me whenever I saw my wife buttering the toast.
But whenever I see someone who did it on the news, they don’t specify how, exactly, they did it. They never do. Am I a sick individual for wanting to know that? Why report it at all if you’re not going to go full Monty? And what was with these damn rabbit holes?

So I clicked back on to the search engine home page and typed in “Tin Foil.” Nothing to rave about, invented in the 7th-5th century in China. But an interesting thing came up. “Tin Foil Hat.” How did they know? “Tin foil hats. People who wear them are often associated with paranoia, distrust, erratic beliefs.” What are they trying to say? That the tin foil hats don’t work? Are they a placebo?

So I typed in “Rabbit Hole… Tin Foil… Legitimate?” A couple of articles on the pros and cons of the tin foil, but what followed was a very interesting commercial.

It was of a man walking in the park. The same man as before, in the Tin Foil ad, but now he’s in this one, working for the competition. The world is short on informercial actors I suppose. What could only describe as an almighty force was then stopping me from asking “actors who frequently appear in informercials. Secret connection?”
The video continued with the multi credited informercial actor seeing a rabbit hole with tin foil covering it.
“Oh god I’m blind!” Cried the unnamed man who, in the past 5 minutes has not only spent most of his life in a rabbit hole, but has now been blinded by tin foil reflecting off the sun.
“Tired of being blinded by rabbit holes and tin foil covering them?” The same announcer from the ads before.
“Sick of the outside world ruining your day?” The announcer continued while another scene showed a man being blinded and, in panic, fell into the rabbit hole anyway.
“Not convinced that tin foil is going to protect you from rabbit holes?”
It then cut to a woman with her thumb down and blowing a raspberry. And, now that I think about it, also appeared in one of the re enactment scenes in the rabbit hole ad.
“Try! Conspira See!” The announcer exclaimed. It was an eye drop preventative for, what I can only imagine to be, sudden blindness. The logo stuck out to me. It was a picture of a single tear drop above an eye, but the eye was also inside a triangle.
“Wow. Now that I’ve used Conspira See, I can see so much clearer.” The man in the hole said.
“Now you can fall into as many Rabbit Holes as you want without getting blinded. With Conspira See!” The announcer finished. Another disclaimer on the bottom of the screen with the same quick voice as before.
“Use only as directed. Side effects may included permanent physical damage and psychological collapse. Prolonged use for longer than a week is not recommended.”

What an odd commercial, I thought as I clicked away. I didn’t understand how I’d gotten this far. Conspira See? What a terrible idea for a preventative solution. Even the name was… wait a minute. Of course. It all made sense now. How could I have been so blind? This eye drop ad was sending an encoded message. Now… I may have stopped taking my antipsychotics a week ago but I was still sane enough to rationalize that this wasn’t necessarily directly encoded to me. I’m not that egotistical. But what if it was an encoded message to anyone that got a rabbit hole? Or, furthermore, anyone that got stuck in rabbit holes? As I kept searching it all started to come together. The recycling infomercial actors, the rabbit holes, the tin foil, the Conspira See. And that’s when it hit me. Conspira See sounds a lot like the word “conspiracy”. Conspira See. Conspiracy?
My god, I thought. I’d done it. At first it seemed odd but why not? This was a conspiracy by Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us.
And not only that… the rabbit hole people, the tin foil people and the Conspira See people are all one and the same.
Think about it… They start the tin foil commercial out by assuming that their customers had already fallen into rabbit holes. Why were they advertising for that specific problem? Why didn’t they advertise tin foil for anything else? Same happened with the eye drops. Advertising these things for the highly improbable, yet oddly specific situation where you would be blinded by the tin foil? It’s almost like they made these ads as a direct response, or subconscious lateral move, to and for each other. Like it’s all there. They were forcing people to create their holes, trap them in there, then they would offer you a faulty product like tin foil as a way of funnelling money to keep the businesses afloat. Then, they would keep you trapped and helpless with nothing but tin foil and a Conspira See.

I had to see if there was any credence to this so I searched “Rabbit Hole controversies.” There was nothing. Nothing except a website for a news article that said “Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us in deep. Hundreds of angry customers accuse the infamous company of false advertising. Claims that they were forced to dig their own holes.” Well a lot of good that did, I thought. That didn’t prove anything… until I got curious. Dig their own holes?

So I decided to go back to something simple. I went back to the animal search, with that Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us ad link staring back at me. Then I started over. Rabbits. I put in “Which countries had an overpopulation of rabbits.” Believing that if I put holes on the end of it, it might get confused and wonder if I’m talking about the products or the literal holes dug by rabbits. It came up with a lot of places. China, (well that’s where tin foil originated) Australia, (infamous for their rabbit-proof fences) and some European countries. Nothing was solid enough other than sheer coincidences and straw-grasping. There must’ve been some kind of link to all this. Some small link to Europe that would solidify. Then I thought about the claims that the rabbit hole customers were forced to dig their own holes.

So I searched “Historical events where people had to dig their own holes” I typed next. Nothing but the gold rush and a couple of wars.
Hang on.
War.
So I changed my search to “Historical events where people had to dig their own graves.” A few European countries had a history of making their prisoners dig their own graves during wars. So how did that connect to Australia and China? And then it hit me in the face so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us were working with Tin Foil and Conspira See to make unknowing customers dig their own graves (rabbit holes) causing them to fall in and keep them there until they die, doing this as a form of population control. Overpopulation? Population control during the wars? The overpopulation of China? And what else was China overpopulated with? Rabbits. Another country? Australia. Things were getting clearerer. And although Australia had their rabbit-proof fences, maybe the rabbit hole people found this method barbaric, so they opted for a more humane approach. By leading them down rabbit holes. This is why in the commercials, they more or less implied that the customers had to either lead single lonely lives or cut off everything and everyone they held dear.
I know it sounds sounds crazy. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. And I even had my doubts when I immediately asked something else in the search engine.

“Am I a conspiracy theorist?” I began to type in. My wife used to call me that and I hated it so much. But she is no longer with us.
But before I hit send I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want anyone who was monitoring my search history to come acorss that question. They’d lock me away for sure. So I went for something more subtle.

I asked, “What are the signs of a conspiracy theorist?” A few classic buzzwords came up like paranoid, unable to accept reality, dangerous. But I ignored it because I didn’t think any of those adjectives applied to me.
I was about to ask “Are conspiracies real?” being ever-careful to not tip off any federal agents who may mark me down as “concerning” but then I stopped. And I thought… if the government can do that then why couldn’t the rabbit hole people do that? What if they had monitored my searches in the past? I’d be the first to admit I’d looked up some conspiracies before, so maybe they saw that and targeted my ads. But that would mean… no. No chance. If they had my search history then it’s very possible that they could’ve had my IP address, which meant that if they had then they had my home address. And if they had that then they were the ones monitoring and maybe even controlling what I was looking up! They wanted me to get stuck in my own rabbit hole!

They wanted me to get stuck in the rabbit hole by luring me into it using tin foil and Conspira See, eventually causing me to die. One less person in the population. Rinse and repeat. I found this because I was looking up animal facts, I looked up animal facts because I wanted to know why rats were dishonest, and I only looked up that because I wanted to know the difference between tale and tail. I wanted to know that because I was thinking of that Edgar Allen Poe story, and I did that because of the dark piece of wood that’s directly over my basement.
Oh my god.
They were there since the beginning… It all made perfect sense now. Since the dark piece of wood, everything was connected! They obviously saw my internet history for a while and tracked where I lived. And when the time was right they broke in, replaced my floorboard with an intentionally dark one as a sort of sick subliminal hint as to where this rabbit hole should go, causing me to go on the internet, ask why this was the case, leading me from one query to another. Every detour, every tangent, was specifically curated, tailor-made if you will, for one purpose that would eventually culminate in me getting stuck down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t get out of!
They were probably watching me as I was figuring this out.
Waiting… contemplating my next move. And if I tried to resist, they would force me down the rabbit hole. To get rid of me, to push me further and further away from the truth.
If I could see my wife now, I’d tell her that this wasn’t all for nothing. That my theories were valid, that everything I found out was currently happening and I was truly and completely powerless to get out of it.

And then I thought, “Well that’s enough internet for me today.” And stepped away from my computer. And then I began to unravel this rabbit hole theory, dissected the flaws and ultimately decided that I couldn’t let this exist in my life. Of course there was no Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us! That would be crazy… and I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
So I let it go and buried it. I then stepped outside and embraced the glorious rays of the sun, something I hadn’t seen in the last day or so due to my journey. I walked over to my lawn and quite literally touched the grass. I’ve heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find yourself spending too much time online. It was soothing. I felt great. I felt free.

Then, two days later. I went back on my computer, clicked on the search engine, and asked… “How do I get rid of the smell of rotting flesh coming from my basement?”

A few days ago, I went to my computer, clicked on my search engine, and asked… “Why does my floor have one dark floorboard?” I had been doing some home renovating and I got curious. Instead of finding anything interesting it said it was due to the elements. But for some reason it didn’t scratch the itch that I desired.

So then I asked “Can basements have floorboards on top of them?” And it told me “Yes, floorboards can go over basements, but you must use the right materials and moisture protection because concrete slabs are porous and trap dampness.” Which explained the floorboard issue.

“What’s the difference between a basement and a cellar?” I proceeded to ask. It told me that basements are partially underground whereas cellars are completely underground.

Then, to solve my wood problem, I asked “Can cellars below ground effect the floorboards above ground?” In which it gave me the same response as the basement question.

Then I wondered if The Tell-Tale Heart was about the guy that put a dead body in the floor boards. Was it really his guilt or would the police just see a dark piece of wood, despite there being no basement, and deduce that there’s a body under there?

Then, second guessing myself, I asked “Is it Tell-Tale Heart or Tattle Tale Heart?” The search engine told me it was tell-tale.
And, just for the hell of it, I asked “What’s the difference between a tell-tale and a tattle tale?” The search engine told me “A tattletale is a person who reports someone's minor misbehavior to an authority figure to get them in trouble, while a tell-tale is a sign or clue that reveals something hidden.” But if a person reports the hidden truth coming out, why is it called a tale? And furthermore, why are these people called rats?

So I searched “Rat slang word: origin.” Apparently it was called this because rats would historically try to do anything to survive. And because of their reputation living in dark, hidden spaces, spreading disease, and acting sneakily, it makes them a natural symbol for untrustworthy behavior. So I wondered if it would make more sense if they were called rats because of their “tall tails.” Which adds another tale idiom into the mix.

On the subject of tails, I looked up some more interesting animal facts. Like how reindeer eyeballs turn blue in winter to help them see at lower light levels, young goats pick up accents from each other, horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other and African buffalo do, in fact, understand and display a voting system in their herd. Fascinating creatures the African buffalo! Apparently when a male wants to let the rest of the herd know where it wants to travel, it will stand up, look in one direction, and then lie back down. It’s amazing what kind of things you can find out.

