We’ve been in the same crime-solving podcast and now is the time you want to reveal you’re a serial killer?

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Lorenzo Stamp
Race: Halfling – Elf (tinker) / Human
Age: 46, physically about 27
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 785 words
 

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I’ve had to take a few steps back from reading fiction. Of all the books I’d found recently, and I’d felt were interesting, there were either glaring errors or things that didn’t make sense and it was frustrating me more than not. This was across several different authors—at least, according to the names on the books they were but who knows they were not the same author under different pseudonyms. The writing style certainly seemed very familiar from one book to the next and of all those books, the furthest I managed to get was about three or four chapters in because I had to stop reading.

So, instead of reading, I’ve attempted to make a foray into the world of podcasts. They are things that I didn’t know how I felt about, at first. Plugging in, if you would, with headphones or earbuds has never been a thing for me but I didn’t want to just play the audio files on speakers so as to not be a bother to my pair so I tried headphones but I couldn’t wear them for much more than a few minutes before they started hurting my ears, I then tried earbuds and I had to try a few different types until I found one that hooked gently behind the ear and then came up into the ear itself. I can barely feel them.

I’ve only been wearing one so I can keep on hearing what’s around me. I tried wearing both at first, but it was so disorienting to just be caught up in the sudden fact that I couldn’t hear the outside world that I stopped almost immediately. I don’t know why I struggled with that. Maybe I just much prefer to be able to hear the world around me, even in a distracted sort of way.

In any case, having found good earbuds, I found myself looking through the podcasts and located a few that could have been interesting. Some were about mathematics—to no one’s surprise—others were about discussing random sciency subjects and I’m not sure how I felt about that one. One of the most recent ones I found myself listening to somewhat distractedly was a podcast about true crime.

The people who did the podcast would dig up cold cases and talk about them, discuss what they thought of them, talk about what they figured they would have done differently and, every now and again, they try to mock-solve the case. Not that they’ve done any solving so far that I can tell and, again, it’s all such older stuff that most of these things have long since passed.

The last episode I listened to, ended up on a bit of a different note. I know that they included what they did in the upload willingly, I’ve looked up how these things work and while you can do this sort of live thing, most of them used to record everything, put things together and then upload it to the platform. I know that this particular episode hadn’t been done live, they had little markers on their episodes that stated as much when that was the case. This one wasn’t.

They’d had a guest in this podcast that they’d had a few times prior but, at the very end, the regular host asked their guest a question, the answer seemed somewhat garbled—I don’t know why they included it—but the very final thing before all the sound cut out was the host stating that they’d had their guest on the show a few times now, working together on looking through these old cold cases and now they—the guest—was ready to reveal that they were a serial killer.

That made no sense to me. The whole thing ended clearly on a question, and it cut so abruptly that I have no idea what really happened. I looked at the next few episodes and they all had a new host attached to them. In a way, I feel like this is more of a mise en scene, something they’ve put together possibly because the host was leaving or something of the sort. I can’t imagine that they would leave this online and not talk about it in the next episode if something had happened.

Then again, maybe it’s just me and the way I go about things, but it still feels as though this would be the way I would have gone about things. I would have posted a brief episode explaining whatever that had been and all. Right now, I’m not sure how I feel about continuing to listen to this one, but I guess that we’ll see.

Is it too dramatic to say I owe you my life?

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Jeremiah Daishi
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human
Age: 33, physically about 25
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 793 words
 

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Denying that there was a time in my life when nature was out to get me would be a lie. I don’t know when it started. What I do know is that if not for Dennis coming in just at the right time, at least that one time, I wouldn’t be here anymore. It really is that simple and while I used to feel a little dramatic stating that I owed him my life, that is exactly what it is in the end.

It was only some years ago, too. I’ve always had an affinity with plants and everything green and nature but a few years back—a decade, maybe?—I sort of found myself being squeezed none-too-gently by some vines that had just seemingly come out of nowhere. It isn’t even that I was too exhausted to figure them out or try to will them back; they just didn’t listen to me. There was just something wrong with them—with me, we, later on, realized—that made them just want to, you know, lovingly strangle me until there was nothing left.

The greenhouse, after that particular incident, was a mess and it honestly took me days before I felt even relatively strong enough to approach that building of ours. It isn’t directly attached to the house, and, at that particular point, I was very glad for that. The vines really had come out of nowhere. There had been nothing growing in there that should have been able to form vines and yet, it had happened. When I try to think back about it, I don’t even know what triggered the whole event, just that it happened, and it still makes me uncomfortable to this day.

I think it took me two days before I even could really just properly talk again. My voice had been so rough from the events in the greenhouse that I’d gone quiet and had spent a lot of those two days sipping near constantly on sweetened lemon tea because it was the only thing that soothed the burning ache in my throat. I’d never imagined I would ever be terrified of plants, but I was for that week. I was.

Even the plants at home I avoided as though they would do me harm but, for some reason, those plants always behaved. Never once did they grow in any way, shape or form that they were not supposed to, they grew at their own calm pace, they did what plants did and that was all there was to it.

Later on, after I’d spoken to Tyron and learned a little bit more about my own gift and listening to the voices that were always at the back of my head, I never understood why the plants in the house behaved and the ones in the greenhouse hadn’t. He seemed to think that perhaps there had been just one particular plant that had been the culprit, possibly something new that had been transplanted recently but as his gift was more of the earth and soil and mine is to plant, these were speculations and even as I tried to think back, I hadn’t really brought in any new plants into the greenhouse.

It was where I tended to settle plants that were struggling a little and needed a bit more attentive care for a while, but the last plant I’d brought in had been a lovely orchid that had been dying and it had been in the main room. The back room is where the issues all started so even now, I have no idea as to what truly happened and why they did what they did.

I don’t think about it much anymore though I know I’ll never really forget it. It’s hard to forget an event that has shaped your life and, trust me, this event has shaped my life. I already knew what I was doing with my life, and I had a fair control over my gift, but this changed everything. This forced me to learn more about my nature. I know that dad has no idea who his real father is and what gifts might have been in his blood that have been passed down to us. That’s okay, though.

At this point, I mean, I’m still alive. I’m still good and my control over all of the plants that do surround us both in the house and in the greenhouse has grown. I feel comfortable in saying that I don’t think I’ll have the issue again, but I know better than to say never. It might, but if it does, I will be much better prepared for it and that’s all there is to that. At least, that’s how I see it.