r/story

I’m 21M.
This happened over the last six months and I genuinely don’t know if I’m angry, scared, or just stupid for not noticing any of this earlier.
Back in February I went out with two friends.
Nothing special. Just drinks at a bar near our university.
Around midnight my friends disappeared outside to smoke and I was sitting alone when this girl came over and asked if the seat next to me was taken.
I’ll call her Emma.
She was 22.
We started talking and instantly got along.
She told me she was studying architecture. I told her what I was studying. We talked about music, football, travelling, random shit.
Normal conversation.
Then she mentioned a restaurant I loved.
I said something like:
“No way. Nobody knows that place.”
She laughed and said her dad used to take her there.
Tiny coincidence.
Whatever.
We kept drinking.
Eventually my friends came back and one of them gave me that look like bro you better not fumble this 😭
Emma and I exchanged numbers.
We started texting basically every day.
About three weeks later we went on an actual date.
Then another.
Then another.
Eventually I stayed at her apartment one night and we had sex.
From there it pretty much turned into a relationship without either of us officially saying it.
And ngl those first few months were probably the happiest I’d been in a while.
She was genuinely perfect.
Maybe too perfect looking back.
She knew exactly what food I liked.
She knew the kind of movies I watched.
Even dumb little things.
Like I hate having the bedroom door completely closed when I sleep.
First night I stayed at hers, she randomly left it slightly open.
I remember joking:
“How did you know I do that?”
She said:
“Lucky guess.”
There were loads of moments like that.
I never questioned them.
Because why would I?
Then around May something happened.
We were lying in bed and she fell asleep before me.
Her phone lit up.
I wasn’t trying to snoop.
I swear.
But the notification showed a name.
Daniel R.
My last name starts with R.
And my dad’s name is Daniel.
I immediately thought there was no fucking way.
I woke her up and asked who Daniel was.
She looked at the notification and froze.
Like completely froze.
Then she said it was a guy from university.
I asked why he had the same first name and initial as my dad.
She got defensive and told me I was being paranoid.
And tbh when she said it like that I felt like an idiot.
Daniel is obviously a common name.
So I dropped it.
Two weeks later my dad called me.
He asked:
“Are you still seeing that girl?”
I had mentioned Emma to my parents but they hadn’t met her yet.
I said yeah.
He asked what her surname was.
When I told him, he went quiet.
Then he said:
“Bring her for dinner sometime.”
Nothing else.
That Sunday Emma came over.
Everything was normal at first.
My mom loved her.
My dad was polite but weirdly quiet.
At one point Emma went to the bathroom.
My dad immediately looked at me and said:
“Where did you meet her?”
I told him the bar.
He asked me again.
“Did she approach you or did you approach her?”
I said she approached me.
His face changed.
He stood up, walked into his office and came back holding an old photo album.
At this point I’m like bro what is happening.
He flips through it.
Then puts a photo on the table.
It was my dad.
Way younger. Probably early 20s.
Standing next to another guy.
And between them was a woman.
I recognized the woman immediately.
Emma looked EXACTLY like her.
Not kinda similar.
I mean same eyes. Same face shape. Everything.
My dad said the woman was Emma’s mother.
My stomach literally dropped.
Apparently my dad and Emma’s parents had all known each other when they were young.
I asked why he had never told me.
He said because he hadn’t seen them in over 20 years.
Then he tells me something even weirder.
Emma’s father and my dad were best friends.
Like childhood best friends.
Until suddenly they weren’t.
I asked what happened.
My dad refused to tell me.
He just kept saying:
“Ask Emma.”
So when Emma came back downstairs, I put the photo in front of her.
She didn’t even look surprised.
That was the worst part.
She just sat down.
I asked:
“You knew?”
She said yes.
I asked how long.
She said:
“Before we met.”
My whole body went cold.
I said:
“So you didn’t randomly meet me at that bar?”
She started crying.
Then she admitted it.
No.
It wasn’t random.
She knew I was going to be there.
Apparently she had known who I was since we were teenagers.
Her dad talked about my family sometimes.
Mostly negatively.
I asked why.
She wouldn’t answer.
I asked about the message from “Daniel R.”
She looked at my dad.
Then at me.
And said:
“That actually was your dad.”
Bro.
I genuinely thought I misheard her.
I looked at my dad.
He didn’t deny it.
Turns out my dad and Emma had been talking for months.
BEFORE I met her.
At this point I thought the obvious.
My dad had cheated with Emma or some insane shit.
But somehow the actual answer was worse.
Emma’s father had contacted my dad the previous year.
Apparently he had cancer.
Terminal.
They hadn’t spoken in decades.
He wanted to see my dad before he died.
My dad eventually agreed.
And during that meeting, Emma’s father told him something.
Something that apparently caused their friendship to end 22 years ago.
I asked what.
Nobody wanted to tell me.
I lost my shit.
I basically said somebody better start fucking talking because I felt like I was the only person in the room who didn’t know my own life.
My dad finally told me.
When my parents were 21, my mom briefly broke up with my dad.
During that breakup, she slept with Emma’s dad.
A few weeks later, my parents got back together.
Then my mom found out she was pregnant.
With me.
Yeah.
You already know where my brain went.
I literally couldn’t speak.
My dad immediately said:
“No. I’m your father.”
Apparently they did a DNA test when I was born.
He was my biological dad.
So thank God because for about ten seconds I thought I’d been sleeping with my half sister 💀
But that wasn’t why the friendship ended.
Emma’s dad never believed the DNA test.
He was convinced I was his son.
Apparently for YEARS he believed my parents had lied.
My dad cut him off because he kept trying to involve himself in my life.
Eventually Emma’s family moved away.
I asked Emma why the fuck any of this had anything to do with her dating me.
She said her dad had spent her entire childhood talking about me.
Not constantly.
But enough.
“The son I might have had.”
That was apparently how he referred to me.
Imagine hearing that shit growing up.
Emma became curious about me.
Eventually curiosity turned into stalking my socials.
Then she found out where I went to university.
Then she saw through mutual accounts that I went to that bar pretty often.
So that night she went there hoping I’d show up.
She swore she only planned on talking to me once.
Then she actually liked me.
And things went from there.
I was furious.
I told her whatever relationship we had was built on a lie.
I left.
Didn’t speak to her for almost three weeks.
Then her dad died.
I found out through my dad.
I don’t know why but I agreed to attend the funeral.
Mostly for my dad.
Afterwards Emma’s mom came up to me.
First time I’d ever met her.
She hugged me.
Then she said:
“You look so much like him.”
I assumed she meant my dad.
So I said:
“Yeah people say that.”
She looked confused.
Then said:
“No. I meant Michael.”
Emma’s dad.
My stomach dropped AGAIN.
I went home and confronted my parents.
My mom was furious at Emma’s mom for saying that.
My dad kept insisting the DNA test proved everything.
So I asked to see it.
Silence.
My dad said they didn’t have the paperwork anymore.
It was 21 years ago.
Okay.
Possible.
But at this point my brain was cooked.
So I bought an ancestry DNA test.
Didn’t tell anyone.
Sent it away.
A few weeks later I got my results.
Nothing crazy.
Until I checked relatives.
There was a woman listed as a close relative.
Estimated relationship:
Aunt.
Her name was Sarah.
Emma’s dad had one sister.
Her name is Sarah.
I literally stared at the screen for like five minutes.
I called the company because I thought there had to be some mistake.
They said the amount of shared DNA strongly suggested aunt, half-sister, grandmother, or niece.
Sarah is 48.
So yeah.
Aunt made sense.
I called my dad.
He came over.
I showed him.
He sat there for probably a full minute without saying anything.
Then finally:
“I know.”
That sentence genuinely hurt more than anything else in this entire story.
I asked what he meant.
He started crying.
I have seen my dad cry maybe twice in my entire life.
Then he told me the DNA test from when I was born DID exist.
And it did NOT say he was my biological father.
Michael was.
My mom knew.
My dad knew.
Michael knew.
They decided my dad would raise me and Michael would stay away.
That was the real reason they stopped being friends.
So yeah.
Emma’s dad was my biological father.
Which meant Emma was my half-sister.
The girl I had been dating.
The girl I had sex with.
My fucking half-sister.
I threw up.
Literally.
I called Emma immediately.
She started sobbing before I even finished explaining.
She kept saying she didn’t know.
And apparently she genuinely didn’t.
Her dad had always said he might be my father.
Never that he actually was.
We obviously ended everything instantly.
I haven’t seen her since.
But somehow this story still wasn’t finished.
Because two days ago, Emma sent me an envelope.
Inside was a letter her dad had written before he died.
He had addressed it to me.
The first sentence said:
“If you’re reading this, then Emma finally found you.”
I almost stopped reading right there.
Further down he wrote:
“I never told her the truth because I knew if I told her you were her brother, she would stay away from you.”
I had to read that sentence like six times.
Then:
“I needed her to meet you first.”
Apparently he knew he was dying.
He wanted me to somehow become part of their family before the truth came out.
He thought if Emma met me naturally and became my friend, she could eventually bring me into their lives.
Except she didn’t become my friend.
She fell in love with me.
And he knew.
Because she told him about me.
He knew we were dating.
He knew exactly who I was.
And he still didn’t tell her.
The final paragraph said:
“I thought I had more time to fix it.”
But there’s one thing I still can’t get past.
I went back through my old messages with Emma.
Our very first conversation after the bar.
She sent:
“Glad I finally found you.”
At the time I thought she meant finding me on Instagram.
Now I know she meant literally.
And last night my dad admitted one final thing.
Emma’s father didn’t randomly contact him last year because of the cancer.
He contacted him because Emma had found my Instagram.
He knew exactly what she was planning.
So did my dad.
My dad knew Emma was looking for me months before we met.
He just never thought she would actually find me.
Or that we would end up together.
So basically four adults spent my entire life hiding who my biological father was.
One of them then indirectly sent his daughter looking for me.
And somehow nobody thought this could go catastrophically wrong.
I’m 21 and in the span of six months I found out my girlfriend was my sister, my father wasn’t my biological father, my biological father had been watching my life from a distance for years, and apparently the night I thought I randomly met Emma was basically set in motion before I even knew she existed.
I genuinely wish I was making this shit up.