As I moved out of that website, though, I noticed another little website called Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us. It was a short infomercial about how people can call up and get a rabbit hole installed.
“Tired of packing things away and not having anymore room to contain it?” An excitable announcer rhetorically asked. “Worried that everything will come out eventually no matter how hard you cram it down? Well come on down to Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us!”
The flashing lights and entertaining announcer was enough to keep me from clicking out of such a bizarre concept.
“We create rabbit holes for you!” The announcer continued. “There are so many uses for rabbit holes. Storage, living, recreation, capturing your enemies.” I found this quite strange, I thought rabbit holes were only homes for rabbits, as the word suggested.

So I asked, “Are rabbit holes legitimate?” And it said that rabbit holes are legitimate but you have to be careful not to fall into one. So naturally I asked “How do I prevent myself from falling down a rabbit hole?” The first result was another video commercial so I clicked on it. It was of a man walking in the park, then all of a sudden he disappeared from the frame, then it badly transitioned to a poor match-cut shot of him stuck down the hole. The only thing that was visible was his head sticking out of it from the chest up. “Honey I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole again.” Then I heard an announcer speak over the scene. The same voice as the one advertising the rabbit holes.
“Tired of falling down rabbit holes made by yourself or your neighbors? Losing your family due to frequent accidents?” It loudly asked. We then cut to his wife leaning down and telling him “I can’t watch you live like this, I’m taking the children.” I then heard the voiceover continue, “Try Tin Foil!”
“Wow, Tin Foil. Why didn’t I think of that?” Said the man in the hole.
“Simply place the tin foil over the rabbit hole…” the announcer explained, over an animated shot of the tin foil moving down over the hole. “And that’s it! Using the patented technology of reflection, you can see the rabbit holes coming a mile away! And if you do fall down a rabbit hole, that’s no problem either! Because the tin foil will get so hot that it will keep you warm overnight. And that’s not all! Because of its deflection technology, you can say and do anything privately without anyone signaling in and knowing what you’re up to. And because of its stylish design you can even make it into clothing!”
It then cut to the same man in the hole, only now he’d evidently fashioned the tin foil into a hat and could be seen wearing it.
“I used to worry about my enemies reading my thoughts when I’m asleep.” He said into the camera. “But thanks to Tin Foil, now I don’t have to.”
“You don’t need a wife to tell you to be careful falling in…” the announcer continued. “Or your friends calling you crazy, Tin Foil is the only thing you need!”
“Tin Foil is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” The man in the hole exclaimed.
“So try Tin Foil today!”
Followed by a disclaimer on the screen and a voice quickly stating “Side effects may include the very likelihood that you’ll fall into the rabbit hole anyway. Tin Foil may cause long lasting psychological damage. Use only as directed.” I turned off the ad. Rabbit holes? I don’t remember hearing about people falling into any rabbit holes. I remember my wife bringing them up here and there but I was never really listening.

So I looked up, “Rabbit Hole fatalities.” It came up with a website, a log of unusual deaths. It’s an A-Z list sorted alphabetically by the first letter of each death. Surprisingly “Rabbit Hole” was one of them. 100 years ago a man was walking down the street. He fell in and died. 20 years ago a vagrant was minding his own business took a shortcut to the bridge and fell in. Died. John E Masseldorf, dead. Richard Allanson, dead. But it wasn’t telling me how they died. The method. Lack of oxygen? Blunt force trauma? Exhaustion? And how did it happen? Did they take themselves out? I’ve always said that I can really tell a lot about a person by knowing how they would off themselves. For me it would definitely be a toaster in the bath, I’d even put bread in the toaster before I do it for no extra charge. I figured if I’m going out, it would be with a sense of humor. Not that I would actually do it. But every now and then, the fleeting thought would pass me whenever I saw my wife buttering the toast.
But whenever I see someone who did it on the news, they don’t specify how, exactly, they did it. They never do. Am I a sick individual for wanting to know that? Why report it at all if you’re not going to go full Monty? And what was with these damn rabbit holes?

So I clicked back on to the search engine home page and typed in “Tin Foil.” Nothing to rave about, invented in the 7th-5th century in China. But an interesting thing came up. “Tin Foil Hat.” How did they know? “Tin foil hats. People who wear them are often associated with paranoia, distrust, erratic beliefs.” What are they trying to say? That the tin foil hats don’t work? Are they a placebo?

So I typed in “Rabbit Hole… Tin Foil… Legitimate?” A couple of articles on the pros and cons of the tin foil, but what followed was a very interesting commercial.

It was of a man walking in the park. The same man as before, in the Tin Foil ad, but now he’s in this one, working for the competition. The world is short on informercial actors I suppose. What could only describe as an almighty force was then stopping me from asking “actors who frequently appear in informercials. Secret connection?”
The video continued with the multi credited informercial actor seeing a rabbit hole with tin foil covering it.
“Oh god I’m blind!” Cried the unnamed man who, in the past 5 minutes has not only spent most of his life in a rabbit hole, but has now been blinded by tin foil reflecting off the sun.
“Tired of being blinded by rabbit holes and tin foil covering them?” The same announcer from the ads before.
“Sick of the outside world ruining your day?” The announcer continued while another scene showed a man being blinded and, in panic, fell into the rabbit hole anyway.
“Not convinced that tin foil is going to protect you from rabbit holes?”
It then cut to a woman with her thumb down and blowing a raspberry. And, now that I think about it, also appeared in one of the re enactment scenes in the rabbit hole ad.
“Try! Conspira See!” The announcer exclaimed. It was an eye drop preventative for, what I can only imagine to be, sudden blindness. The logo stuck out to me. It was a picture of a single tear drop above an eye, but the eye was also inside a triangle.
“Wow. Now that I’ve used Conspira See, I can see so much clearer.” The man in the hole said.
“Now you can fall into as many Rabbit Holes as you want without getting blinded. With Conspira See!” The announcer finished. Another disclaimer on the bottom of the screen with the same quick voice as before.
“Use only as directed. Side effects may included permanent physical damage and psychological collapse. Prolonged use for longer than a week is not recommended.”

What an odd commercial, I thought as I clicked away. I didn’t understand how I’d gotten this far. Conspira See? What a terrible idea for a preventative solution. Even the name was… wait a minute. Of course. It all made sense now. How could I have been so blind? This eye drop ad was sending an encoded message. Now… I may have stopped taking my antipsychotics a week ago but I was still sane enough to rationalize that this wasn’t necessarily directly encoded to me. I’m not that egotistical. But what if it was an encoded message to anyone that got a rabbit hole? Or, furthermore, anyone that got stuck in rabbit holes? As I kept searching it all started to come together. The recycling infomercial actors, the rabbit holes, the tin foil, the Conspira See. And that’s when it hit me. Conspira See sounds a lot like the word “conspiracy”. Conspira See. Conspiracy?
My god, I thought. I’d done it. At first it seemed odd but why not? This was a conspiracy by Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us.
And not only that… the rabbit hole people, the tin foil people and the Conspira See people are all one and the same.
Think about it… They start the tin foil commercial out by assuming that their customers had already fallen into rabbit holes. Why were they advertising for that specific problem? Why didn’t they advertise tin foil for anything else? Same happened with the eye drops. Advertising these things for the highly improbable, yet oddly specific situation where you would be blinded by the tin foil? It’s almost like they made these ads as a direct response, or subconscious lateral move, to and for each other. Like it’s all there. They were forcing people to create their holes, trap them in there, then they would offer you a faulty product like tin foil as a way of funnelling money to keep the businesses afloat. Then, they would keep you trapped and helpless with nothing but tin foil and a Conspira See.

I had to see if there was any credence to this so I searched “Rabbit Hole controversies.” There was nothing. Nothing except a website for a news article that said “Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us in deep. Hundreds of angry customers accuse the infamous company of false advertising. Claims that they were forced to dig their own holes.” Well a lot of good that did, I thought. That didn’t prove anything… until I got curious. Dig their own holes?

So I decided to go back to something simple. I went back to the animal search, with that Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us ad link staring back at me. Then I started over. Rabbits. I put in “Which countries had an overpopulation of rabbits.” Believing that if I put holes on the end of it, it might get confused and wonder if I’m talking about the products or the literal holes dug by rabbits. It came up with a lot of places. China, (well that’s where tin foil originated) Australia, (infamous for their rabbit-proof fences) and some European countries. Nothing was solid enough other than sheer coincidences and straw-grasping. There must’ve been some kind of link to all this. Some small link to Europe that would solidify. Then I thought about the claims that the rabbit hole customers were forced to dig their own holes.

So I searched “Historical events where people had to dig their own holes” I typed next. Nothing but the gold rush and a couple of wars.
Hang on.
War.
So I changed my search to “Historical events where people had to dig their own graves.” A few European countries had a history of making their prisoners dig their own graves during wars. So how did that connect to Australia and China? And then it hit me in the face so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us were working with Tin Foil and Conspira See to make unknowing customers dig their own graves (rabbit holes) causing them to fall in and keep them there until they die, doing this as a form of population control. Overpopulation? Population control during the wars? The overpopulation of China? And what else was China overpopulated with? Rabbits. Another country? Australia. Things were getting clearerer. And although Australia had their rabbit-proof fences, maybe the rabbit hole people found this method barbaric, so they opted for a more humane approach. By leading them down rabbit holes. This is why in the commercials, they more or less implied that the customers had to either lead single lonely lives or cut off everything and everyone they held dear.
I know it sounds sounds crazy. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. And I even had my doubts when I immediately asked something else in the search engine.

“Am I a conspiracy theorist?” I began to type in. My wife used to call me that and I hated it so much. But she is no longer with us.
But before I hit send I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want anyone who was monitoring my search history to come acorss that question. They’d lock me away for sure. So I went for something more subtle.

I asked, “What are the signs of a conspiracy theorist?” A few classic buzzwords came up like paranoid, unable to accept reality, dangerous. But I ignored it because I didn’t think any of those adjectives applied to me.
I was about to ask “Are conspiracies real?” being ever-careful to not tip off any federal agents who may mark me down as “concerning” but then I stopped. And I thought… if the government can do that then why couldn’t the rabbit hole people do that? What if they had monitored my searches in the past? I’d be the first to admit I’d looked up some conspiracies before, so maybe they saw that and targeted my ads. But that would mean… no. No chance. If they had my search history then it’s very possible that they could’ve had my IP address, which meant that if they had then they had my home address. And if they had that then they were the ones monitoring and maybe even controlling what I was looking up! They wanted me to get stuck in my own rabbit hole!

