Loba

Hey, I've been reading through this thread since its inception, and have been on the fence about whether or not I should respond, the reason being that despite my after-death experiences, I am still quite afraid of death and so it felt to me that reassuring another person about these things would come across as hypocritical. I've decided to tell you about my experiences to help ease your transition. So, I have an autoimmune disease - the doctors could not find an exact name for what was going on with me, but they came to the conclusion that it was autoimmune related, as well as an irregular heartbeat. About every year and a half to two years, it flares up again and it creates problems in an organ in my body, to my scalp, to just general all around sickness, to chronic fever and so forth. These episodes have caused me to work through a lot of death related anxiety, as I don't exactly know how much time I have or when this illness will strike something important, such as my heart. In 2016, when my illness first flared up, and was at its worst, I had to go through a period of extreme self introspection. I had not heard of spirituality around this time and knew nothing about God. But I wanted to be ready emotionally and mentally for what was to happen. So what I did, is I spent many grueling hours going over anything that seemed out of sync with who I wanted to be as a person, anything that seemed disingenuous, pathological or anxiety-producing, I looked into it all. By the time I got done with this, it was about three months into this project, the real issue - my death anxiety, surfaced. I realized that I had to actually face these fears head on, and I did. I had on a song with a beautiful picture of the mountains in blue mist, when I looked at this picture, I went through my fear instead of skirting around it - and I became very present in the current moment. As I looked over the detail of this image, I began to feel absolute appreciation for its beauty. In that moment, God appeared. It was just behind all of my fears and traumas that life had placed over me, and it was as clear as day, and it said to me, "I exist". It was as if I always knew it was there, but had just been blind to it. It was so pure, and loving and genuine. The awakening continued. I learned that God is evolving to bring to Earth its love and perfection, that evolution is moving through a series of various offshoots in order to maximize the potential for the universe to witness itself, while aware of itself through its creations. There is a plan for everything and everything is in its proper place, this includes all of the plants and animals on this planet, everything moves through a series of divine feedback loops in order to build upon this. We are like God's bloom, it's flower, to witness itself, and this can be done through love and through the arts. As the awakening continued, through the song below I was able to hear angels in the music. It was like everyone who ever lived, who currently lives, and who will live, animals included, were all praising me for making this discovery. They were all reaching towards some singularity that was made out of pure love in the very center, as if each soul was a partition of the whole, all connected, all perfectly placed. Nothing out of order, and that my entire life and the pain that I went through was designed to allow me to awaken to this truth. It felt like stepping off of a carnival ride, and you could still feel the movements of the ride despite not being on it anymore, as though time and space were forever moving forward, but that I had stepped away from this - and what I realized was that I was always there, my soul, my awareness had always been there, forever, and that there was no death and that there was no birth. There was just Now. It was like a chorus of angels were singing their praises for me. And then the awakening dissolved. Altogether, the whole thing lasted about a half an hour with a period of 2 hours afterglow. I've had many more awakenings, ones with different entities, I've met my soul family and partner from the other side, I've done some research here and there on near death experiences as well, and this is what people generally say when they pass on - this is what to expect: You will pass away, and your awareness will move out of your body from the top of your head. Some people see in 360 degrees. You will either immediately flow upwards into a tunnel that will move you into the light, or you will stay in a waiting room for a short period of time that is pitch dark, from there someone will either come get you, or you will eventually see the light grow larger and you will move into it and become one with it. Around this time, the light will either orchestrate your life review, previous family members might be there, or religious figures/deities, each after death experience is uniquely tailored to you, the individual. As you go through the after life review, you will see everything, like a hologram from start to finish, where you see not only your own actions, but those around you and how you influenced them. Some people go to heaven and remain there, and there are different descriptions of heaven, some people decide to return to earth - it is said that we have the free will to return, so we can choose to relax in the afterlife for a while. It is similar to earth in how it looks, but is more "transparent" in that it isn't physical, and you can manifest what you desire much easier. Some people say they go to a hell realm. There is a way out of this, anyone who has gotten stuck there prayed. They prayed either to the light, to Jesus or to God, and asked for forgiveness. These experiences are very rare, but if they happen, that's the way out of that space is to pray. My belief is that because we are connected to God, either as a partition or as the whole, that we have a say in what we want to create for ourselves in the next life. If I were in your shoes, which in some way I am due to my own chronic illness, I would go through the journey of self evaluation, and also of writing what you wish for yourself in the next life. What do you want to create? I believe that part of the reason that we are here on earth is to develop a desire for what we want in the next step of existence. That the struggles that we face, the hardships, are put there so that we have some polarity, so we can appreciate what we get in the next life. I am so sorry that you are going through this, no one deserves to die young. Just know, that - I wish I could give to you a transfer of my experiences - just know that there are good things waiting. It absolutely isn't the end when it comes to physical death. The prophecy is real. God exists. Life goes on. Love is true. There is a plan. It includes you. And you will understand and know more about your role here and there once you transition.