Might sound crazy, but I’ve seen enough in life that made me get less shocked but the things people do.

Roommate 1 lets call him Pat, has been in a loving serious relationship with his girl since high school, if u look at them on the average day, they look like ur classic loving couple, hanging out together, calling eachother, supporting eachother and their fights dont even look that bad, no grudges held, fast recovery and a new good day, 2 months ago I came back home to my roommate number 2 who we’ll call Justin, with her giving him a good soul snatcher in the living room with music playing and birds chirping, as if none of them is comitting infidelity, the moment I saw them I just stared for a solid 3 seconds and then went into my room, both of them froze then Pat’s girl followed me into the room panicking and begging I don’t tell Pat and all that BS I just told her it’s their life, I’m not willing to come between the both of them and destroy a 6 years relationship, she just kept crying, tried to hug me, I gently pushed her away, and she left the house.

Justin was watching from the background the whole time, and frankly he was aware I wouldn’t say anything to Pat, as I have a ‘cold unbothered’ personality, and I’m not the type to tell on others or try to create any problems, and the thing is he wasnt even regretting the thing, he actually smirked after she left and said ‘well there it goes huh’, I just smirked back and told him to go away because I was about to demolish a burger I had brought with me.

Fast forward 4 months, Pat doesn’t know a thing and his relationship seems usual, nothing weird, both their girls come over sometimes, most of the time I don’t sit and hang out with the group, Pat came home drunk, and Justin was visiting his parents in a different city, he comes into my room and strikes a weird conversation, talking about women he dated during high school before his current girl, then out of nowhere tells me, ‘U know I trust u and Im not supposed to be telling u this, but when Justin had just started dating his girl I slept with her at another friend group’s place and he regretted it ever since’ I just stared at him and smiled and told him to just move on, which was followed by him trying to sleep on my bed and me kicking him out (gently of course).

I’m not sure wether what happend with both of them is karma, but it surely isn’t normal nor a pleasant thing to go through, I haven’t told any of them and I am not planning to do so, I just my distance…

What do u think?

Last month, I was driving home after visiting my parents. It was late, I was tired, and I stopped at a gas station to grab a coffee and fill up.

Somehow, I managed to put my wallet on top of my car while I was paying and then completely forgot about it.

I didn't realize it was missing until the next morning when I went to get breakfast. I checked my car, my room, everywhere I could think of. Then I remembered the gas station.

My license, debit card, and around $60 in cash were all in that wallet.

I called the station, hoping someone had turned it in, but they hadn't seen it. I was already preparing myself for the headache of canceling my cards and replacing my license.

Then, around noon, I got an alert from my doorbell camera.

There was an older man standing on my porch with my wallet in his hand.

I opened the door and asked him where he'd found it.

He told me he'd been at the same gas station the night before and spotted my wallet near the highway exit. Somehow, it had survived all the traffic.

He checked the address on my license and realized I lived about two hours away.

Instead of mailing it, handing it over to someone else, or simply leaving it somewhere, he decided to drive the entire distance himself so he could make sure it reached me.

I opened it in front of him, and everything was still there. Cards, license, cash—nothing was missing.

I tried to give him the $60 as a thank-you, but he wouldn't accept it.

He just smiled and said, "Pay it forward someday."

Then he got back into his truck and left.

Honestly, I didn't expect something like this. You hear so many stories about people taking advantage of situations, so having a complete stranger go that far just to return something that wasn't even his really stuck with me.

I guess there are still plenty of good people out there.

Has a stranger ever done something unexpectedly kind for you?

My wife, Samantha, and I had a great marriage.

We were both animal lovers.

Hikers.

Sports enthusiasts.

When we got married, she was beginning a career in business, and I was a veterinarian at an animal clinic.

Every so often, people brought abandoned or abused animals to the clinic.

On my very first day at the clinic, a woman walked in with a dog.

"We bought a house," the woman said, "and the previous owners left her there."

I looked down at her feet, and there she was: an Australian shepherd with the sweetest eyes I'd ever seen. You could tell something was hurting her, yet she looked as though she was trying to smile.

We examined her and found that she had heartworms. The X-rays showed some damage to her heart. We explained the treatment she would need and what it would cost.

The woman stared at the dog for a long moment before speaking.

"I can't pay for that. She needs more care than I can give her."

Well, I was glad the shepherd couldn't understand English, because that wasn't the kind of thing anybody wanted to hear.

That dog had already been abandoned. She was probably wondering where her owners were.

I told the woman I'd take the dog to a shelter.

I called Samantha on my way there and told her what had happened.

"We need to bring her home," she said.

Those were the kindest words I'd heard all day.

I put the phone on speaker so the dog could hear it, or at least feel the warmth in it.

That night, I brought her home.

"I think Layla," Samantha said.

"No, she looks more like a Kira," I said.

"I hate that one."

"Kayla," I said.

Samantha smiled.

She didn't have to say anything. We both knew we'd found the right name.

From that day on, Kayla went almost everywhere with us: hardware stores, hiking trails, road trips.

Like many couples, we grew even closer because of our dog.

And so did the love between Samantha and me.

Bringing Kayla home was the best decision we'd made since getting married.

But things between Samantha and me changed a few months later.

Not because we stopped loving each other, but because more animals kept arriving at the clinic.

Just like Kayla, many of them weren't likely to be adopted because of chronic health problems.

So I brought them home.

Eventually, we had seven dogs and three cats living in our house.

That's when everything started to fall apart.

Samantha was barely home anymore.

"I can't stand the noise... all the extra cleaning," she said one night.

She held up her running shoes.

"They chewed them." Frustration filled her voice. "Please take them to the shelter."

"And let them die?" I asked.

"It wasn't you who abandoned them in the first place."

I knew she didn't mean that. She cried all night.

I brought up an idea I'd been dreaming about for years.

"What if I opened my own veterinary practice?" I asked.

"We don't have the money, James."

"We can use our savings."

We argued for hours that night.

I couldn't convince her.

She became more and more frustrated. She cried herself to sleep almost every night.

And just like that, the same decision that had once brought us closer slowly drove us apart.

A month later, she packed her things and moved in with a friend from college.

"I'll give you time to decide if this is the life you want," she said before she left.

About six months later, I opened my own practice and converted part of it into a rescue where animals could stay for as long as they needed.

Three months in, I was already sheltering fifteen dogs and two cats.

By that point, Samantha and I were still separated, but we hadn't stopped talking.

We texted every week or so.

We hadn't talked about divorce papers.

We hadn't talked about moving back in together, either.

My friend Ray and I were grabbing drinks one night.

"She should've come back already," he said. "Your house isn't full of dogs and cats anymore."

I'd been thinking about that.

I kept telling myself maybe Samantha just needed more time. But ten months felt like long enough. If we wanted to give our marriage another chance, we needed to see each other again. And there was one trip we'd planned that could be our chance to do that.

So, a week later, I called her.

"The hiking trip to Tuscany is coming up," I said.

"I know. I figured you'd cancel the tickets."

"What if we went?"

There was a long silence.

For a moment, I thought the call had disconnected.

"Are you there?" I asked.

"I am," she said quietly. "I guess we could go... if you want."

"Yes," I answered softly.

Samantha and I texted more frequently in the weeks after that. We shared our excitement about the nature trails we'd chosen for the hike.

For the first time in months, it felt like we were finding our way back to each other.

Everything was going smoothly until Ray texted me.

"I saw Samantha," he said.

He kept typing.

"On a dating app."

I didn't believe him until he sent screenshots.

Something inside me broke when I saw them. Maybe Samantha had lost hope in us. Or maybe she'd stopped loving me.

But I couldn't understand why she hadn't asked me for a divorce.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

Part of me felt I should fight for my marriage.

The other part told me to accept that it was over, even though neither of us had admitted it.

For two days, I thought about canceling the trip.

Every reason told me not to go.

But I kept remembering the woman I'd married. The one who'd told me to bring Kayla home without a second thought.

If there was even the smallest chance we could find our way back to each other, I owed it to us to take it.

So I went.

***

Samantha and I sat together on the plane for roughly seven hours.

We talked about how much we were looking forward to the scenery and the hiking trails.

I still believed this was our chance to get back together. I kept telling myself that Samantha's decision to get on a dating app didn't mean anything.

When we got to Tuscany, we spent the next week hiking through the countryside. We talked for hours, laughed, and enjoyed our time together.

It felt like we had never separated.