They wanted me to get stuck in the rabbit hole by luring me into it using tin foil and Conspira See, eventually causing me to die. One less person in the population. Rinse and repeat. I found this because I was looking up animal facts, I looked up animal facts because I wanted to know why rats were dishonest, and I only looked up that because I wanted to know the difference between tale and tail. I wanted to know that because I was thinking of that Edgar Allen Poe story, and I did that because of the dark piece of wood that’s directly over my basement.
Oh my god.
They were there since the beginning… It all made perfect sense now. Since the dark piece of wood, everything was connected! They obviously saw my internet history for a while and tracked where I lived. And when the time was right they broke in, replaced my floorboard with an intentionally dark one as a sort of sick subliminal hint as to where this rabbit hole should go, causing me to go on the internet, ask why this was the case, leading me from one query to another. Every detour, every tangent, was specifically curated, tailor-made if you will, for one purpose that would eventually culminate in me getting stuck down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t get out of!
They were probably watching me as I was figuring this out.
Waiting… contemplating my next move. And if I tried to resist, they would force me down the rabbit hole. To get rid of me, to push me further and further away from the truth.
If I could see my wife now, I’d tell her that this wasn’t all for nothing. That my theories were valid, that everything I found out was currently happening and I was truly and completely powerless to get out of it.

And then I thought, “Well that’s enough internet for me today.” And stepped away from my computer. And then I began to unravel this rabbit hole theory, dissected the flaws and ultimately decided that I couldn’t let this exist in my life. Of course there was no Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us! That would be crazy… and I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
So I let it go and buried it. I then stepped outside and embraced the glorious rays of the sun, something I hadn’t seen in the last day or so due to my journey. I walked over to my lawn and quite literally touched the grass. I’ve heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find yourself spending too much time online. It was soothing. I felt great. I felt free.

Then, two days later. I went back on my computer, clicked on the search engine, and asked… “How do I get rid of the smell of rotting flesh coming from my basement?”

A few days ago, I went to my computer, clicked on my search engine, and asked… “Why does my floor have one dark floorboard?” I had been doing some home renovating and I got curious. Instead of finding anything interesting it said it was due to the elements. But for some reason it didn’t scratch the itch that I desired.

So then I asked “Can basements have floorboards on top of them?” And it told me “Yes, floorboards can go over basements, but you must use the right materials and moisture protection because concrete slabs are porous and trap dampness.” Which explained the floorboard issue.

“What’s the difference between a basement and a cellar?” I proceeded to ask. It told me that basements are partially underground whereas cellars are completely underground.

Then, to solve my wood problem, I asked “Can cellars below ground effect the floorboards above ground?” In which it gave me the same response as the basement question.

Then I wondered if The Tell-Tale Heart was about the guy that put a dead body in the floor boards. Was it really his guilt or would the police just see a dark piece of wood, despite there being no basement, and deduce that there’s a body under there?

Then, second guessing myself, I asked “Is it Tell-Tale Heart or Tattle Tale Heart?” The search engine told me it was tell-tale.
And, just for the hell of it, I asked “What’s the difference between a tell-tale and a tattle tale?” The search engine told me “A tattletale is a person who reports someone's minor misbehavior to an authority figure to get them in trouble, while a tell-tale is a sign or clue that reveals something hidden.” But if a person reports the hidden truth coming out, why is it called a tale? And furthermore, why are these people called rats?

So I searched “Rat slang word: origin.” Apparently it was called this because rats would historically try to do anything to survive. And because of their reputation living in dark, hidden spaces, spreading disease, and acting sneakily, it makes them a natural symbol for untrustworthy behavior. So I wondered if it would make more sense if they were called rats because of their “tall tails.” Which adds another tale idiom into the mix.

On the subject of tails, I looked up some more interesting animal facts. Like how reindeer eyeballs turn blue in winter to help them see at lower light levels, young goats pick up accents from each other, horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other and African buffalo do, in fact, understand and display a voting system in their herd. Fascinating creatures the African buffalo! Apparently when a male wants to let the rest of the herd know where it wants to travel, it will stand up, look in one direction, and then lie back down. It’s amazing what kind of things you can find out.

As I moved out of that website, though, I noticed another little website called Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us. It was a short infomercial about how people can call up and get a rabbit hole installed.
“Tired of packing things away and not having anymore room to contain it?” An excitable announcer rhetorically asked. “Worried that everything will come out eventually no matter how hard you cram it down? Well come on down to Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us!”
The flashing lights and entertaining announcer was enough to keep me from clicking out of such a bizarre concept.
“We create rabbit holes for you!” The announcer continued. “There are so many uses for rabbit holes. Storage, living, recreation, capturing your enemies.” I found this quite strange, I thought rabbit holes were only homes for rabbits, as the word suggested.

So I asked, “Are rabbit holes legitimate?” And it said that rabbit holes are legitimate but you have to be careful not to fall into one. So naturally I asked “How do I prevent myself from falling down a rabbit hole?” The first result was another video commercial so I clicked on it. It was of a man walking in the park, then all of a sudden he disappeared from the frame, then it badly transitioned to a poor match-cut shot of him stuck down the hole. The only thing that was visible was his head sticking out of it from the chest up. “Honey I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole again.” Then I heard an announcer speak over the scene. The same voice as the one advertising the rabbit holes.
“Tired of falling down rabbit holes made by yourself or your neighbors? Losing your family due to frequent accidents?” It loudly asked. We then cut to his wife leaning down and telling him “I can’t watch you live like this, I’m taking the children.” I then heard the voiceover continue, “Try Tin Foil!”
“Wow, Tin Foil. Why didn’t I think of that?” Said the man in the hole.
“Simply place the tin foil over the rabbit hole…” the announcer explained, over an animated shot of the tin foil moving down over the hole. “And that’s it! Using the patented technology of reflection, you can see the rabbit holes coming a mile away! And if you do fall down a rabbit hole, that’s no problem either! Because the tin foil will get so hot that it will keep you warm overnight. And that’s not all! Because of its deflection technology, you can say and do anything privately without anyone signaling in and knowing what you’re up to. And because of its stylish design you can even make it into clothing!”
It then cut to the same man in the hole, only now he’d evidently fashioned the tin foil into a hat and could be seen wearing it.
“I used to worry about my enemies reading my thoughts when I’m asleep.” He said into the camera. “But thanks to Tin Foil, now I don’t have to.”
“You don’t need a wife to tell you to be careful falling in…” the announcer continued. “Or your friends calling you crazy, Tin Foil is the only thing you need!”
“Tin Foil is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” The man in the hole exclaimed.
“So try Tin Foil today!”
Followed by a disclaimer on the screen and a voice quickly stating “Side effects may include the very likelihood that you’ll fall into the rabbit hole anyway. Tin Foil may cause long lasting psychological damage. Use only as directed.” I turned off the ad. Rabbit holes? I don’t remember hearing about people falling into any rabbit holes. I remember my wife bringing them up here and there but I was never really listening.

So I looked up, “Rabbit Hole fatalities.” It came up with a website, a log of unusual deaths. It’s an A-Z list sorted alphabetically by the first letter of each death. Surprisingly “Rabbit Hole” was one of them. 100 years ago a man was walking down the street. He fell in and died. 20 years ago a vagrant was minding his own business took a shortcut to the bridge and fell in. Died. John E Masseldorf, dead. Richard Allanson, dead. But it wasn’t telling me how they died. The method. Lack of oxygen? Blunt force trauma? Exhaustion? And how did it happen? Did they take themselves out? I’ve always said that I can really tell a lot about a person by knowing how they would off themselves. For me it would definitely be a toaster in the bath, I’d even put bread in the toaster before I do it for no extra charge. I figured if I’m going out, it would be with a sense of humor. Not that I would actually do it. But every now and then, the fleeting thought would pass me whenever I saw my wife buttering the toast.
But whenever I see someone who did it on the news, they don’t specify how, exactly, they did it. They never do. Am I a sick individual for wanting to know that? Why report it at all if you’re not going to go full Monty? And what was with these damn rabbit holes?

So I clicked back on to the search engine home page and typed in “Tin Foil.” Nothing to rave about, invented in the 7th-5th century in China. But an interesting thing came up. “Tin Foil Hat.” How did they know? “Tin foil hats. People who wear them are often associated with paranoia, distrust, erratic beliefs.” What are they trying to say? That the tin foil hats don’t work? Are they a placebo?

So I typed in “Rabbit Hole… Tin Foil… Legitimate?” A couple of articles on the pros and cons of the tin foil, but what followed was a very interesting commercial.

It was of a man walking in the park. The same man as before, in the Tin Foil ad, but now he’s in this one, working for the competition. The world is short on informercial actors I suppose. What could only describe as an almighty force was then stopping me from asking “actors who frequently appear in informercials. Secret connection?”
The video continued with the multi credited informercial actor seeing a rabbit hole with tin foil covering it.
“Oh god I’m blind!” Cried the unnamed man who, in the past 5 minutes has not only spent most of his life in a rabbit hole, but has now been blinded by tin foil reflecting off the sun.
“Tired of being blinded by rabbit holes and tin foil covering them?” The same announcer from the ads before.
“Sick of the outside world ruining your day?” The announcer continued while another scene showed a man being blinded and, in panic, fell into the rabbit hole anyway.
“Not convinced that tin foil is going to protect you from rabbit holes?”
It then cut to a woman with her thumb down and blowing a raspberry. And, now that I think about it, also appeared in one of the re enactment scenes in the rabbit hole ad.
“Try! Conspira See!” The announcer exclaimed. It was an eye drop preventative for, what I can only imagine to be, sudden blindness. The logo stuck out to me. It was a picture of a single tear drop above an eye, but the eye was also inside a triangle.
“Wow. Now that I’ve used Conspira See, I can see so much clearer.” The man in the hole said.
“Now you can fall into as many Rabbit Holes as you want without getting blinded. With Conspira See!” The announcer finished. Another disclaimer on the bottom of the screen with the same quick voice as before.
“Use only as directed. Side effects may included permanent physical damage and psychological collapse. Prolonged use for longer than a week is not recommended.”

