r/story

So, last month, I was traveling alone from Dhaka to a friend’s wedding in another city. I had a few hours to kill at the airport before my next flight. While waiting near the gate, I noticed this older gentleman struggling with his bag and some paperwork. He looked completely lost and a bit overwhelmed.

I approached him and asked if he needed help. Turned out, he was visiting his grandson and wasn’t very comfortable with the whole airport system—ticket stuff, security lines, finding the right gate, you name it. I offered to assist him, helped him with check-in, guided him through security, and even showed him where to grab a quick snack.

As it turns out, the man was from a small village near Gazipur but rarely traveled alone. Helping him felt natural, and honestly, I didn’t expect much in return. But when he finally made it to his gate, he pulled out a small handwoven scarf and insisted I take it as a thank you gift. He said, “This is how my village says thanks—handmade with care.”

I thanked him, of course, but it stuck with me. Sometimes, a small moment of kindness can brighten someone’s day in unexpected ways. Plus, now I have a beautiful scarf that reminds me how a simple gesture made a stranger’s travel easier.

Has anyone else had a similar experience where a random act of kindness led to something meaningful?

It started with just one.

I was taking a shower when I got this weird pain in my right arm. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. I guess I’d been too busy to notice the irritation.

When my eyes landed on it, though, I immediately felt bile rising up in my throat.

It wasn’t a maggot. No, what I actually saw when I glanced down was what looked like a boil. About the size of a quarter, bright red and brimming with what I assumed was green and white pus.

It was hot to the touch. So much so that I had to draw my hand back as soon as I fingered it. It was like touching a glowing eye on a stove.

It sort of… responded to my touch.

Like I’d disturbed it or something.

Needless to say, showering quickly became my lowest priority as I hopped out and wrapped my torso with a towel.

I went to my bedroom and found some tweezers that I usually used for splinters and what have you. I started trying to pop the thing, but it just wouldn’t budge.

The pain was maddening, but the sight of it was worse. I needed this thing off of me. Tweezers refused to work, so I switched to pliers. I kept pulling and pulling until… pop.

The boil burst, and a puddle of syrupy, red, white, and green sludge coated about 6 inches of my forearm.

The pain subsided slightly, but it was replaced with a new sensation. It felt like there was something swimming through my blood and patching the hole in my arm.

I figured that it must’ve been some excess pus, so I just kept squeezing with my thumb and index finger until I caught sight of what actually lay beneath the skin.

I was forcing it through the wound with my squeezing. It was wriggling. It was squirming. And it was massive.

When its body finally poked out through the hole, I grabbed the tweezers again. It held on for dear life, taking chunks of flesh out of my arm as I pulled, but I removed it and examined it between the forceps.

A fucking maggot.

I couldn’t hold back the vomit anymore. I barely had time to grab a trash can before it came spewing out.

I sat the little fucker on my desk and burned it with a lighter. I swear I could hear it screaming in pain as the flame caused it to pop like a tick.

I hoped that’d be the end of it, but that hope was short-lived. It was like my entire arm started to pulsate and bulge after I took out what I thought was the source of the problem.

Boils started popping up all over my arm. From my wrist all the way to my shoulder. They threatened to move to my neck and head if I didn’t act fast.

It was like active volcanoes. I couldn’t even look at myself. All I could do was grab a knife and get to work. Well, a knife and a spatula. I needed something to bite down on just so I didn’t bite my tongue in the process.

The blade glided through the dozen or so boils on my forearm, sliding through them like hot butter as tears fell from my eyes and I stifled screams.

Dozens of maggots fell from each boil I removed. I had to stomp them into my carpet because they just kept crawling towards my feet.

My arm and shoulder were nothing more than raw, bloody meat covered in that syrupy liquid. It was like my body was more maggot than human.

There was an ocean of the things eating away at my dead flesh. I’d scrape them away with the blade, and hundreds more would pop up seemingly out of nowhere.

That’s when my vision started to get blurry. I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker. The world was swimming, and I was getting lightheaded.

I guess I passed out from the blood loss?

I’m not sure. Maybe it was the shock. All I know is, when I woke up… my body was completely healed.

I could still see the bugs writhing beneath my skin, and my carpet was still stained with pus and crushed maggots. But the pain was gone. My flesh was back. The only abnormality was one single boil right in the center of my forearm.

I stared at it for a few minutes.

Ultimately, I decided to leave it there.

There was no way I was going to go through that again.

So there’s a girl I’ve like for a long time and she used to like me to but we were very young like (10)
and now we’re 15 now she has a bf but I still like her and I think she still likes me to and we often talk and laugh together I don’t now what to do
Should I ask her?

I probably don’t have to explain how difficult it is to be a single parent. My son’s mom died during his birth. Since then, it’s just been me and him.

I tried my best to bring him up right. All things considered, I’m pretty sure I did a damn fine job.

He’s coming up on his 10th birthday, and he’s probably the most well-mannered kid I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I know that sounds like ‘parent talk,’ but I mean it with my full heart. I’m so proud of him. So proud to be his father. I just know he’s going to be an amazing man when he grows up.