On our last night, we had dinner at a small restaurant near the hotel.

For the first time in ten months, we talked about getting back together.

It was the moment I'd been waiting for ever since we'd talked about coming.

But something had changed.

At that point, I couldn't keep denying to myself that she might have seen someone. Maybe it didn't mean anything.

But I needed to know why she'd done it.

More than anything, I needed to know why she was hiding it from me. 

So I pulled out my phone and showed her the screenshots Ray had sent me.

She stared at them for several seconds without saying a word.

"It's not what you think," she said.

"Tell me what you think I think. Because I don't understand why you would do this."

"I regretted everyday leaving. I regretted asking you to pick. I thought you wouldn't want to get back together. " 

"Even if our chances were gone, I couldn't have moved on so soon."

"I didn't date anyone. I swear. It was a stupid decision."

She pulled out her phone and showed me the messages in the app.

She had never responded to anyone.

I felt a wave of relief when I saw that. Yet part of me still felt there was something she wasn't telling me. 

But I ignored it.

When we got back to Washington, Samantha moved back into the house.

She started helping at the clinic. She helped feed the dogs, clean the kennels, and take them for walks.

We would take Kayla on short hikes and hang out on the front porch when we finished our workdays.

It almost felt like we were a family again.

Ray hadn't stopped messaging me, telling me that giving Samantha another chance was a mistake.

"She probably met someone and is hiding it from you," he said.

I started questioning whether I'd made the right decision. Whether there was something I wasn't seeing.

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Some days, I thought about it all day.

One evening, Samantha took Kayla for a walk alone and left her phone on the kitchen counter.

A notification beeped.

I looked at the phone from where I was sitting.

Then I looked away.

I'd never checked Samantha's messages during the five years we'd been married. It had never even crossed my mind to do that.

Not once.

I knew looking would be wrong.

But something told me that if I didn't, I might spend the rest of my life wondering whether Samantha had told me everything.

So I picked up the phone and read the message.

"I miss you."

My stomach tightened when I looked at the sender.

It wasn't from some random guy she'd met online.

It was from Ray.

My friend. The best man at my wedding.

Maybe there was an explanation. Maybe I was misunderstanding what I was seeing.

I stood there for several minutes, staring at the phone.

Then, I looked at their conversation.

Samantha had texted Ray after we came back from Tuscany, telling him they couldn't see each other again. She asked him never to talk about what had happened.

I checked the earlier messages. 

They started talking before Samantha and I had separated. 

I put the phone down and sat in the chair.

I couldn't cry.

I couldn't even get angry.

I just felt empty.

When Samantha came back from the walk, she smiled at me.

Then she noticed my expression.

"What happened?" she asked.

I looked at her.

"How long?"

Her smile disappeared.

"What?"

"How long before telling me about Ray?"

She froze.

For several seconds, neither of us said anything.

"It was one night," she finally said. "I felt like a horrible person after I asked you to abandon the dogs. Ray offered a shoulder to cry on."

She burst into tears.

I remembered how she had barely been home during those days leading to our separation.

"We have only texted since then, James. I swear."

I felt something inside me break.

I looked at her and realized I couldn't forgive her. 

Then it all made sense. Ray had sent me those screenshots not to help me move on.

But to make me doubt Samantha and break us apart.

That day, I ended a friendship and a marriage.

For several days afterward, I wondered if it had all been my fault.

I wondered if I had been too stubborn.

I wondered if I should have done more to prevent my marriage from falling apart.

And I couldn't stop thinking about the dogs.

Maybe if I had listened to Samantha, things would have been different.

I carried those feelings for a while.

Until one day, I walked into the clinic and saw the dogs wagging their tails and barking hello.

In that moment, I knew one thing for certain.

They were always worth it.

Note: I had posted part 1 of this story a few weeks ago. This is part 1 and 2. I changed a few things and updated the title.

I’ll keep it short and simple, I am graduating this year from Uni (masters degree) and I have been class president for 3 years now (lame).

During the first semester of my final year (current year) I was contacted by this teacher who taught me 2 years prior, nothing out of the ordinary as I occasionally get texts from my past teachers mostly asking me to relay information to specific students as they don’t contact them by phone (nor email as most teachers in my uni are old school and it’s a 3rd world country), she first started by asking me to inform 3 students that they had to submit an additional assignment by the end of the week nothing weird.

The moment I responded to her, she immediately jumped off to her main subject, and directly asked me if I was interested in traveling to a different city, where she has to attend a meeting, and if I’ve ever been. I froze for a couple seconds as our university is notorious for a couple male teachers behavior towards female students, but I never heard the other way around.

I asked her if she needed me for something in particular (something professional), though It was clear to me that there was nothing professional behind it, but It was a simple follow up question, to dig deeper…

Her answer was also short and direct, ‘I just need you’, honestly, I’m used to handling awkward situations, but with a teacher and this particular situation, truly left me speechless, I even started shaking a lil bit ngl. I just kept looking at the conversation and did not respond until she added another text ‘are u not interested?’ And then proceeded to delete both her texts as I did not respond, followed with ‘tell the students they have to send their assignments via school email’ to which I responded ‘Well received’.
The convo might seem normal to some if u, but it’s everything but normal here, and teachers do not invite students to accompany them on trips, especially with the fact that my presence would have had nothing to the with the meeting (it was a professional closed meeting).

To give u a bit more context, the woman is a hijabi (no downgrade or disrespect towards anyone with any religious background), in her late thirties and her husband is also a teacher in the same uni, probably in his fifties, she’s nice (personality wise) but I guess u never know what goes through a person’s head, their deepest darkest secrets.

I only told 2 people about it because news spread like disease in uni and I’m not the type to like drama and such.
I’m also not religious, very introverted (with decent social skills as it was the reason I wanted to be class president from the first place), your average 22Y.O whose interests are politics and videogames, and I hate the gym but I’ve been consistent for years (if this parts adds anymore context lol).

What would u have done in my situation?

For about five nights in a row, I kept hearing the same thing from the apartment next to mine.

A quiet voice.

Usually around 2 a.m.

At first, I ignored it. People have weird schedules, and honestly, I didn't want to be the nosy neighbor listening through the walls.

But then I started noticing the pattern.

A few whispers.

A long pause.

Then something like, “No. That's not it.”

Another pause.

“Come on. One more time.”

It sounded like someone having a very serious conversation with another person.

So naturally, my brain decided the most reasonable explanation was that my neighbor was secretly dealing with some kind of relationship drama at two in the morning.

The next morning, I casually asked him if everything was okay.

He just looked at me and said, “Yeah. Why?”

I told him I'd been hearing him talking late at night.

He stared at me for a second.

Then said, “Oh. That.”

And immediately changed the subject.

That did absolutely nothing to calm my imagination.

A couple of nights later, I woke up again and heard the voice.

This time, I could make out the words more clearly.

“Come on…”

“Do it…”

“Yes! That's it!”

I finally gave up on sleeping.

I walked into the hallway and knocked on his door.

He opened it looking completely exhausted.

I asked, “Who are you talking to every night?”

He didn't answer.

He just slowly opened the door wider.

Inside, his living room was completely dark except for the light from the television.

And sitting in front of it was his dog.

The dog was staring intensely at the screen.

My neighbor pointed at him and said, completely seriously:

“He's learning chess.”

I honestly thought he was joking.

He wasn't.

Apparently, he had discovered that his dog became extremely interested whenever chess videos were playing on TV. So every night, he would sit there moving a toy around the floor while narrating the game like he was training a professional athlete.

“Knight to C4.”

Pause.

“Excellent decision.”

The dog stared at him.

My neighbor nodded.

“I agree.”

I had to sit down because I was laughing so hard.

The funniest part?

The dog actually seemed to understand that the game was over whenever my neighbor said, “Good match.”

He would immediately get up, grab his toy, and walk away.

Now I don't hear mysterious conversations through the wall anymore.

Instead, every few nights, I hear my neighbor shouting things like:

“THAT WAS A TERRIBLE MOVE!”

And then a dog barking once.

Apparently, the dog has started winning.

I'm not sure what that says about either of them.

So, through the span of 3 years, I was in a personal relationship with a guy we’ll call “red ball”.

• For the first year, him and I had an on and off romantic relationship. We would continuously flirt every day, we would text all night and call all night, and we would hang out all day. So, we eventually started to get into arguments, and he decided that he couldn’t wait around for me. He begins talking to one of my friends, and I get very jealous. So I tell everyone that he is homophobic (which is true), and he begins to get jumped and bullied at our school. Then, we stop talking.

• Eventually he reaches back out to me and apologizes. Now, I begin to start wanting him again and try talking to him again, but he tells me that he has moved on. He introduces me to this new girl he is talking to, and creates a group chat with us, leaving them so we could talk just the two of us (me and the girl). He would ask me to basically give them my blessing. Briefly, when I did ask him out, he said and I quote “I want to keep my options open”.

• Then he proceeded to switch school due to the bulling caused by me, and started to text me on his siblings accounts because I had blocked him on his original ones. I told him numerous times I was done and didn’t want to talk. So, one day he is blowing up my line again, and I proceed to tell him that I died. He originally tried to go to the funeral, being very distraught about it, but eventually he moved on. :)

• Eventually, he does find out that I’m actually still alive from mutual friends. He tries to initiate something romantic with me, but I shut him down again. Then, for another year, we did another back and forth. Suddenly, he became really rude to me. I realized it was because he had a girlfriend. Every time he got a girlfriend, he would never tell me, but got very rude with me instead. Then when he would break up with them, he’d come crawling back to me seeking my attention.