What an odd commercial, I thought as I clicked away. I didn’t understand how I’d gotten this far. Conspira See? What a terrible idea for a preventative solution. Even the name was… wait a minute. Of course. It all made sense now. How could I have been so blind? This eye drop ad was sending an encoded message. Now… I may have stopped taking my antipsychotics a week ago but I was still sane enough to rationalize that this wasn’t necessarily directly encoded to me. I’m not that egotistical. But what if it was an encoded message to anyone that got a rabbit hole? Or, furthermore, anyone that got stuck in rabbit holes? As I kept searching it all started to come together. The recycling infomercial actors, the rabbit holes, the tin foil, the Conspira See. And that’s when it hit me. Conspira See sounds a lot like the word “conspiracy”. Conspira See. Conspiracy?
My god, I thought. I’d done it. At first it seemed odd but why not? This was a conspiracy by Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us.
And not only that… the rabbit hole people, the tin foil people and the Conspira See people are all one and the same.
Think about it… They start the tin foil commercial out by assuming that their customers had already fallen into rabbit holes. Why were they advertising for that specific problem? Why didn’t they advertise tin foil for anything else? Same happened with the eye drops. Advertising these things for the highly improbable, yet oddly specific situation where you would be blinded by the tin foil? It’s almost like they made these ads as a direct response, or subconscious lateral move, to and for each other. Like it’s all there. They were forcing people to create their holes, trap them in there, then they would offer you a faulty product like tin foil as a way of funnelling money to keep the businesses afloat. Then, they would keep you trapped and helpless with nothing but tin foil and a Conspira See.

I had to see if there was any credence to this so I searched “Rabbit Hole controversies.” There was nothing. Nothing except a website for a news article that said “Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us in deep. Hundreds of angry customers accuse the infamous company of false advertising. Claims that they were forced to dig their own holes.” Well a lot of good that did, I thought. That didn’t prove anything… until I got curious. Dig their own holes?

So I decided to go back to something simple. I went back to the animal search, with that Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us ad link staring back at me. Then I started over. Rabbits. I put in “Which countries had an overpopulation of rabbits.” Believing that if I put holes on the end of it, it might get confused and wonder if I’m talking about the products or the literal holes dug by rabbits. It came up with a lot of places. China, (well that’s where tin foil originated) Australia, (infamous for their rabbit-proof fences) and some European countries. Nothing was solid enough other than sheer coincidences and straw-grasping. There must’ve been some kind of link to all this. Some small link to Europe that would solidify. Then I thought about the claims that the rabbit hole customers were forced to dig their own holes.

So I searched “Historical events where people had to dig their own holes” I typed next. Nothing but the gold rush and a couple of wars.
Hang on.
War.
So I changed my search to “Historical events where people had to dig their own graves.” A few European countries had a history of making their prisoners dig their own graves during wars. So how did that connect to Australia and China? And then it hit me in the face so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us were working with Tin Foil and Conspira See to make unknowing customers dig their own graves (rabbit holes) causing them to fall in and keep them there until they die, doing this as a form of population control. Overpopulation? Population control during the wars? The overpopulation of China? And what else was China overpopulated with? Rabbits. Another country? Australia. Things were getting clearerer. And although Australia had their rabbit-proof fences, maybe the rabbit hole people found this method barbaric, so they opted for a more humane approach. By leading them down rabbit holes. This is why in the commercials, they more or less implied that the customers had to either lead single lonely lives or cut off everything and everyone they held dear.
I know it sounds sounds crazy. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. And I even had my doubts when I immediately asked something else in the search engine.

“Am I a conspiracy theorist?” I began to type in. My wife used to call me that and I hated it so much. But she is no longer with us.
But before I hit send I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want anyone who was monitoring my search history to come acorss that question. They’d lock me away for sure. So I went for something more subtle.

I asked, “What are the signs of a conspiracy theorist?” A few classic buzzwords came up like paranoid, unable to accept reality, dangerous. But I ignored it because I didn’t think any of those adjectives applied to me.
I was about to ask “Are conspiracies real?” being ever-careful to not tip off any federal agents who may mark me down as “concerning” but then I stopped. And I thought… if the government can do that then why couldn’t the rabbit hole people do that? What if they had monitored my searches in the past? I’d be the first to admit I’d looked up some conspiracies before, so maybe they saw that and targeted my ads. But that would mean… no. No chance. If they had my search history then it’s very possible that they could’ve had my IP address, which meant that if they had then they had my home address. And if they had that then they were the ones monitoring and maybe even controlling what I was looking up! They wanted me to get stuck in my own rabbit hole!

They wanted me to get stuck in the rabbit hole by luring me into it using tin foil and Conspira See, eventually causing me to die. One less person in the population. Rinse and repeat. I found this because I was looking up animal facts, I looked up animal facts because I wanted to know why rats were dishonest, and I only looked up that because I wanted to know the difference between tale and tail. I wanted to know that because I was thinking of that Edgar Allen Poe story, and I did that because of the dark piece of wood that’s directly over my basement.
Oh my god.
They were there since the beginning… It all made perfect sense now. Since the dark piece of wood, everything was connected! They obviously saw my internet history for a while and tracked where I lived. And when the time was right they broke in, replaced my floorboard with an intentionally dark one as a sort of sick subliminal hint as to where this rabbit hole should go, causing me to go on the internet, ask why this was the case, leading me from one query to another. Every detour, every tangent, was specifically curated, tailor-made if you will, for one purpose that would eventually culminate in me getting stuck down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t get out of!
They were probably watching me as I was figuring this out.
Waiting… contemplating my next move. And if I tried to resist, they would force me down the rabbit hole. To get rid of me, to push me further and further away from the truth.
If I could see my wife now, I’d tell her that this wasn’t all for nothing. That my theories were valid, that everything I found out was currently happening and I was truly and completely powerless to get out of it.

And then I thought, “Well that’s enough internet for me today.” And stepped away from my computer. And then I began to unravel this rabbit hole theory, dissected the flaws and ultimately decided that I couldn’t let this exist in my life. Of course there was no Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us! That would be crazy… and I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
So I let it go and buried it. I then stepped outside and embraced the glorious rays of the sun, something I hadn’t seen in the last day or so due to my journey. I walked over to my lawn and quite literally touched the grass. I’ve heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find yourself spending too much time online. It was soothing. I felt great. I felt free.

Then, two days later. I went back on my computer, clicked on the search engine, and asked… “How do I get rid of the smell of rotting flesh coming from my basement?”

A few days ago, I went to my computer, clicked on my search engine, and asked… “Why does my floor have one dark floorboard?” I had been doing some home renovating and I got curious. Instead of finding anything interesting it said it was due to the elements. But for some reason it didn’t scratch the itch that I desired.

So then I asked “Can basements have floorboards on top of them?” And it told me “Yes, floorboards can go over basements, but you must use the right materials and moisture protection because concrete slabs are porous and trap dampness.” Which explained the floorboard issue.

“What’s the difference between a basement and a cellar?” I proceeded to ask. It told me that basements are partially underground whereas cellars are completely underground.

Then, to solve my wood problem, I asked “Can cellars below ground effect the floorboards above ground?” In which it gave me the same response as the basement question.

Then I wondered if The Tell-Tale Heart was about the guy that put a dead body in the floor boards. Was it really his guilt or would the police just see a dark piece of wood, despite there being no basement, and deduce that there’s a body under there?

Then, second guessing myself, I asked “Is it Tell-Tale Heart or Tattle Tale Heart?” The search engine told me it was tell-tale.
And, just for the hell of it, I asked “What’s the difference between a tell-tale and a tattle tale?” The search engine told me “A tattletale is a person who reports someone's minor misbehavior to an authority figure to get them in trouble, while a tell-tale is a sign or clue that reveals something hidden.” But if a person reports the hidden truth coming out, why is it called a tale? And furthermore, why are these people called rats?

So I searched “Rat slang word: origin.” Apparently it was called this because rats would historically try to do anything to survive. And because of their reputation living in dark, hidden spaces, spreading disease, and acting sneakily, it makes them a natural symbol for untrustworthy behavior. So I wondered if it would make more sense if they were called rats because of their “tall tails.” Which adds another tale idiom into the mix.

On the subject of tails, I looked up some more interesting animal facts. Like how reindeer eyeballs turn blue in winter to help them see at lower light levels, young goats pick up accents from each other, horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other and African buffalo do, in fact, understand and display a voting system in their herd. Fascinating creatures the African buffalo! Apparently when a male wants to let the rest of the herd know where it wants to travel, it will stand up, look in one direction, and then lie back down. It’s amazing what kind of things you can find out.

As I moved out of that website, though, I noticed another little website called Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us. It was a short infomercial about how people can call up and get a rabbit hole installed.
“Tired of packing things away and not having anymore room to contain it?” An excitable announcer rhetorically asked. “Worried that everything will come out eventually no matter how hard you cram it down? Well come on down to Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us!”
The flashing lights and entertaining announcer was enough to keep me from clicking out of such a bizarre concept.
“We create rabbit holes for you!” The announcer continued. “There are so many uses for rabbit holes. Storage, living, recreation, capturing your enemies.” I found this quite strange, I thought rabbit holes were only homes for rabbits, as the word suggested.

So I asked, “Are rabbit holes legitimate?” And it said that rabbit holes are legitimate but you have to be careful not to fall into one. So naturally I asked “How do I prevent myself from falling down a rabbit hole?” The first result was another video commercial so I clicked on it. It was of a man walking in the park, then all of a sudden he disappeared from the frame, then it badly transitioned to a poor match-cut shot of him stuck down the hole. The only thing that was visible was his head sticking out of it from the chest up. “Honey I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole again.” Then I heard an announcer speak over the scene. The same voice as the one advertising the rabbit holes.
“Tired of falling down rabbit holes made by yourself or your neighbors? Losing your family due to frequent accidents?” It loudly asked. We then cut to his wife leaning down and telling him “I can’t watch you live like this, I’m taking the children.” I then heard the voiceover continue, “Try Tin Foil!”
“Wow, Tin Foil. Why didn’t I think of that?” Said the man in the hole.
“Simply place the tin foil over the rabbit hole…” the announcer explained, over an animated shot of the tin foil moving down over the hole. “And that’s it! Using the patented technology of reflection, you can see the rabbit holes coming a mile away! And if you do fall down a rabbit hole, that’s no problem either! Because the tin foil will get so hot that it will keep you warm overnight. And that’s not all! Because of its deflection technology, you can say and do anything privately without anyone signaling in and knowing what you’re up to. And because of its stylish design you can even make it into clothing!”
It then cut to the same man in the hole, only now he’d evidently fashioned the tin foil into a hat and could be seen wearing it.
“I used to worry about my enemies reading my thoughts when I’m asleep.” He said into the camera. “But thanks to Tin Foil, now I don’t have to.”
“You don’t need a wife to tell you to be careful falling in…” the announcer continued. “Or your friends calling you crazy, Tin Foil is the only thing you need!”
“Tin Foil is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” The man in the hole exclaimed.
“So try Tin Foil today!”
Followed by a disclaimer on the screen and a voice quickly stating “Side effects may include the very likelihood that you’ll fall into the rabbit hole anyway. Tin Foil may cause long lasting psychological damage. Use only as directed.” I turned off the ad. Rabbit holes? I don’t remember hearing about people falling into any rabbit holes. I remember my wife bringing them up here and there but I was never really listening.