Well, he would’ve been. He’s gone now. The entire house smells like cotton candy, and the scent is getting stronger by the day.

I’m not sure when this whole ordeal started. If I had to pinpoint an exact date, I’d probably say it was around August when he started to act a little weird.

School had just started back, and I was sending my sweet boy out the door to catch his bus. First day of 4th grade. Two more years before my little man was a big ol’ middle schooler.

I waited for him by the door, eyes glistening as I handed him his lunchbox and leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the forehead.

That’s when I noticed something.

He smelled… weirdly sweet. Like when you open a bag of jelly beans or circus peanuts or something.

I just figured it must’ve been that new shampoo I got him. I mean, the bottle itself looked like candy packaging. It was the only thing that made sense to me.

I guess I kept sniffing him a tad bit too long because, before I knew it, he was asking me to let him go so he didn’t miss the bus.

When he came home, though, the smell still hadn’t dissipated. I figured that after 7 hours, it would have at least worn off a little bit, but it was even stronger than when I first noticed it.

It wasn’t until we began talking about his first day of school that I realized something. The smell wasn’t coming from his hair at all. It was coming from his breath.

I asked him if he’d gotten into any candy at school that day, and he adamantly denied it.

Even still, I made him go upstairs to brush his teeth. A few minutes later, he was on the couch watching cartoons while I cooked dinner.

I whipped us up a couple of burgers, but as we ate, the smell of cotton candy still wouldn’t leave my nostrils. Obviously, I asked him if he’d actually brushed his teeth, and he seemed confused that I was even asking.

“Of course I did,” he chirped, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Does my breath smell bad or something?”

Just to be sure, I went and checked his toothbrush. It was wet. There was still spit in the sink. But, while I was up there, the smell was no longer present.

I didn’t want to embarrass him. I simply returned to the table, and we finished our dinner.

I tried to ignore the smell for the rest of the night, convincing myself that I was just going crazy and that it’d be gone by the next day.

That day came, and this time, I could smell the candy all the way from my bedroom. I followed it to my son’s bedroom and found him sleeping peacefully on his side.

However, when I went to wake him up, I found that his mouth was full to the brim with candy. Jelly beans, Nerds, Sour Patch Kids. All covered in spit and slobber. All unchewed.

I picked each candy out, piece by piece, before waking him up. I can admit, I was a bit frustrated. Not even by the candy itself, more so because of how easily he could’ve choked sleeping like that.

“Why did you have all this in your mouth?” I asked him.

“Have what?” he responded, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

I gestured to the pile of candy on his nightstand. He didn’t look guilty. He didn’t look nervous. He looked absolutely terrified.

He insisted he had no idea where that stuff had come from, but that just couldn’t be possible, right?

I kept asking him where he got it and just kept getting the same response.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“I swear I don’t know.”

What was I supposed to do? I just threw the candy away and sent him off to school.

The next morning, it happened again. Only this time, he really was choking. He kept vomiting up Lifesavers, candy corn, Tootsie Rolls, all covered in what looked like caramel rather than bile.

From that day forward, I was checking my son’s backpack every time he came home. I’d search his room. I looked in every hiding spot I could find. There was no candy in my house whatsoever.

But, somehow, every morning he’d wake up with a mouth full of candy. Every day, that sweet aroma of his became stronger and stronger.

Days turned into weeks. Things just kept getting weirder. He’d scrape his knee, and instead of blood, I’d find caramel oozing out of the wound. He developed dozens of cavities. I didn’t know what to do.

I think what pushed me over the edge was when I tasted him, though. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was some kind of primal urge when I snuck into his room while he was sleeping.

All I wanted was a taste.

I crept up to his bed, as silent as could be. I bent down, tongue hanging out of my mouth, the smell of cotton candy making me salivate as I pressed my tongue against his forehead.

Immediate sugar rush. Immediate guilt.

I shamefully ran back to my room, unable to get the taste out of my mouth. It plagued my mind for days afterward.

What started as curiosity soon became a craving.

It got to the point where every night I was sneaking into my son’s room for a taste. A dent was forming in his forehead like when you lick a lollipop repeatedly.

When he asked me about it, when he stared in the mirror, wondering why his head was becoming misshapen, all I could tell him was I didn’t know.

My addiction kept getting worse, though.

I started taking bites out of him. It started with his arms. Little nibbles at his fingers to get my fix. But once I ran out of those, I think I got a little carried away.

I gnawed away at his arms and legs, filling my mouth with that sweet, syrupy molasses he had been concealing within himself. It was a slow process, but it got a lot easier once he lost his ability to fight back.

It wasn’t until I got to his torso that I hit the jackpot. With each bite, the colorful candy inside revealed itself more and more. The scent of cotton candy burned my nose. Caramel covered my face, but I just couldn’t stop eating. Not until all of those goodies fully revealed themselves.

I found myself staring into a treasure trove of sweets.

And the only thing I could think in that moment was… Wow.

I’m gonna save a fortune on Halloween candy this year.