• So when I got a boyfriend, I blocked him on everything. He was very pissed off, but eventually it didn’t matter to him anymore. He actually ended up getting a girlfriend of his own! But then my boyfriend and I broke up, and he cheated on his girlfriend. Now he told me he didn’t cheat, but I was in a group chat I was in and he didn’t know, and texted out mutual about cheating which I saw. When I confronted him about it, he proceeded to lie and say I “misread” the messages. Then we started to have sexual conversations with no outcome. I realized quickly it was becoming toxic and I was leading him on, so I tried ending things. But he would always say that I wasn’t the bad person, and he was.

• He became severely depressed and started antidepressants, and often refused to take his meds. So he would often get high, and we would call and argue about it.

• So then, he texts me out of the blue, and brings up that I promised to take his virginity. We discuss it, but ultimately I decide I am not ready for that, and we’re not even dating. He proceeds to get angry with me, for breaking yet another promise. Eventually I tell him that we need to end things for good. We haven’t spoken in 3 weeks now, but he says that he misses me and does want to see me. He keeps trying to take me out to dinner, and I keep refusing.

I know we both had our faults with everything, and I was just wondering, should I go back to him? I feel like I do owe him that dinner and to give him a chance after everything.

This happened through the ages of 15-21.

P.S. I originally told him that if he got a job and licence that we can run things back, but he has yet to do those things. Right now we’re no contact.

This is a story.

It all started with a favor.

My neighbor was going on vacation. She asked me if I could water her plants.

I said course no problem because it seemed easy.

She had six plants to water.

I thought to myself this is not a deal.

When my neighbor came home, she thanked me and gave me a bag of tomatoes from her garden.

A few months went by. Then she asked me if I could help her move a flowerpot.

Then she asked me which of her plants looked healthier.

After that she started sending me pictures of leaves and asking me questions like:

Does this leaf look normal to you?

I had no idea what I was doing.

I was looking up the answers on the internet just before I responded to her.

A lot on time passed.

Week end I got a message from someone I had never met before.

The message said: Hi my neighbor said you are the person to ask about the community garden.

I was surprised when I saw this message on my phone.

It seems that my neighbor thought I was qualified to be part of the gardening committee because.

I did not kill her six plants.

Now I have a key to the garden shed.

We have meetings to attend.

We even have spreadsheets to keep track of things.

Someone recently asked me to be a judge for a tomato competition.

The problem is that I do not even like to eat tomatoes.

All I did was water six plants one time.

Somehow, I now have a career, in gardening.

I thought I knew every inch of my boyfriend.

Every bruise, every scar, every tattoo intricately etched into his skin. I knew my boyfriend's body better than my own. Caelen was, in my opinion, a work of art, one I loved to show off whenever we were out, and even more when we were alone.

I sat perched on the edge of our bed in the penthouse suite, on the highest floor of the tallest building. I was wearing a robe more expensive than my mother's mortgage, and my only job was to film Caelen coming out of the shower.

It was for some shampoo partnership. I couldn't help getting flustered. I couldn't believe he was mine.

"Are you ready?" Caelen yelled from inside.

"Ready," I said, holding my phone vertically.

Caelen stepped out wearing his usual awkward smile.

He'd never been good in front of a camera. I guessed that was because I was the influencer, and he just kicked a ball around. Standing at six-foot-something, with smooth golden skin and a face straight out of a Dior commercial, he was impossibly handsome. I zoomed in, capturing airbrushed perfection: cheekbones sharp enough to slice right through me, abs for days.

I couldn't resist a grin.

"Stop with the stupid smile," I laughed. "You look awkward!"

He rolled his eyes, tipped his head back, and forced a wide, cheesy grin.

“Happy?” he said through his teeth. “I’m pretty sure this shampoo is giving me an allergic reaction.”

I lowered the phone.

“Babe.” I couldn’t resist a laugh. I could see suds slipping down his temples. “Did you actually put it on your head?”

He frowned, eyebrows furrowing.

“Well, yeah, that’s what I was supposed to do—”

“You just had to soak your hair,” I laughed when he threw me the puppy-dog eyes. “You didn’t actually need to apply it, you idiot.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Caelen groaned, and I snapped another photo. His expression was perfect; mildly amused, which would get the fangirls excited, but also that slight quirk of irritation. “Stay like that,” I ordered him.

“Keep that exact position. Your followers love the tantrums.”

“They’re not tantrums,” he grumbled.

But he did freeze in place, even exaggerating his anger a little.

“How’s this?” He glared straight into the camera, lips curving into a smirk. “I don’t get it! Why do they LIKE my anger?”

I typed a snappy caption:

“doesn’t my boyfriend look GORGEOUS with @luxshampoo? His hair is SO glossy 💕”

“Ivy.” Caelen groaned, running his hand through damp strands of hair.

I snapped another photo.

Perfection.

I peeked over my phone, raking my eyes over beads of water sliding down his torso.

“Because.” I stood and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him onto the bed.

He fell awkwardly on top of me and immediately straddled my hips, his lips finding my mouth. I lost my breath, then my words, when he kissed me.

“You look fucking sexy.”

I expected sex, but we just lay together, him sprawled across me, while I dragged my fingernails down every inch of his skin, enjoying his low moan. I reached his ankle, momentarily confused by the new tattoo.

“Oh?” I laughed, leaning closer to inspect his most recent.

It was different from his others.

Simple block numbers: 14569.

Maybe my birthday, or our anniversary? But the numbers didn’t match either. My mind immediately went there. Of course it did.

I wasn’t the first girl to know every inch of him. In the public eye, he’d had three girlfriends.

I was the one he had proposed to on a beach in Bali.

I was the one wearing a 300k ring.

“Babe,” I said, running my fingers over each number. I noticed the ink wasn’t as new as I thought. I could see where it had faded. “What do these numbers mean?”

“Hm?” Caelen mumbled, half asleep. “What numbers?”

Something cold crawled through me.

I sat up.

“The numbers,” I said. “On your ankle.”

“Oh.”

Caelen shrugged, burying his head under the pillow. I noticed he’d stiffened, goose flesh creeping across his arms.

He didn’t respond for a moment and exhaled into his pillow. “I don’t know. Fuck, man, I probably got it when I was drunk.”

I chose not to push.

Caelen wouldn’t lie to me, right?

He jumped up, grabbed his sweatpants and threw them on.

“I should start packing,” he said, his back to me.

I had to force a smile back. I had forgotten about his meeting.

“Right.”

I hugged him and then helped him pack.

But he was different, suddenly. I knew he was nervous about possibly signing for another club, but he didn’t talk all day. It was the numbers, I thought, nausea twisting my gut. He was different.

Colder.

I asked him again, cornering him in his closet. But I couldn’t get my words out; my lips were numb, my words tasted of bile.

“If you’re going to ask me what the number is, don’t,” he muttered, refusing to look me in the eye.

I didn’t, twisting around and leaving him to his adult tantrum.

When it was time for him to leave, I kissed him goodbye.

“Those numbers,” I breathed into his lips.

Again, he froze, his breath shuddering.

“Caelen, was that tattoo for  another girl?”

He smiled, to my surprise.

“I wish we had more time, Ivy.”

“What?” I laughed. “So, there WAS a girl or IS?”

He didn’t respond, just tossed me a smile and walked away.

I presumed it was over. 

I headed to the hotel pool to overthink.

Harry, Caelen’s teammate, was sitting on the edge of the deep end, frowning at the water. “You look like you’re having fun,” Harry muttered. He wasn’t even looking at me; his gaze was glued to the sparkling blue depths, eyebrows furrowed, lips curled, like he was figuring out how to dive in without getting wet. 

“Caelen’s acting weird,” I said, dropping down next to him. 

He laughed, kicking his legs in the water. “When is he not?” 

I was about to pour my heart out when I saw it. Five numbers etched into Harry’s ankle: 18970.

“That number,” I teased. “Is that a soccer player thing? Do you all get tats?” 

Harry didn’t reply for a long time. His legs stopped moving. The water around him settled. “Ivy,” he said, his tone almost sardonic. Mocking. “Have you ever been to a transfer window?”

“Like, for soccer?” 

Harry’s lips twitched. “Football,” he corrected me. He wasn’t smiling, glaring down at the water. “We play for the Premier League.” 

“Well, sorry I don’t know football terms. I’m from LA.”

I kicked him playfully.

“Where were you born?”

Harry didn’t look at me. 

“Wolverhampton.”

He turned to me.

“You’re an influencer.” 

Harry pulled his legs from the pool and stood up. “Come to the transfer, and bring your phone.”

After asking around, I discovered soccer transfers were boring.

Still, I attended the event in downtown LA. The auction itself was held in a large glass-walled room with three floors overlooking the event. I was allowed in on one condition. I had to hand over my phone. Smiling, I did, then pulled out my second phone and slipped it beneath my dress while security checked for secondary devices. I was handed a beaded mask with a lion's face. 

The auction didn't start with an announcer, or music. Around me, hundreds of people, with the majority of them wearing masquerade masks, silently watched a man appear below us. “The transfer window has closed,” he announced, his voice echoing.