So I looked up, “Rabbit Hole fatalities.” It came up with a website, a log of unusual deaths. It’s an A-Z list sorted alphabetically by the first letter of each death. Surprisingly “Rabbit Hole” was one of them. 100 years ago a man was walking down the street. He fell in and died. 20 years ago a vagrant was minding his own business took a shortcut to the bridge and fell in. Died. John E Masseldorf, dead. Richard Allanson, dead. But it wasn’t telling me how they died. The method. Lack of oxygen? Blunt force trauma? Exhaustion? And how did it happen? Did they take themselves out? I’ve always said that I can really tell a lot about a person by knowing how they would off themselves. For me it would definitely be a toaster in the bath, I’d even put bread in the toaster before I do it for no extra charge. I figured if I’m going out, it would be with a sense of humor. Not that I would actually do it. But every now and then, the fleeting thought would pass me whenever I saw my wife buttering the toast.
But whenever I see someone who did it on the news, they don’t specify how, exactly, they did it. They never do. Am I a sick individual for wanting to know that? Why report it at all if you’re not going to go full Monty? And what was with these damn rabbit holes?

So I clicked back on to the search engine home page and typed in “Tin Foil.” Nothing to rave about, invented in the 7th-5th century in China. But an interesting thing came up. “Tin Foil Hat.” How did they know? “Tin foil hats. People who wear them are often associated with paranoia, distrust, erratic beliefs.” What are they trying to say? That the tin foil hats don’t work? Are they a placebo?

So I typed in “Rabbit Hole… Tin Foil… Legitimate?” A couple of articles on the pros and cons of the tin foil, but what followed was a very interesting commercial.

It was of a man walking in the park. The same man as before, in the Tin Foil ad, but now he’s in this one, working for the competition. The world is short on informercial actors I suppose. What could only describe as an almighty force was then stopping me from asking “actors who frequently appear in informercials. Secret connection?”
The video continued with the multi credited informercial actor seeing a rabbit hole with tin foil covering it.
“Oh god I’m blind!” Cried the unnamed man who, in the past 5 minutes has not only spent most of his life in a rabbit hole, but has now been blinded by tin foil reflecting off the sun.
“Tired of being blinded by rabbit holes and tin foil covering them?” The same announcer from the ads before.
“Sick of the outside world ruining your day?” The announcer continued while another scene showed a man being blinded and, in panic, fell into the rabbit hole anyway.
“Not convinced that tin foil is going to protect you from rabbit holes?”
It then cut to a woman with her thumb down and blowing a raspberry. And, now that I think about it, also appeared in one of the re enactment scenes in the rabbit hole ad.
“Try! Conspira See!” The announcer exclaimed. It was an eye drop preventative for, what I can only imagine to be, sudden blindness. The logo stuck out to me. It was a picture of a single tear drop above an eye, but the eye was also inside a triangle.
“Wow. Now that I’ve used Conspira See, I can see so much clearer.” The man in the hole said.
“Now you can fall into as many Rabbit Holes as you want without getting blinded. With Conspira See!” The announcer finished. Another disclaimer on the bottom of the screen with the same quick voice as before.
“Use only as directed. Side effects may included permanent physical damage and psychological collapse. Prolonged use for longer than a week is not recommended.”

What an odd commercial, I thought as I clicked away. I didn’t understand how I’d gotten this far. Conspira See? What a terrible idea for a preventative solution. Even the name was… wait a minute. Of course. It all made sense now. How could I have been so blind? This eye drop ad was sending an encoded message. Now… I may have stopped taking my antipsychotics a week ago but I was still sane enough to rationalize that this wasn’t necessarily directly encoded to me. I’m not that egotistical. But what if it was an encoded message to anyone that got a rabbit hole? Or, furthermore, anyone that got stuck in rabbit holes? As I kept searching it all started to come together. The recycling infomercial actors, the rabbit holes, the tin foil, the Conspira See. And that’s when it hit me. Conspira See sounds a lot like the word “conspiracy”. Conspira See. Conspiracy?
My god, I thought. I’d done it. At first it seemed odd but why not? This was a conspiracy by Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us.
And not only that… the rabbit hole people, the tin foil people and the Conspira See people are all one and the same.
Think about it… They start the tin foil commercial out by assuming that their customers had already fallen into rabbit holes. Why were they advertising for that specific problem? Why didn’t they advertise tin foil for anything else? Same happened with the eye drops. Advertising these things for the highly improbable, yet oddly specific situation where you would be blinded by the tin foil? It’s almost like they made these ads as a direct response, or subconscious lateral move, to and for each other. Like it’s all there. They were forcing people to create their holes, trap them in there, then they would offer you a faulty product like tin foil as a way of funnelling money to keep the businesses afloat. Then, they would keep you trapped and helpless with nothing but tin foil and a Conspira See.

I had to see if there was any credence to this so I searched “Rabbit Hole controversies.” There was nothing. Nothing except a website for a news article that said “Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us in deep. Hundreds of angry customers accuse the infamous company of false advertising. Claims that they were forced to dig their own holes.” Well a lot of good that did, I thought. That didn’t prove anything… until I got curious. Dig their own holes?

So I decided to go back to something simple. I went back to the animal search, with that Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us ad link staring back at me. Then I started over. Rabbits. I put in “Which countries had an overpopulation of rabbits.” Believing that if I put holes on the end of it, it might get confused and wonder if I’m talking about the products or the literal holes dug by rabbits. It came up with a lot of places. China, (well that’s where tin foil originated) Australia, (infamous for their rabbit-proof fences) and some European countries. Nothing was solid enough other than sheer coincidences and straw-grasping. There must’ve been some kind of link to all this. Some small link to Europe that would solidify. Then I thought about the claims that the rabbit hole customers were forced to dig their own holes.

So I searched “Historical events where people had to dig their own holes” I typed next. Nothing but the gold rush and a couple of wars.
Hang on.
War.
So I changed my search to “Historical events where people had to dig their own graves.” A few European countries had a history of making their prisoners dig their own graves during wars. So how did that connect to Australia and China? And then it hit me in the face so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us were working with Tin Foil and Conspira See to make unknowing customers dig their own graves (rabbit holes) causing them to fall in and keep them there until they die, doing this as a form of population control. Overpopulation? Population control during the wars? The overpopulation of China? And what else was China overpopulated with? Rabbits. Another country? Australia. Things were getting clearerer. And although Australia had their rabbit-proof fences, maybe the rabbit hole people found this method barbaric, so they opted for a more humane approach. By leading them down rabbit holes. This is why in the commercials, they more or less implied that the customers had to either lead single lonely lives or cut off everything and everyone they held dear.
I know it sounds sounds crazy. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. And I even had my doubts when I immediately asked something else in the search engine.

“Am I a conspiracy theorist?” I began to type in. My wife used to call me that and I hated it so much. But she is no longer with us.
But before I hit send I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want anyone who was monitoring my search history to come acorss that question. They’d lock me away for sure. So I went for something more subtle.

I asked, “What are the signs of a conspiracy theorist?” A few classic buzzwords came up like paranoid, unable to accept reality, dangerous. But I ignored it because I didn’t think any of those adjectives applied to me.
I was about to ask “Are conspiracies real?” being ever-careful to not tip off any federal agents who may mark me down as “concerning” but then I stopped. And I thought… if the government can do that then why couldn’t the rabbit hole people do that? What if they had monitored my searches in the past? I’d be the first to admit I’d looked up some conspiracies before, so maybe they saw that and targeted my ads. But that would mean… no. No chance. If they had my search history then it’s very possible that they could’ve had my IP address, which meant that if they had then they had my home address. And if they had that then they were the ones monitoring and maybe even controlling what I was looking up! They wanted me to get stuck in my own rabbit hole!

They wanted me to get stuck in the rabbit hole by luring me into it using tin foil and Conspira See, eventually causing me to die. One less person in the population. Rinse and repeat. I found this because I was looking up animal facts, I looked up animal facts because I wanted to know why rats were dishonest, and I only looked up that because I wanted to know the difference between tale and tail. I wanted to know that because I was thinking of that Edgar Allen Poe story, and I did that because of the dark piece of wood that’s directly over my basement.
Oh my god.
They were there since the beginning… It all made perfect sense now. Since the dark piece of wood, everything was connected! They obviously saw my internet history for a while and tracked where I lived. And when the time was right they broke in, replaced my floorboard with an intentionally dark one as a sort of sick subliminal hint as to where this rabbit hole should go, causing me to go on the internet, ask why this was the case, leading me from one query to another. Every detour, every tangent, was specifically curated, tailor-made if you will, for one purpose that would eventually culminate in me getting stuck down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t get out of!
They were probably watching me as I was figuring this out.
Waiting… contemplating my next move. And if I tried to resist, they would force me down the rabbit hole. To get rid of me, to push me further and further away from the truth.
If I could see my wife now, I’d tell her that this wasn’t all for nothing. That my theories were valid, that everything I found out was currently happening and I was truly and completely powerless to get out of it.

And then I thought, “Well that’s enough internet for me today.” And stepped away from my computer. And then I began to unravel this rabbit hole theory, dissected the flaws and ultimately decided that I couldn’t let this exist in my life. Of course there was no Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us! That would be crazy… and I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
So I let it go and buried it. I then stepped outside and embraced the glorious rays of the sun, something I hadn’t seen in the last day or so due to my journey. I walked over to my lawn and quite literally touched the grass. I’ve heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find yourself spending too much time online. It was soothing. I felt great. I felt free.

Then, two days later. I went back on my computer, clicked on the search engine, and asked… “How do I get rid of the smell of rotting flesh coming from my basement?”

A few days ago, I went to my computer, clicked on my search engine, and asked… “Why does my floor have one dark floorboard?” I had been doing some home renovating and I got curious. Instead of finding anything interesting it said it was due to the elements. But for some reason it didn’t scratch the itch that I desired.

So then I asked “Can basements have floorboards on top of them?” And it told me “Yes, floorboards can go over basements, but you must use the right materials and moisture protection because concrete slabs are porous and trap dampness.” Which explained the floorboard issue.

“What’s the difference between a basement and a cellar?” I proceeded to ask. It told me that basements are partially underground whereas cellars are completely underground.

Then, to solve my wood problem, I asked “Can cellars below ground effect the floorboards above ground?” In which it gave me the same response as the basement question.

Then I wondered if The Tell-Tale Heart was about the guy that put a dead body in the floor boards. Was it really his guilt or would the police just see a dark piece of wood, despite there being no basement, and deduce that there’s a body under there?