I peered over, looking for Caelen. 

To my confusion, two figures appeared. 

One was a smartly dressed woman. The other, my boyfriend.

The woman wore a red gown.

Caelen was completely naked. 

I peered closer, a sour bile rising in my throat.

He wasn't walking, instead, being violently dragged into the spotlight.

Then I saw his skin; I saw where he'd been scribbled on with red marker, highlighting and circling parts of him; his jawline, eyes, lips, nose, are marked. While his legs and arms bore arrows and crude writing.

The announcer smiled wildly, as my boyfriend mindlessly stepped into the light. “All right, for 2 million, we have a full-body transfer, save for the head. The torso and muscles are well defined. Striker. Played for Chelsea for two seasons on loan. Turn AROUND,” he ordered my boyfriend, who obeyed, throwing out his arms. 

“Caelen!” I choked.

A meaty hand muffled my scream. 

“He can't hear you,” a British accent hummed. The man behind me grinned through his goat mask. “Before the auction, those men are hollowed out,” he laughed. “Unless the brain is being sold, though it's rare, of course,” he laughs.

“Have you ever heard of an intelligent footballer? They want learned tactics. Wipe the personality, all that fucking ego, and keep the good stuff.”

The announcer continued below us. “Premier-league ready legs.” 

The  man in the goat mask threw up his hand gleefully. 

“6 million,” he yelled, “I'll take the striker's legs and torso.” 

“Sold!”

Before I could figure out what was happening, a laser beam shot straight through my boyfriend, slicing him into four neat chunks.

There was no blood, no gore, just his unwound body lying in dismembered pieces for thousands of greedy eyes.

But I noticed scars, pieces of him that were mismatched and wrong, like a jagged puzzle piece, shades of different skin tones stitched together, making him up.

His right shoulder was darker than his left, his lower torso bronzer than I remembered, a mismatched scatter of freckles scattered across his back.

I exhaled, had to keep it together, my breaths coming out in sharp gasps through my mask. 

Who was my boyfriend… made of? 

“Next.” The announcer yelled, while Caelen was shovelled into a white bag. 

I was on my knees, all of the air knocked from my lungs. 

Another spotlight.

This time, Harry stood, thick red hair catching the blinding allure, his hollow eyes finding oblivion.

The only thing highlighted in black marker were his calves. “Twenty seven years old.” The announcer said, “Right leg. Elite acceleration. Minimal ligament damage. Estimated career lifespan: four seasons. Currently plays for Tottenham Hotspur.”

Harry was shoved onto his knees, right under the lazer. “Midfielder.” 

“5 million!” A woman across from me yelled, “For his legs.” 

Harry’s wandering gaze met mine. He was awake.

His lips quivered as the laser came down. He was smiling. 

“Ivy!”

Harry was shoved into his knees, his breathless sob reaching me.

I already knew what to do; already pulling out my phone, my hands trembling. Another flash of blinding light seared my eyes. Harry’s scream ricocheted. “Fucking film EVERYTHING!” 

With the last of my voice, I spoke up, forcing my tone into commanding.

"I'm live streaming right now," I yelled, my voice echoing around the room.

The laser, to my surprise, flickered off.

I held myself. Harry dropped onto his stomach, his hands over his head, his sobs reverberating through the room.

The organisers fell into a panic. The woman in the red dress grabbed Harry, yanking him behind her, slamming her hand over his mouth. "If you do anything to him," I said, watching floods of confused viewers join the live, "the world will see it."

I thought my wife was cheating.

For months, she'd quietly leave our house after I fell asleep and return hours later.

Every time, her clothes were different.

Her feet were covered in mud.

And whenever I asked where she'd been, she'd just say:

"I don't remember."

I eventually stopped asking.

Then one night, she cut her hand badly in the kitchen.

The next morning, the wound was completely gone.

That's when I decided to follow her.

At around 2 AM, she slipped out of bed.

I waited a few seconds, then followed her into the woods.

She ran deep into the forest like she'd done it a hundred times before.

Then she started removing her clothes.

That's when I noticed what was hanging from the trees.

Human-shaped skins.

Dozens of them.

My wife stopped beneath one of the trees and began shaking violently.

Her skin started peeling away.

Not like a wound.

Like she was taking off a suit.

A few seconds later, she stepped out of her entire outer layer and stood there completely different.

I accidentally stepped on a branch.

CRACK.

She turned.

She saw me.

For the first time since I'd known her, my wife looked terrified.

She walked toward me and whispered:

"Please don't make me explain this here."

Dropped out at 19 to start a business from my apartment. My parents called it a phase. My siblings made jokes about it at every holiday I still bothered attending. Eventually I stopped showing up, and nobody really noticed. No calls on my birthday, no "how's it going" — just silence, which was honestly easier than the criticism had been. Six years, two failed attempts, and one that finally stuck. A small trade publication ran a piece when I sold the company — nothing major, just a local business story. Within a week my mom texted like nothing had happened: "So proud of you, always knew you had it in you." My brother, who once told me I'd be begging him for a job by 25, suggested we "get the family together, it's been too long." I let it sit for a few days, then replied to the group chat with one screenshot — every old text calling me irresponsible, a disappointment, a waste of potential, stitched together in order, ending right above my mom's new "so proud of you." No caption. Nobody responded for two days. When my mom finally called, I let her talk, then told her I was glad things were going well for me too — and that I hoped she enjoyed reading about it in the paper like everyone else did.

I am exited to hear yr story and experience

My husband has been waking me up at 3:17 AM every night.
Not intentionally.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
The first time it happened, I woke up because someone was whispering my name.
“Emma.”
I opened my eyes.
The bedroom was dark.
My husband, Noah, was asleep beside me.
“Emma.”
I sat up.
Nothing.
I checked the time.
3:17 AM.
I figured I’d dreamed it.
The next night, it happened again.
“Emma.”
This time, the voice sounded closer.
I turned toward Noah.
His eyes were closed.
He was breathing normally.
I reached over and touched his shoulder.
He didn’t move.
Then the whisper came again.
“Emma.”
From underneath the bed.
I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
The next morning, I told Noah.
He laughed.
“You’re watching too many horror movies.”
“I heard someone.”
“You were dreaming.”
“I heard my name.”
He kissed my forehead.
“You’re cute when you’re scared.”
I wanted to believe him.
So I did.
For three nights, nothing happened.
Then, on the fourth night, I woke up at exactly 3:17.
No whisper.
No sound.
Just silence.
I rolled over.
Noah wasn’t beside me.
I sat up.
“Noah?”
Nothing.
I checked the bathroom.
Empty.
Kitchen.
Empty.
Living room.
Empty.
Then I heard footsteps coming from upstairs.
We don’t have an upstairs.
I froze.
Another step.
Slow.
Heavy.
Coming down the hallway.
I grabbed my phone and stood completely still.
The footsteps stopped outside our bedroom.
Then Noah’s voice came from the other side of the door.
“Emma?”
I nearly cried from relief.
I opened it.
Nobody was there.
I looked down the hallway.
Nothing.
Then my phone buzzed.
A text from Noah.
I’m at work. What’s wrong?
I stared at the screen.
My hands went cold.
I slowly looked toward the bedroom.
The door was still open.
And someone was standing beside my bed.
It was Noah.
Except he was still wearing his work uniform.
The same uniform he’d worn when he left that morning.
He smiled at me.
“Emma.”
I couldn’t move.
He tilted his head.
“Why are you awake?”
I screamed.
The figure disappeared.
Just—
gone.
I called Noah.
He answered immediately.
“Hey, baby. What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t speak.
Then he said something that made my blood run cold.
“Did it happen again?”
I whispered:
“What?”
“The thing under the bed.”
I didn’t tell him about the footsteps.
I didn’t tell him about the man in his uniform.
I just asked:
“How do you know?”
There was silence.
Then Noah whispered:
“Because it happened to me too.”
I sat down on the floor.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been seeing you.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Every night.”
He sounded terrified.
“I wake up at 3:17 and you’re standing beside the bed.”
I looked toward our bedroom.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
“Noah, I’m here.”
“I know you’re there now.”
His voice cracked.
“But that’s not the version of you I’m talking about.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“What does she do?”
Noah didn’t answer.
“What does she do, Noah?”
Finally, he whispered:
“She just stands there.”
“Where?”
“Beside the bed.”
“Doing what?”
“Watching me.”
I swallowed.
“Does she look like me?”
“No.”
My heart stopped.
“Then what does she look like?”
He started crying.
“She’s you.”
I didn’t understand.
“That’s what I mean.”
He took a shaky breath.
“She’s exactly you.”
I heard something behind me.
A floorboard creaked.
I turned around.
Nothing.
Then Noah whispered:
“Emma?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t turn around again.”
My blood went cold.
“Why?”
“Because I can hear her breathing.”
I slowly looked down.
There were two shadows beneath the bedroom door.
Mine.
And another one.
Standing directly behind me.
I couldn’t move.
Noah whispered through the phone:
“She’s been getting closer every night.”
I started crying.
“How close?”
He didn’t answer.
Then I felt something touch the back of my neck.
A fingertip.
Cold.
Wet.
And a voice whispered directly into my ear.
My voice.
“He’s lying.”
The phone went dead.
I stood there for what felt like an eternity.
Then I heard Noah’s voice from the hallway.
“Emma?”
I couldn’t move.
“Baby?”
The bedroom door slowly opened.
Noah stood there.
Covered in blood.
He looked at me.
Then smiled.
“Sorry I’m late.”
I stared at him.
“You said you were at work.”
He tilted his head.
“I was.”
“Then why are you bleeding?”
His smile disappeared.
He looked down at his shirt.
Confused.
Then he looked back at me.
“I don’t know.”
Something moved behind him.
A woman stepped into the hallway.
She looked exactly like me.
Same face.
Same hair.
Same pajamas.
She smiled at Noah.
Then she looked at me.
And whispered:
“Finally.”
Noah turned around.
His face went completely white.
The woman grabbed his hand.
He didn’t fight her.
He just stared at me.
Then he said something I’ll never forget.
“Emma…”
His voice was shaking.
“Which one of you is my wife?”
The woman smiled.
I didn’t.
Because suddenly I remembered something.
I remembered waking up at 3:17 AM every night.
I remembered whispering his name.
I remembered standing beside his bed.
I remembered watching him sleep.
And I remembered something else.
Something I had completely forgotten.
I had died three weeks ago.

My friend Dave texted me: "we need to talk. tonight. it's serious." No context, no emoji, nothing. I spent the entire day spiraling. Did I say something wrong? Did he find out I "borrowed" his phone charger four months ago and never gave it back? I rehearsed apologies in my head during a work meeting and missed half of what my boss said. I showed up that night braced for the worst, sat down across from him at his kitchen table like we were about to negotiate a hostage situation. He looked dead serious. "I found a wing place," he said. "It's life-changing. We need to go tonight." I just stared at him. "That's it? That's the emergency?" "Bro, I said it was serious. Wings ARE serious." I told him about my entire day — the spiral, the missed meeting notes, the internal apology speech I'd prepared. He laughed so hard he knocked his water over. We went and got the wings. They were fine. Not life-changing. I made him buy mine as compensation for emotional damages.

Chapter One

In July 1999, a little girl entered a world that had not been expecting her.

Her father had long believed he would never have another child. Diabetes had quietly closed that door years ago, or so he thought. He had stopped imagining the sound of another baby crying in his house, stopped imagining small hands reaching for his.

So when his wife told him she was pregnant, disbelief arrived before happiness.

"How," he asked her, not unkindly, but not gently either. "After all this time — how?"

He could not silence the questions. He was ashamed to ask them aloud, and ashamed that he had asked them at all. For months, doubt stood between him and the child who had not yet been born.

The doubt did not survive the moment she arrived.

He was sitting outside the delivery room, elbows on his knees, when he heard it — a cry, thin and furious, cutting through the hospital noise like it belonged to no one else in the building. He stood up before he had decided to. A nurse opened the door and he was already moving toward it.

"A girl," she told him.

He didn't answer. He walked in and saw her — red-faced, fists closed, screaming at a world she'd only just met — and something in him that had been braced for years simply let go.

He held out his arms before anyone offered her to him.

"Sophia," he said, once she was against his chest and had, for a moment, stopped crying. He said it like he was trying the name in his mouth for the first time and finding it fit. "Sophia."

By the time he handed her back, he was a different man than the one who had walked in.

The house did not stay the same for long.

He gave money to families who hadn't asked for it. He sent food to neighbors whose kitchens he'd never been invited into. Men who had done him no particular favor found small envelopes waiting for them, and when they tried to ask why, he waved it off — as if the birth of his daughter had reminded him he'd been given something he hadn't earned, and giving was the only language he had for saying thank you.

Sophia was the only girl in the family, born to two brothers who were already halfway to grown — one nearly twenty years older, the other eighteen. To them she was the surprise that arrived long after they'd stopped expecting anyone else at the dinner table.

To her father, she was something else entirely. She was his.

He was older than most men holding a newborn, and something in his body had been telling him for years that time was not endless. He never said this out loud. Instead, he closed most of the business he'd spent decades building and opened a smaller one just beneath their home — close enough that he was never more than a staircase away from her.

When she learned to walk, she became his shadow. If he stood, she wanted to stand beside him. If he sat, she climbed into whatever space was left of the chair.

And in the evenings, when he lay down after the shop had closed, she would climb onto his stomach the way other children climbed into beds, and fall asleep listening to him breathe.

"You're going to break my ribs one day," he told her once, not moving, his hand resting on her back so she wouldn't roll off.

She didn't answer. She was already asleep.

He would lie there long after she'd gone still, watching her face in a way she never saw and would never remember — the particular stillness of a man trying to memorize something he was afraid he wouldn't get to keep. Whether it was fear, or grief arriving early, or simply love with nowhere else to go, he never said. He wasn't a man who explained himself. He only changed his life around her, one decision at a time, and let that be the explanation.

If she pointed at a toy in a shop window, he found a way to bring it home before the day was over. If she cried, he came — even from the middle of a customer's order, even from sleep.

To Sophia, he was not a businessman. He was not the man half the neighborhood owed a favor to. He was not a husband, or a father managing a disease that was quietly working against him.

He was Daddy. And Daddy could fix anything.

Except, perhaps, the thing that was already waiting for him.

Her mother loved her too — but her mother's love came with conditions Sophia was too young to name.

She was warm when Sophia behaved. She was something closer to frightening when she didn't. A spilled cup could become a punishment that outlasted the mess. On the days her mother decided a lesson was needed, she would tie Sophia's wrists to the leg of a table or a chair with a length of rope, and leave her there until she judged the lesson had taken.

Sophia never understood why love and fear lived in the same house, wearing the same face. She only learned, very young, that there were moments she wanted her mother, and moments she wanted her father — and that the second kind came more often.

One afternoon, after the last customer had gone, her father heard crying from the back room. He followed it and found her there — wrists red, rope still looped loose around the table leg where her mother had left her.

He didn't shout. He went very quiet, which was worse.

He untied her himself, fingers working the knot slower than the moment seemed to need, and when it came free he pulled her against him before she'd finished crying.

"You're alright," he said, to her, or to himself. "You're alright."

What happened between him and her mother after that, Sophia didn't see. She only heard the house shake with it — voices raised somewhere she wasn't allowed into. By the time he came back for her, his face had rearranged itself into something calm again, something built specifically for her.

He always knew how to make her smile again. It was, perhaps, the only thing he was certain he was good at.

Her older brothers watched all of this differently. One liked to play with her, would get down on the floor and let her win. The other thought she was spoiled, and some quiet part of him resented a father he'd known only as a hard, tired, working man — a man Sophia had never met, because by the time she existed, that man had already softened into someone else for her sake.

She was too young to understand the difference between the father her brother remembered and the father who belonged to her. She only knew that Daddy was hers, and that seemed, at four years old, like the only fact that mattered.

He had started working as a boy, with almost nothing, and built what he had out of copper and iron and things made by hand and sold for what they were worth. He had known hunger before he knew money, and maybe that was why he never seemed to forget the people who still knew it. He could barely read. He could be jealous in ways that frightened her mother, possessive in ways that had nothing to do with Sophia at all. He was not a simple man, and not always a gentle one.

None of that reached her. She knew the version of him that carried her on his hip through the shop, that let his stomach become her pillow, that could turn her crying into laughing in under a minute. She believed, the way children believe the sun will rise, that he would always be there to do it.

She was four when that belief began to come apart.

It happened in December 2003.

The house was unusually quiet that afternoon. Sophia was playing on the floor when she noticed a smell that didn't belong to anything she knew — not food, not smoke, something underneath those, something wrong.

Her mother noticed it too, and started searching, room by room, following it with her face pulled tight, until it led her to a shoe her father had taken off and left by the door.

She picked it up. She looked inside.

Sophia didn't see what her mother saw. She only saw her mother's face change into an expression she'd never worn before — not the anger from the rope days, not ordinary worry. Something closer to fear.

Her father had cut the bottom of his foot days earlier and hadn't felt it — the diabetes had taken that particular warning system from him years before. By the time the shoe told them what his foot could not, the wound had gone past infection into something the doctors would later call gangrene. It had eaten down far enough that bone showed through.

A taxi took them to the hospital. Sophia went too, holding her mother's hand in the back seat, watching her mother's knee bounce the whole way there and not understanding why, only that whatever was wrong, it was wrong enough to make her mother's hands shake.

He was taken back almost the moment they arrived. His blood sugar, they were told later, had climbed to something near 600. Before the night was over, he had slipped into a coma.

Sophia stood at the edge of his bed and looked at him lying there, and to her it looked exactly like sleep. So she did what she always did when Daddy was sleeping and she wanted him awake.

"Daddy." She touched his hand. "Daddy, wake up."

He didn't. Someone — a nurse, an aunt, she never remembered who — crouched down to her height and told her he was unconscious, and watched the word land on her without meaning anything at all.

To Sophia there was only one word that made sense of a man lying so still. He was sleeping. He would wake up the way he always did, and this would be a story they told later, about the time Daddy slept for a long time.

Her mother called an aunt that night. Sophia was sent to stay with her — the first nights of her life spent somewhere her father wasn't sleeping down the hall.

Every morning she asked the same questions. Was Daddy awake yet? Was Mama coming? When could she go home? No one had an answer built for a four-year-old, so mostly they gave her none.