Then, second guessing myself, I asked “Is it Tell-Tale Heart or Tattle Tale Heart?” The search engine told me it was tell-tale.
And, just for the hell of it, I asked “What’s the difference between a tell-tale and a tattle tale?” The search engine told me “A tattletale is a person who reports someone's minor misbehavior to an authority figure to get them in trouble, while a tell-tale is a sign or clue that reveals something hidden.” But if a person reports the hidden truth coming out, why is it called a tale? And furthermore, why are these people called rats?

So I searched “Rat slang word: origin.” Apparently it was called this because rats would historically try to do anything to survive. And because of their reputation living in dark, hidden spaces, spreading disease, and acting sneakily, it makes them a natural symbol for untrustworthy behavior. So I wondered if it would make more sense if they were called rats because of their “tall tails.” Which adds another tale idiom into the mix.

On the subject of tails, I looked up some more interesting animal facts. Like how reindeer eyeballs turn blue in winter to help them see at lower light levels, young goats pick up accents from each other, horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other and African buffalo do, in fact, understand and display a voting system in their herd. Fascinating creatures the African buffalo! Apparently when a male wants to let the rest of the herd know where it wants to travel, it will stand up, look in one direction, and then lie back down. It’s amazing what kind of things you can find out.

As I moved out of that website, though, I noticed another little website called Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us. It was a short infomercial about how people can call up and get a rabbit hole installed.
“Tired of packing things away and not having anymore room to contain it?” An excitable announcer rhetorically asked. “Worried that everything will come out eventually no matter how hard you cram it down? Well come on down to Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us!”
The flashing lights and entertaining announcer was enough to keep me from clicking out of such a bizarre concept.
“We create rabbit holes for you!” The announcer continued. “There are so many uses for rabbit holes. Storage, living, recreation, capturing your enemies.” I found this quite strange, I thought rabbit holes were only homes for rabbits, as the word suggested.

So I asked, “Are rabbit holes legitimate?” And it said that rabbit holes are legitimate but you have to be careful not to fall into one. So naturally I asked “How do I prevent myself from falling down a rabbit hole?” The first result was another video commercial so I clicked on it. It was of a man walking in the park, then all of a sudden he disappeared from the frame, then it badly transitioned to a poor match-cut shot of him stuck down the hole. The only thing that was visible was his head sticking out of it from the chest up. “Honey I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole again.” Then I heard an announcer speak over the scene. The same voice as the one advertising the rabbit holes.
“Tired of falling down rabbit holes made by yourself or your neighbors? Losing your family due to frequent accidents?” It loudly asked. We then cut to his wife leaning down and telling him “I can’t watch you live like this, I’m taking the children.” I then heard the voiceover continue, “Try Tin Foil!”
“Wow, Tin Foil. Why didn’t I think of that?” Said the man in the hole.
“Simply place the tin foil over the rabbit hole…” the announcer explained, over an animated shot of the tin foil moving down over the hole. “And that’s it! Using the patented technology of reflection, you can see the rabbit holes coming a mile away! And if you do fall down a rabbit hole, that’s no problem either! Because the tin foil will get so hot that it will keep you warm overnight. And that’s not all! Because of its deflection technology, you can say and do anything privately without anyone signaling in and knowing what you’re up to. And because of its stylish design you can even make it into clothing!”
It then cut to the same man in the hole, only now he’d evidently fashioned the tin foil into a hat and could be seen wearing it.
“I used to worry about my enemies reading my thoughts when I’m asleep.” He said into the camera. “But thanks to Tin Foil, now I don’t have to.”
“You don’t need a wife to tell you to be careful falling in…” the announcer continued. “Or your friends calling you crazy, Tin Foil is the only thing you need!”
“Tin Foil is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” The man in the hole exclaimed.
“So try Tin Foil today!”
Followed by a disclaimer on the screen and a voice quickly stating “Side effects may include the very likelihood that you’ll fall into the rabbit hole anyway. Tin Foil may cause long lasting psychological damage. Use only as directed.” I turned off the ad. Rabbit holes? I don’t remember hearing about people falling into any rabbit holes. I remember my wife bringing them up here and there but I was never really listening.

So I looked up, “Rabbit Hole fatalities.” It came up with a website, a log of unusual deaths. It’s an A-Z list sorted alphabetically by the first letter of each death. Surprisingly “Rabbit Hole” was one of them. 100 years ago a man was walking down the street. He fell in and died. 20 years ago a vagrant was minding his own business took a shortcut to the bridge and fell in. Died. John E Masseldorf, dead. Richard Allanson, dead. But it wasn’t telling me how they died. The method. Lack of oxygen? Blunt force trauma? Exhaustion? And how did it happen? Did they take themselves out? I’ve always said that I can really tell a lot about a person by knowing how they would off themselves. For me it would definitely be a toaster in the bath, I’d even put bread in the toaster before I do it for no extra charge. I figured if I’m going out, it would be with a sense of humor. Not that I would actually do it. But every now and then, the fleeting thought would pass me whenever I saw my wife buttering the toast.
But whenever I see someone who did it on the news, they don’t specify how, exactly, they did it. They never do. Am I a sick individual for wanting to know that? Why report it at all if you’re not going to go full Monty? And what was with these damn rabbit holes?

So I clicked back on to the search engine home page and typed in “Tin Foil.” Nothing to rave about, invented in the 7th-5th century in China. But an interesting thing came up. “Tin Foil Hat.” How did they know? “Tin foil hats. People who wear them are often associated with paranoia, distrust, erratic beliefs.” What are they trying to say? That the tin foil hats don’t work? Are they a placebo?

So I typed in “Rabbit Hole… Tin Foil… Legitimate?” A couple of articles on the pros and cons of the tin foil, but what followed was a very interesting commercial.

It was of a man walking in the park. The same man as before, in the Tin Foil ad, but now he’s in this one, working for the competition. The world is short on informercial actors I suppose. What could only describe as an almighty force was then stopping me from asking “actors who frequently appear in informercials. Secret connection?”
The video continued with the multi credited informercial actor seeing a rabbit hole with tin foil covering it.
“Oh god I’m blind!” Cried the unnamed man who, in the past 5 minutes has not only spent most of his life in a rabbit hole, but has now been blinded by tin foil reflecting off the sun.
“Tired of being blinded by rabbit holes and tin foil covering them?” The same announcer from the ads before.
“Sick of the outside world ruining your day?” The announcer continued while another scene showed a man being blinded and, in panic, fell into the rabbit hole anyway.
“Not convinced that tin foil is going to protect you from rabbit holes?”
It then cut to a woman with her thumb down and blowing a raspberry. And, now that I think about it, also appeared in one of the re enactment scenes in the rabbit hole ad.
“Try! Conspira See!” The announcer exclaimed. It was an eye drop preventative for, what I can only imagine to be, sudden blindness. The logo stuck out to me. It was a picture of a single tear drop above an eye, but the eye was also inside a triangle.
“Wow. Now that I’ve used Conspira See, I can see so much clearer.” The man in the hole said.
“Now you can fall into as many Rabbit Holes as you want without getting blinded. With Conspira See!” The announcer finished. Another disclaimer on the bottom of the screen with the same quick voice as before.
“Use only as directed. Side effects may included permanent physical damage and psychological collapse. Prolonged use for longer than a week is not recommended.”

What an odd commercial, I thought as I clicked away. I didn’t understand how I’d gotten this far. Conspira See? What a terrible idea for a preventative solution. Even the name was… wait a minute. Of course. It all made sense now. How could I have been so blind? This eye drop ad was sending an encoded message. Now… I may have stopped taking my antipsychotics a week ago but I was still sane enough to rationalize that this wasn’t necessarily directly encoded to me. I’m not that egotistical. But what if it was an encoded message to anyone that got a rabbit hole? Or, furthermore, anyone that got stuck in rabbit holes? As I kept searching it all started to come together. The recycling infomercial actors, the rabbit holes, the tin foil, the Conspira See. And that’s when it hit me. Conspira See sounds a lot like the word “conspiracy”. Conspira See. Conspiracy?
My god, I thought. I’d done it. At first it seemed odd but why not? This was a conspiracy by Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us.
And not only that… the rabbit hole people, the tin foil people and the Conspira See people are all one and the same.
Think about it… They start the tin foil commercial out by assuming that their customers had already fallen into rabbit holes. Why were they advertising for that specific problem? Why didn’t they advertise tin foil for anything else? Same happened with the eye drops. Advertising these things for the highly improbable, yet oddly specific situation where you would be blinded by the tin foil? It’s almost like they made these ads as a direct response, or subconscious lateral move, to and for each other. Like it’s all there. They were forcing people to create their holes, trap them in there, then they would offer you a faulty product like tin foil as a way of funnelling money to keep the businesses afloat. Then, they would keep you trapped and helpless with nothing but tin foil and a Conspira See.

I had to see if there was any credence to this so I searched “Rabbit Hole controversies.” There was nothing. Nothing except a website for a news article that said “Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us in deep. Hundreds of angry customers accuse the infamous company of false advertising. Claims that they were forced to dig their own holes.” Well a lot of good that did, I thought. That didn’t prove anything… until I got curious. Dig their own holes?

So I decided to go back to something simple. I went back to the animal search, with that Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us ad link staring back at me. Then I started over. Rabbits. I put in “Which countries had an overpopulation of rabbits.” Believing that if I put holes on the end of it, it might get confused and wonder if I’m talking about the products or the literal holes dug by rabbits. It came up with a lot of places. China, (well that’s where tin foil originated) Australia, (infamous for their rabbit-proof fences) and some European countries. Nothing was solid enough other than sheer coincidences and straw-grasping. There must’ve been some kind of link to all this. Some small link to Europe that would solidify. Then I thought about the claims that the rabbit hole customers were forced to dig their own holes.

So I searched “Historical events where people had to dig their own holes” I typed next. Nothing but the gold rush and a couple of wars.
Hang on.
War.
So I changed my search to “Historical events where people had to dig their own graves.” A few European countries had a history of making their prisoners dig their own graves during wars. So how did that connect to Australia and China? And then it hit me in the face so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us were working with Tin Foil and Conspira See to make unknowing customers dig their own graves (rabbit holes) causing them to fall in and keep them there until they die, doing this as a form of population control. Overpopulation? Population control during the wars? The overpopulation of China? And what else was China overpopulated with? Rabbits. Another country? Australia. Things were getting clearerer. And although Australia had their rabbit-proof fences, maybe the rabbit hole people found this method barbaric, so they opted for a more humane approach. By leading them down rabbit holes. This is why in the commercials, they more or less implied that the customers had to either lead single lonely lives or cut off everything and everyone they held dear.
I know it sounds sounds crazy. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. And I even had my doubts when I immediately asked something else in the search engine.