Her aunt took her to visit once a week, and each time Sophia walked in holding her hand with the same small hope going ahead of her like a light — maybe today he's awake. Most weeks he wasn't. He looked, each time, like a tired man asleep, the exhaustion sitting on his face even while he was unconscious to it.

Twice, though, she found him awake.

The second time, she climbed up as close as they'd let her and told him everything at once — that she missed him, that she wanted to go home, that she couldn't sleep at her aunt's because there was no stomach to sleep on and no breathing to listen to.

He didn't say any of the things he must have been thinking. He didn't tell her he was afraid, or that he could feel something closing in that had nothing to do with his foot anymore. He put his arms around her instead, and cried without trying to hide it from her, which was the only time in her life she ever saw him do that.

A few days later, doctors took his right leg.

Sophia found out the way children find out things adults don't know how to tell them — by noticing. Her mother was changing the dressing near his hip when Sophia glanced toward the bed and stopped.

Something was missing. She looked again to be sure. Then she looked at her father, and then at the flat, wrong space under the blanket where a leg should have been.

"Where is your leg?"

No one answered her right away. She pieced it together later, from fragments of adult conversation not meant for her — that it had been buried, that it was in the cemetery now, apart from the rest of him.

She turned this over for days. How could part of Daddy be somewhere else, in the ground, without him? She was four. There were still whole categories of the world she hadn't learned yet.

But she was learning, faster than anyone wanted her to, that things could disappear. Legs. Mornings at home. The sound of him breathing under her ear.

He stayed in the hospital about a month and a half in total, unconscious for most of it. In the final fifteen days he surfaced only in pieces — an hour here, less there — and in those pieces, he seemed to already know something Sophia didn't.

He asked, eventually, that she not be brought to see him anymore.

Maybe he didn't want that to be the last picture she kept of him. Maybe he already understood what his body was telling him with more certainty than any doctor had. A man knows, sometimes, when he's run out of time — not from anything anyone says to him, but from somewhere underneath language.

The last time she saw him, he reached into his pocket with the hand that still worked well and pulled out a banknote. He pressed it into her small hand and closed her fingers around it himself, as if he didn't trust her to hold on to it otherwise.

She took it without knowing why it mattered. She had no way of knowing it was the last thing he would ever give her, or that she would keep it — folded, then flattened, then kept in places that changed over the years — long after she'd forgotten which pocket it came from.

On January 7, 2004, in the middle of the Christmas season, Sophia's father died.

She was at her aunt's, in a bed that still didn't feel like hers, trying to fall asleep the way she'd been trying every night since she left home — without a stomach rising and falling under her ear, without arms that already knew, before she asked, that she wanted to be picked up.

She heard the crying first. Then whispering, low and fast, the kind adults use when they think a child is already asleep. Then the words themselves reached her, not softened for her at all, because grief doesn't always remember to soften itself.

Her father was dead.

She sat up in the dark. She didn't scream. She didn't have a shape yet for what death was supposed to feel like, only a question, small and exact.

"Does that mean I won't see Daddy again?"

Her aunt looked at her and couldn't answer — not really, not with anything true enough to give a four-year-old. So she gave her the only sentence she could get out without breaking further.

"He went away."

Sophia lay back down in the unfamiliar bed, in the unfamiliar room, inside a silence that had no breathing in it at all.

She didn't know yet that some people leave without ever coming back.

She only knew that Daddy had gone somewhere she couldn't follow.

This happened on Friday and I'm still fuming. I know it's important to get this shit off your chest, pun not intended. A wise man once said that the number one cause for relapse is holding onto resentment and I know I need to let go:

I'd gone 6 months without crapping my pants and I just started feeling good about myself. Stopped carrying extra underwear everywhere, started wearing the slimmer pants that I used to love, whiter socks - you know how it goes. Well on Friday I'd actually used the washroom before work as I always try to do. It was good, I didn't hold it in or anything I just went and read Jughead comics while I did my business (I would highly recommend these for doing your business in peace - much easier read than Garfield or Dilbert or some of the others I see talked about). Anyways, I had a little yogurt with granola bits, no coffee of course, and drove to work.

So I'm a software developer at a mid-sized start-up company. We've actually been doing really well this summer and making good progress on a project for a client, so the plan was that we'd all go out for a company lunch today. 01:00PM rolls around and our boss comes out and we hold a vote for where to go. I voted for the Mediterranean place, of course, but one of the accountants noted that "we did go there last time". Fuck's sake. Leave it to an accountant. So we ended up voting for the Mexican place nearby. That's right - Mexican food. I know you're probably thinking that I should've said I can't eat Mexican food, but I really didn't want to make myself out to be a sore loser. Plus, when I was still crapping my pants, I always used to bring Chipotle in to the office and everybody knew that I was "the Chipotle guy" so there really wasn't anything I could've done.

When democracy failed and we were all seated, I looked at the menu and was horrified. Everything was as bad as you can expect. (TW: sp*cy beef, beans, corn, jalapenos, pico de gallo). There was nothing for a recovering pants crapper to eat, absolutely nothing. This wasn't one of those new places either where you can substitute things for dairy-free or gluten-sensitive options: this was raw greasy Mexican food of the highest caliber. Hell, when I was still pantsing my craps, I would've loved this place but now, it was like an alcoholic taking a big whiff of whisky, or a former smoker walking into an Indian casino. To make it worse, everyone was talking about how good everything looked: the software intern said it was a nice break from his project, and the one HR lady who voted for Vietnamese even said she was glad we went here.

When it came time to order everyone was laughing and smiling with the waitress. When she glanced over at me I tried to order the lesser of all evils: pork tacos. I asked if I could get the sp*cy sauce on the side and the waitress tilted her head at me like she didn't understand. Then everyone started laughing. The accountant guy said "Are you gonna want a straw with that, Chipotle guy!" and everyone laughed even harder. Fucking accountants. Of course when the pork tacos arrived they were covered with hot sauce. So much that it even made a little soup at the bottom of the plate. It looked like a artistic rendition of Dante's Inferno. I started to feel a premonition of a rumble in the depths of my stomach.

I couldn't make a scene about it at a company lunch. I ate the tacos trying not to touch the sauce that covered everything. Everyone was having such a good time, there were even a few beers on the table. The CTO made a toast with the whole tapping the dirty fork on the beer glass and everything. My head was swimming. When he mentioned my "Chipotle-fueled code reviews" I forced a fake laugh that churned my stomach like a boat on open sea. I clenched my fists and prayed it would end soon.

When it finally did and it was time to leave, I told everyone I'd be right back at the office, but that I was going to fuel my car first. The accountant guy said "Hey, bring me a Chipotle too!" Fucking accountants. I haven't had a Chipotle in over half a year. Nobody would even call me Chipotle guy if it wasn't for this a**hole. When I got to the gas station, I parked in a stall. My car was fueled this morning. I ran inside and found that the washrooms were one of those ones where you have to ask the guy for a key. So I hung my head and asked. When I finally got inside, I reached in my bag and my heart sank: No Jughead. I left them all at home - Damn my confidence!

I left the washroom after pretending to wash my hands and I heard "Hey sir! Washroom is for the customer only, sir". I bought a pack of gum, exited the store, and immediately threw it in the trash.

Back in the office I kept my eye on the clock. 2:30PM. Just two and a half hours before I can get home. I'm ahead of my work, I can just try to relax and I'll be good. So I did just that. I tried to find Jughead comics online, but they didn't seem very funny for some reason. Then I started feeling the warning sign. There was a pressure on my b*tthole region. I took a deep breath. The pressure got worse. I moved position and sat on my chair backwards like a cool middle-school teacher. It kept building. I closed my eyes and continued breathing. One Mississippi, Two Mississippi. The pressure continued to build. I heard a faint muffled sound from my stomach and let out a quiet "Uunghh". I even tried looking at Dilbert comics online but all I could find was news that Dilbert died from cancer. 4:30PM I started massaging my stomach, pulling up on my ribcage as if coaxing the crap into my lungs. Dilbert creator Scott Adams has died, January 13, 2026. My breathing started to slow. was abruptly dropped from syndication in 2023 after racist remarks. I doubled over in my chair, clutching my left b*ttock. "I had an amazing life, I gave it everything I had". I closed my eyes. It was over.

Our office is located in a large building and we share the washrooms with a couple other businesses. This meant I needed to walk out our doors and into a hallway that led to the bathroom. As I waddled my way out, the software intern got in my way. "Hey, would you be able to review -" I pushed past him, hand gripping my stomach. I waddled down the hallway, sweat covering my face. I went to open the men's washroom when the door ripped open in front of me. It was the accountant guy. Fucking accountants. He smiled at me, waved his hand in front of his face and said "Hey, that wasn't me haha". Then the smile from his face dropped and I saw his nostrils dilate. I pushed past him, moved into the furthest stall, locked it, dropped my pants and looked at the damage. I'll spare you the details.

I took off my underwear and wrapped them in toilet paper. I wiped my areas from top to bottom, you guys know how it is. When my eyes reached the bottom my heart skipped a beat: not only were my white socks no longer white, my dress shoes looked like I'd been working construction in the spring. I sat there and cleaned up best that I could. I threw my underwear and socks in the trash can, toilet paper in the toilet and flushed. It didn't go. I tried again and the water quickly rose in tandem with my heartbeat. I ran from the washroom back towards the office.