“Am I a conspiracy theorist?” I began to type in. My wife used to call me that and I hated it so much. But she is no longer with us.
But before I hit send I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want anyone who was monitoring my search history to come acorss that question. They’d lock me away for sure. So I went for something more subtle.

I asked, “What are the signs of a conspiracy theorist?” A few classic buzzwords came up like paranoid, unable to accept reality, dangerous. But I ignored it because I didn’t think any of those adjectives applied to me.
I was about to ask “Are conspiracies real?” being ever-careful to not tip off any federal agents who may mark me down as “concerning” but then I stopped. And I thought… if the government can do that then why couldn’t the rabbit hole people do that? What if they had monitored my searches in the past? I’d be the first to admit I’d looked up some conspiracies before, so maybe they saw that and targeted my ads. But that would mean… no. No chance. If they had my search history then it’s very possible that they could’ve had my IP address, which meant that if they had then they had my home address. And if they had that then they were the ones monitoring and maybe even controlling what I was looking up! They wanted me to get stuck in my own rabbit hole!

They wanted me to get stuck in the rabbit hole by luring me into it using tin foil and Conspira See, eventually causing me to die. One less person in the population. Rinse and repeat. I found this because I was looking up animal facts, I looked up animal facts because I wanted to know why rats were dishonest, and I only looked up that because I wanted to know the difference between tale and tail. I wanted to know that because I was thinking of that Edgar Allen Poe story, and I did that because of the dark piece of wood that’s directly over my basement.
Oh my god.
They were there since the beginning… It all made perfect sense now. Since the dark piece of wood, everything was connected! They obviously saw my internet history for a while and tracked where I lived. And when the time was right they broke in, replaced my floorboard with an intentionally dark one as a sort of sick subliminal hint as to where this rabbit hole should go, causing me to go on the internet, ask why this was the case, leading me from one query to another. Every detour, every tangent, was specifically curated, tailor-made if you will, for one purpose that would eventually culminate in me getting stuck down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t get out of!
They were probably watching me as I was figuring this out.
Waiting… contemplating my next move. And if I tried to resist, they would force me down the rabbit hole. To get rid of me, to push me further and further away from the truth.
If I could see my wife now, I’d tell her that this wasn’t all for nothing. That my theories were valid, that everything I found out was currently happening and I was truly and completely powerless to get out of it.

And then I thought, “Well that’s enough internet for me today.” And stepped away from my computer. And then I began to unravel this rabbit hole theory, dissected the flaws and ultimately decided that I couldn’t let this exist in my life. Of course there was no Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us! That would be crazy… and I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
So I let it go and buried it. I then stepped outside and embraced the glorious rays of the sun, something I hadn’t seen in the last day or so due to my journey. I walked over to my lawn and quite literally touched the grass. I’ve heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find yourself spending too much time online. It was soothing. I felt great. I felt free.

Then, two days later. I went back on my computer, clicked on the search engine, and asked… “How do I get rid of the smell of rotting flesh coming from my basement?”

A few days ago, I went to my computer, clicked on my search engine, and asked… “Why does my floor have one dark floorboard?” I had been doing some home renovating and I got curious. Instead of finding anything interesting it said it was due to the elements. But for some reason it didn’t scratch the itch that I desired.

So then I asked “Can basements have floorboards on top of them?” And it told me “Yes, floorboards can go over basements, but you must use the right materials and moisture protection because concrete slabs are porous and trap dampness.” Which explained the floorboard issue.

“What’s the difference between a basement and a cellar?” I proceeded to ask. It told me that basements are partially underground whereas cellars are completely underground.

Then, to solve my wood problem, I asked “Can cellars below ground effect the floorboards above ground?” In which it gave me the same response as the basement question.

Then I wondered if The Tell-Tale Heart was about the guy that put a dead body in the floor boards. Was it really his guilt or would the police just see a dark piece of wood, despite there being no basement, and deduce that there’s a body under there?

Then, second guessing myself, I asked “Is it Tell-Tale Heart or Tattle Tale Heart?” The search engine told me it was tell-tale.
And, just for the hell of it, I asked “What’s the difference between a tell-tale and a tattle tale?” The search engine told me “A tattletale is a person who reports someone's minor misbehavior to an authority figure to get them in trouble, while a tell-tale is a sign or clue that reveals something hidden.” But if a person reports the hidden truth coming out, why is it called a tale? And furthermore, why are these people called rats?

So I searched “Rat slang word: origin.” Apparently it was called this because rats would historically try to do anything to survive. And because of their reputation living in dark, hidden spaces, spreading disease, and acting sneakily, it makes them a natural symbol for untrustworthy behavior. So I wondered if it would make more sense if they were called rats because of their “tall tails.” Which adds another tale idiom into the mix.

On the subject of tails, I looked up some more interesting animal facts. Like how reindeer eyeballs turn blue in winter to help them see at lower light levels, young goats pick up accents from each other, horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other and African buffalo do, in fact, understand and display a voting system in their herd. Fascinating creatures the African buffalo! Apparently when a male wants to let the rest of the herd know where it wants to travel, it will stand up, look in one direction, and then lie back down. It’s amazing what kind of things you can find out.

As I moved out of that website, though, I noticed another little website called Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us. It was a short infomercial about how people can call up and get a rabbit hole installed.
“Tired of packing things away and not having anymore room to contain it?” An excitable announcer rhetorically asked. “Worried that everything will come out eventually no matter how hard you cram it down? Well come on down to Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us!”
The flashing lights and entertaining announcer was enough to keep me from clicking out of such a bizarre concept.
“We create rabbit holes for you!” The announcer continued. “There are so many uses for rabbit holes. Storage, living, recreation, capturing your enemies.” I found this quite strange, I thought rabbit holes were only homes for rabbits, as the word suggested.

So I asked, “Are rabbit holes legitimate?” And it said that rabbit holes are legitimate but you have to be careful not to fall into one. So naturally I asked “How do I prevent myself from falling down a rabbit hole?” The first result was another video commercial so I clicked on it. It was of a man walking in the park, then all of a sudden he disappeared from the frame, then it badly transitioned to a poor match-cut shot of him stuck down the hole. The only thing that was visible was his head sticking out of it from the chest up. “Honey I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole again.” Then I heard an announcer speak over the scene. The same voice as the one advertising the rabbit holes.
“Tired of falling down rabbit holes made by yourself or your neighbors? Losing your family due to frequent accidents?” It loudly asked. We then cut to his wife leaning down and telling him “I can’t watch you live like this, I’m taking the children.” I then heard the voiceover continue, “Try Tin Foil!”
“Wow, Tin Foil. Why didn’t I think of that?” Said the man in the hole.
“Simply place the tin foil over the rabbit hole…” the announcer explained, over an animated shot of the tin foil moving down over the hole. “And that’s it! Using the patented technology of reflection, you can see the rabbit holes coming a mile away! And if you do fall down a rabbit hole, that’s no problem either! Because the tin foil will get so hot that it will keep you warm overnight. And that’s not all! Because of its deflection technology, you can say and do anything privately without anyone signaling in and knowing what you’re up to. And because of its stylish design you can even make it into clothing!”
It then cut to the same man in the hole, only now he’d evidently fashioned the tin foil into a hat and could be seen wearing it.
“I used to worry about my enemies reading my thoughts when I’m asleep.” He said into the camera. “But thanks to Tin Foil, now I don’t have to.”
“You don’t need a wife to tell you to be careful falling in…” the announcer continued. “Or your friends calling you crazy, Tin Foil is the only thing you need!”
“Tin Foil is the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” The man in the hole exclaimed.
“So try Tin Foil today!”
Followed by a disclaimer on the screen and a voice quickly stating “Side effects may include the very likelihood that you’ll fall into the rabbit hole anyway. Tin Foil may cause long lasting psychological damage. Use only as directed.” I turned off the ad. Rabbit holes? I don’t remember hearing about people falling into any rabbit holes. I remember my wife bringing them up here and there but I was never really listening.

So I looked up, “Rabbit Hole fatalities.” It came up with a website, a log of unusual deaths. It’s an A-Z list sorted alphabetically by the first letter of each death. Surprisingly “Rabbit Hole” was one of them. 100 years ago a man was walking down the street. He fell in and died. 20 years ago a vagrant was minding his own business took a shortcut to the bridge and fell in. Died. John E Masseldorf, dead. Richard Allanson, dead. But it wasn’t telling me how they died. The method. Lack of oxygen? Blunt force trauma? Exhaustion? And how did it happen? Did they take themselves out? I’ve always said that I can really tell a lot about a person by knowing how they would off themselves. For me it would definitely be a toaster in the bath, I’d even put bread in the toaster before I do it for no extra charge. I figured if I’m going out, it would be with a sense of humor. Not that I would actually do it. But every now and then, the fleeting thought would pass me whenever I saw my wife buttering the toast.
But whenever I see someone who did it on the news, they don’t specify how, exactly, they did it. They never do. Am I a sick individual for wanting to know that? Why report it at all if you’re not going to go full Monty? And what was with these damn rabbit holes?

So I clicked back on to the search engine home page and typed in “Tin Foil.” Nothing to rave about, invented in the 7th-5th century in China. But an interesting thing came up. “Tin Foil Hat.” How did they know? “Tin foil hats. People who wear them are often associated with paranoia, distrust, erratic beliefs.” What are they trying to say? That the tin foil hats don’t work? Are they a placebo?

So I typed in “Rabbit Hole… Tin Foil… Legitimate?” A couple of articles on the pros and cons of the tin foil, but what followed was a very interesting commercial.

It was of a man walking in the park. The same man as before, in the Tin Foil ad, but now he’s in this one, working for the competition. The world is short on informercial actors I suppose. What could only describe as an almighty force was then stopping me from asking “actors who frequently appear in informercials. Secret connection?”
The video continued with the multi credited informercial actor seeing a rabbit hole with tin foil covering it.
“Oh god I’m blind!” Cried the unnamed man who, in the past 5 minutes has not only spent most of his life in a rabbit hole, but has now been blinded by tin foil reflecting off the sun.
“Tired of being blinded by rabbit holes and tin foil covering them?” The same announcer from the ads before.
“Sick of the outside world ruining your day?” The announcer continued while another scene showed a man being blinded and, in panic, fell into the rabbit hole anyway.
“Not convinced that tin foil is going to protect you from rabbit holes?”
It then cut to a woman with her thumb down and blowing a raspberry. And, now that I think about it, also appeared in one of the re enactment scenes in the rabbit hole ad.
“Try! Conspira See!” The announcer exclaimed. It was an eye drop preventative for, what I can only imagine to be, sudden blindness. The logo stuck out to me. It was a picture of a single tear drop above an eye, but the eye was also inside a triangle.
“Wow. Now that I’ve used Conspira See, I can see so much clearer.” The man in the hole said.
“Now you can fall into as many Rabbit Holes as you want without getting blinded. With Conspira See!” The announcer finished. Another disclaimer on the bottom of the screen with the same quick voice as before.
“Use only as directed. Side effects may included permanent physical damage and psychological collapse. Prolonged use for longer than a week is not recommended.”