I reached into my pocket for the key-fob to let me back in and once again found my spirits dissolved. I forgot the keys back on my desk. That meant I needed to ring the door bell and have someone let me in. Ding Dong. Please don't be the accountant guy, please don't be the accountant guy, plea- the accountant guy was standing right there with a stupid smile on his face. "Hey, you have a nice vacation? Did you bring me back a Chip-" I pushed past him while feigning a smile. But as I did, I saw a hint of something on his face. Worry? Concern? Whatever it was, I stopped caring. I made my way to my desk, grabbed my things and made to leave when something caught my eye. Something on the carpet in my cubicle. Something brown. No! I looked for something, anything to wipe it with but there was nothing. Curse the modern digital world. I huddled over to the intern's desk and found some papers, some sort of notes for a computer engineering project. I ripped the papers away, moved back to my desk, and used them to wipe the object from the carpet doing my best to minimize the stain. I folded the paper in half when suddenly, someone arrived at my cubicle. It was the boss.

"Hey man have a good weekend-" His eyes glanced at the piece of paper I was holding with a brown stain seeping through. I followed his eyes, and looked back at him. "hehe... Chipotle." I forced a smile. His came out more like a grimace. As soon as I heard the office door close behind him, I counted a few seconds and then booked it for the door. I yanked it open and found the intern standing right there. "Hey good timing!" He cheered. "I just realized I forgot my computer engineering project. It's due tonight!" I looked at him with my best poker face. "Well, good luck with that." I scurried towards the washroom hoping to throw his crap-stained project in the trashcan before anyone found out anything more when I was stopped cold in my tracks: Right in front of the men's washroom was a janitor lady talking in fast Spanish to another janitor man. They had the whole cleaning trolley with them and a sign was posted on the door that said "Out of Order". They watched as I speed-walked past them, down the stairs, out the front door, and towards my car. The paper was still in my hand, brownness seeping through with every passing moment. I saw my car in the parking lot and was almost running towards it when I saw possibly the last person I ever wanted to see.

Standing by the car next to mine was the fucking accountant guy. He was talking on a earpiece, so I figured he wasn't in his usual conversational mood. I tried to shimmy past him when I heard him say "One second". He turned towards me, grabbed the paper out of my hand and said "Hey, Chipotle guy, what's this?" He opened the paper and stared. Seconds took hours. I watched his face go from the usual punch-able accountant face, to confusion, to shock, and then to a sort of green color, his mouth agape with disgust. I snatched the paper out of his hand getting the brownness on my thumb. "It's the Chipotle you ordered. Have a nice weekend." I ran into my car and sped away.

---

Thanks for reading guys. It really helps to get this all of my chest. I guess I learned that this stuff really is all one day at a time and we can never get too cocky. From now on, I'm always bringing extra underwear, extra Jughead comics, and I'm going to make up an allergy that can get me out of Mexican food situations. This has really helped me let go of resentment, and I'm going to practice letting it all go, providing the fucking accountant guy won't get in my way. Thank you.

IWNDWYT (I Will Not Defecate With You Tonight).

My mother met a new man in 2016. At first, everything seemed completely normal. They were happy together, and after about two months, they decided to have our first family dinner at a restaurant. It was going to be the four of us: my mother, her boyfriend at the time, me, and apparently his son. I was 17, and he was 18. Nothing about it seemed particularly special. My mom and I arrived at the restaurant and waited for them. Then he walked in...

The first thing I noticed was how confident he seemed. Not arrogant or anything like that—just comfortable in his own skin. He looked around the restaurant, spotted his father, and then looked at us. Our eyes met for a second before he smiled. I smiled back, probably a little too quickly, and immediately looked away. I remember thinking that he was cute, but nothing more than that. At least, that's what I told myself at the time.

I tried to avoid looking at his face, but it was almost impossible. Something about him kept drawing my attention. Was it his smile? His face? Even his hands, for some reason? I don't know, but there was just something about him that made me feel weird. I couldn't explain it, and honestly, I didn't want to. It was just a strange feeling I'd never experienced before.

We all sat down and started talking like it was any other family dinner. Our parents did most of the talking at first, while he and I mostly stayed quiet. Every now and then, we'd make eye contact, and I would immediately look away like I'd been caught doing something wrong. It was ridiculous because I'd known him for barely five minutes. He was just my mother's boyfriend's son. That's all he was supposed to be.

At least, that's what I kept telling myself. Eventually, dinner was over, and we decided to go back to our house for a drink. One drink turned into another, and before we knew it, it was around 2 a.m. My mom and her boyfriend eventually decided to go to bed, leaving the two of us downstairs.

He looked at me and asked if I would show him around the house. I agreed. We started on the ground floor, talking about random things and laughing more than I expected. When we finished, we headed upstairs toward my room. But as we reached the stairs, something happened that I still remember clearly.

He reached out and took my hand.

I froze for a second. I looked at him, and he looked back at me. Neither of us said anything. It was such a small thing, but somehow, in that moment, it felt like everything had suddenly changed.

We headed upstairs, and I showed him my room. Well, it wasn't really meant to be his room, but I told him that this was where he'd be sleeping that night since we didn't have a guest room. We made up a temporary bed for him, which was basically just a mattress on the floor. I couldn't bring myself to let a guest sleep like that, so I told him he could take my bed while I slept on the floor.

He looked at me and shook his head.

"That's not necessary."

We went back and forth about it for a moment before eventually deciding that we'd figure it out in the morning. Somehow, despite everything going through my head, we eventually settled down for the night.

That night, nothing really happened. We just went to sleep.

Or at least, I thought we did.

Just before he turned away, he leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

It lasted barely a second.

I didn't know what to say. I just stared at him, completely stunned. He didn't explain it, and neither did I. He simply smiled, turned away, and closed his eyes.

I lay there staring at the ceiling, replaying that tiny moment over and over in my head.

That was the first night I realized this wasn't just some silly little crush.

I was falling for him.

And I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do about it.

Should i continue this story?

I have never believed in ghosts or scary stories, nor have I ever seen a ghost, but a rather strange incident happened to me yesterday—this story is absolutely true; it occurred just yesterday. So, let me begin: I am a 19-year-old student living in a village with my family, and we do some farming as well. We had recently planted a rice crop, and yesterday, fertilizer needed to be applied. I also had to fetch some supplies from the field where the fertilizer was to be used. It was around noon; usually, people return home from the fields at that time due to the heat, so the area was completely deserted and quiet, with only a light breeze blowing. Because the path ahead was in poor condition, I parked my motorbike three fields away from my own (about 700 meters back). The heat was intense. I needed to retrieve some weedicide from the field. As I started walking forward, two crows flew in and suddenly began cawing loudly; I noticed they had perched on the overhead electric wires. As I moved towards my field, they kept pace with me, continuing to caw. I reached my field and picked up the weedicide, but then I spotted a weed plant. Just as I reached down to pull it out, a broken piece of glass lying in the water below cut my hand; the wound was deep, and I started bleeding profusely. I decided to go to the handpump to wash the wound thoroughly—it was extremely painful, and I had lost a lot of blood—and on top of that, the crows were still... They were cawing loudly; as soon as I started walking, black dots appeared before my eyes, and I couldn't plant my feet firmly on the ground. After walking a short distance, darkness clouded my vision—my eyes were open, yet I couldn't see a thing, and I felt utterly exhausted. There was no one in the fields except for those two crows and me. I lay down right there for a while. After resting, I felt I should get moving again; my bike was about 300 meters away. As I walked, darkness engulfed my vision once more, all while the crows kept cawing incessantly. Somehow, I managed to reach my motorbike. A little later, my uncle arrived and took me home. I had felt a strange unease there from the very beginning. After I returned, my father went to the fields at 3:00 PM to spread fertilizer. By 7:00 PM, he still hadn't returned; a phone call revealed that he had been admitted to the hospital. The doctor explained that he had come into contact with a weedicide, causing toxicity, but assured us there was no cause for alarm and that he would recover soon. We returned home from the hospital at 9:00 PM. My father then told me that two crows had been following him and cawing loudly; when the toxicity took hold, his vision had gone dark, and he couldn't hear a thing. Hearing this terrified me, as the exact same thing had happened to me. My father is completely fine now, though I have a slight fever. Yesterday, I dismissed it as a mere coincidence—nothing more—but today, when I went to the fields, I found those two crows lying dead on the ground. The sight frightened me deeply; I buried them and came home. This is the first time I have ever experienced something like this. Was it a coincidence? What did it mean? And what was the connection with those two crows?

I was with this girl for almost 2 years. We weren't perfect, but I genuinely thought we were building something together.

I was always there for her. If she had a bad day, I listened. If she needed help, I tried my best. I even started putting some of my own plans aside because I wanted us to work.

Then slowly, things changed.

Her replies became shorter. She stopped calling like she used to. Whenever I asked if something was wrong, she'd just say "nothing."

I kept telling myself maybe she was stressed. Maybe I was overthinking.

Then one night she told me she didn't feel the same anymore.

That's it.

No big argument. No cheating that I know of. No huge fight. She just said her feelings had changed.

The part that hurts the most is that I keep going through everything in my head wondering when I messed up.

I still care about her, even though I know I probably shouldn't.

Has anyone else had a relationship end like this? How do you actually stop blaming yourself when you don't even know what you did wrong?