What an odd commercial, I thought as I clicked away. I didn’t understand how I’d gotten this far. Conspira See? What a terrible idea for a preventative solution. Even the name was… wait a minute. Of course. It all made sense now. How could I have been so blind? This eye drop ad was sending an encoded message. Now… I may have stopped taking my antipsychotics a week ago but I was still sane enough to rationalize that this wasn’t necessarily directly encoded to me. I’m not that egotistical. But what if it was an encoded message to anyone that got a rabbit hole? Or, furthermore, anyone that got stuck in rabbit holes? As I kept searching it all started to come together. The recycling infomercial actors, the rabbit holes, the tin foil, the Conspira See. And that’s when it hit me. Conspira See sounds a lot like the word “conspiracy”. Conspira See. Conspiracy?
My god, I thought. I’d done it. At first it seemed odd but why not? This was a conspiracy by Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us.
And not only that… the rabbit hole people, the tin foil people and the Conspira See people are all one in the same.
Think about it… They start the tin foil commercial out by assuming that their customers had already fallen into rabbit holes. Why were they advertising for that specific problem? Why didn’t they advertise tin foil for anything else? Same happened with the eye drops. Advertising these things for the highly improbable, yet oddly specific situation where you would be blinded by the tin foil? It’s almost like they made these ads as a direct response, or subconscious lateral move, to and for each other. Like it’s all there. They were forcing people to create their holes, trap them in there, then they would offer you a faulty product like tin foil as a way of funnelling money to keep the businesses afloat. Then, they would keep you trapped and helpless with nothing but tin foil and a Conspira See.

I had to see if there was any credence to this so I searched “Rabbit Hole controversies.” There was nothing. Nothing except a website for a news article that said “Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us in deep. Hundreds of angry customers accuse the infamous company of false advertising. Claims that they were forced to dig their own holes.” Well a lot of good that did, I thought. That didn’t prove anything… until I got curious. Dig their own holes?

So I decided to go back to something simple. I went back to the animal search, with that Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us ad link staring back at me. Then I started over. Rabbits. I put in “Which countries had an overpopulation of rabbits.” Believing that if I put holes on the end of it, it might get confused and wonder if I’m talking about the products or the literal holes dug by rabbits. It came up with a lot of places. China, (well that’s where tin foil originated) Australia, (infamous for their rabbit-proof fences) and some European countries. Nothing was solid enough other than sheer coincidences and straw-grasping. There must’ve been some kind of link to all this. Some small link to Europe that would solidify. Then I thought about the claims that the rabbit hole customers were forced to dig their own holes.

So I searched “Historical events where people had to dig their own holes” I typed next. Nothing but the gold rush and a couple of wars.
Hang on.
War.
So I changed my search to “Historical events where people had to dig their own graves.” A few European countries had a history of making their prisoners dig their own graves during wars. So how did that connect to Australia and China? And then it hit me in the face so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us were working with Tin Foil and Conspira See to make unknowing customers dig their own graves (rabbit holes) causing them to fall in and keep them there until they die, doing this as a form of population control. Overpopulation? Population control during the wars? The overpopulation of China? And what else was China overpopulated with? Rabbits. Another country? Australia. Things were getting clearerer. And although Australia had their rabbit-proof fences, maybe the rabbit hole people found this method barabric, so they opted for a more humane approach. By leading them down rabbit holes. This is why in the commercials, they more or less implied that the customers had to either lead single lonely lives or cut off everything and everyone they held dear.
I know it sounds sounds crazy. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. And I even had my doubts when I immediately asked something else in the search engine.

“Am I a conspiracy theorist?” I began to type in. My wife used to call me that and I hated it so much. But she is no longer with us.
But before I hit send I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want anyone who was monitoring my search history to come acorss that question. They’d lock me away for sure. So I went for something more subtle.

I asked, “What are the signs of a conspiracy theorist?” A few classic buzzwords came up like paranoid, unable to accept reality, dangerous. But I ignored it because I didn’t think any of those adjectives applied to me.
I was about to ask “Are conspiracies real?” being ever-careful to not tip off any federal agents who may mark me down as “concerning” but then I stopped. And I thought… if the government can do that then why couldn’t the rabbit hole people do that? What if they had monitored my searches in the past? I’d be the first to admit I’d looked up some conspiracies before, so maybe they saw that and targeted my ads. But that would mean… no. No chance. If they had my search history then it’s very possible that they could’ve had my IP address, which meant that if they had then they had my home address. And if they had that then they were the ones monitoring and maybe even controlling what I was looking up! They wanted me to get stuck in my own rabbit hole!

They wanted me to get stuck in the rabbit hole by luring me into it using tin foil and Conspira See, eventually causing me to die. One less person in the population. Rinse and repeat. I found this because I was looking up animal facts, I looked up animal facts because I wanted to know why rats were dishonest, and I only looked up that because I wanted to know the difference between tale and tail. I wanted to know that because I was thinking of that Edgar Allen Poe story, and I did that because of the dark piece of wood that’s directly over my basement.
Oh my god.
They were there since the beginning… It all made perfect sense now. Since the dark piece of wood, everything was connected! They obviously saw my internet history for a while and tracked where I lived. And when the time was right they broke in, replaced my floorboard with an intentionally dark one as a sort of sick subliminal hint as to where this rabbit hole should go, causing me to go on the internet, ask why this was the case, leading me from one query to another. Every detour, every tangent, was specifically curated, tailor-made if you will, for one purpose that would eventually culminate in me getting stuck down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t get out of!
They were probably watching me as I was figuring this out.
Waiting… contemplating my next move. And if I tried to resist, they would force me down the rabbit hole. To get rid of me, to push me further and further away from the truth.
If I could see my wife now, I’d tell her that this wasn’t all for nothing. That my theories were valid, that everything I found out was currently happening and I was truly and completely powerless to get out of it.

And then I thought, “Well that’s enough internet for me today.” And stepped away from my computer. And then I began to unravel this rabbit hole theory, dissected the flaws and ultimately decided that I couldn’t let this exist in my life. Of course there was no Rabbit Holes ‘R’ Us! That would be crazy… and I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
So I let it go and buried it. I then stepped outside and embraced the glorious rays of the sun, something I hadn’t seen in the last day or so due to my journey. I walked over to my lawn and quite literally touched the grass. I’ve heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find yourself spending too much time online. It was soothing. I felt great. I felt free.

Then, two days later. I went back on my computer, clicked on the search engine, and asked… “How do I get rid of the smell of rotting flesh coming from my basement?”

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

Friday
Staying for a week. So please clean room and leave bedsheets untucked.

Saturday
Bed untucked. But a bit drafty at night

Sunday
Please clean room

Monday
Something very loud in the middle of the night woke me up! Please tell staff to inform my neighbours to keep the noise down!

Tuesday
No noise last night but still chilly.
Also please clean room

Wednesday
Please clean room

Thursday Morning
Draft is back. Mattress is comfortable. But I wish the woman in the corner of my room would say something. I noticed her the other night and I don’t know what she wants. But she yells at me whenever I close my eyes.
Also please clean room

Thursday Evening
It’s my last night here and I’m hoping I can make it all the way through without checking out early.

All I can do is lie here and stare at her.
Because the sheets are tucked I have no way of getting out.

There’s no way of leaving

I can’t call the phone because she’s watching me and can hear me, so I can only write these notes.

Friday
I am leaving this place. I want a full refund of my money. I left my number at reception to handle the financial details as I can not remain in this hotel any longer.
Never staying here again!!!

- Guest

Saturday
Please clean room

There was once a small town in the suburbs. Ordinary, indistinctive, just like every other suburban town you might've seen, a town you might've even lived in.
In that town there stood an old-fashioned tobacco shop.
Again, nothing special; just a shop filled to brim with tobacco, tobacco papers, filters, pipes, lighters, matches, herbal paraphernalia, but most of all... cigarettes. Cigarettes as far as the eye could see, cigarettes from all around the world, cigarettes of varying strengths and packet sizes. But one would expect that from a tobacco shop. It was the man who ran it that ought to be paid close attention to.
The Tobacconist, the friendly old man who stood behind the counter day after day. Sweet looking yet wise, wholesome but sharp, like an uncanny Colonel Sanders. If someone came in to buy a pack of cigarettes from this old timer, they wouldn't suspect a thing. But of course, this shopkeeper held a secret, a dark secret, a secret so sinister that he couldn't allow for it to simply leave the building. Underneath the floor to this very plain, very dull smoke emporium, was an underground room, a basement. And this basement held captive a rough figure of twelve people… dads.

The old man had a basement full of Dads. Why, you may ask?
Why indeed. Evidently, the Tobacconist has been doing this for years. Any time a man who looked like he wanted to leave his family behind walked into the shop, they were treated to a once in a lifetime opportunity. A "way out" situation for a fella to take in order to get out of his newly unwanted patriarchal role. New name, new location; for a small sum. At least that's what The Tobacconist had told them, when in actual fact, the old man had no intention of doing any such thing. It was really just a trap to get the dad down there, to his unforeseen doom.

But don't get me wrong, there was plenty to do in the little basement. The Tobacconist had placed a baseball in the middle of the room, so all the Dads could "play catch" with each other.
And The Tobacconist wasn't a complete monster, he would still feed the Dads, and give them a tiny amount of hydration.
Naturally every now and then a rebellious dad would start acting up, with a plan for some sort of half-baked mutiny; this would rile up all the other dads when it came to feeding time.
The Tobacconist used to try to act threatening towards them by saying to them "I'm your worst nightmare." He soon gave up on that little ploy however, when a dad responded with, "Hi, 'Your Worst Nightmare' I'm Dad."
The Tobacconist even found it humorously ironic that he was slowly killing people with his products above ground and slowly keeping people alive below. Now, I'm not going to get into the origin of why The Tobacconist commits these bizarre crimes;
I'm no psychologist and don't want to chalk it up to whether it was because his own father disappeared when he was younger, or some other catalyst. The Tobacconist didn't even know why he did what he did, nor did he know what his intentions would finally be with them. He just liked to own a basement full of Dads. Maybe because it amused him.
By now, you may be asking which tobacco shop in which town in which country could be doing such a thing. You see, it is not a sole incident. There are thousands of evil tobacconists around the world. It happens a lot more than you think.

So, the next time you hear a dad saying that he's "just going out to get a pack of cigarettes" and doesn't return, just consider... he may be held somewhere against his will.