Oh, my tiny human At 05:08 you break me apart again The space-time continuum Buckles and bends around your every twist and turn I can barely remember Life before You came crashing in on that day Crazy, beautiful you Blind me like the dawn After ashes fell on Pompeii Crazy, beautiful you Matt and I had a few more days to ourselves before he started work. During this time, he went hunting with Wyatt and brought home some buffalo portions for us to enjoy. It took two teams to take it down and Wyatt was the one who made the kill. Matt came home with some ribs, sirloin and two ears to bake just for himself. He also signed a contract over a few drinks with Wyatt after the hunt that would allow the restaurant to be returned to him within six months. I had spent these days working through my trauma and felt ready to leave it all behind. The one thing that was bothering me was that I would never get to see my family again, and knowing that they were out there somewhere and that I was stuck here made me sad. But Matt's good company mostly made up for this and it was a joy to be around him. I had distanced myself from him physically, not wanting any more gifts from The Mother until I felt that I had worked through what she had given me, but we stayed connected emotionally and Matt had no problem giving me the space I asked for. When the morning of his first day came around, we got up very early to get ready. It was still almost pitch black outside. We had a bath together, ate breakfast and I got dressed, hiding myself in the jacket that I still had with me before making our way to Maya and Wyatt's. I rode on Matt's back as he zipped through the streets. Matt wanted to leave early enough so that most demons would still be asleep when he brought me outside. He didn't want anyone to see me, and raced towards Wyatt's as quickly as he could. When we got there, he knocked on the door and Maya opened it, greeting us and then quickly ushered the both of us inside. She showed me the layout of the house while Wyatt and Matt went over what his responsibilities would be for the day. Matt would be in the back kitchen, cooking up the meat orders, and would be doing this for a few months until transitioning to a managing position. Once they had gone over everything together, Matt came over to hug me goodbye before taking off down the street with Wyatt. The two made their way to the train station, where they took a passenger train into the city and got off on Locust on Broadview to start their day. Wyatt spent the morning getting Matt resituated, but he normally worked at the Heartford location. "Your house is beautiful." I told Maya, looking through her artwork and the light animal taxidermy. "Thank you dear." Maya chirped. "Is there anything I can get for you?" "No, but thank you. Matt and I had a big meal before we came. So how do you do this style of artwork?" I inquired. All of the art that she did had the theme of wolves hunting down light animals, and it looked like every line was done with calligraphy in mind. As though there was a technique for each line in the anatomy of these paintings that was done in the same way every time, and with a single graceful brush stroke. "Oh! This could be an interesting lesson for you." She told me. "Part of our demon culture is that we take hunting very seriously, as you must know by now." I nodded. "And we love to share stories of our kills through the visual arts. We also carry out instructions on how to hunt each animal through these pictures. I get a lot of commissions for hunting scenes and it makes up the bulk of my work." She continued to explain. "We have a style of artwork that we have perfected over hundreds of thousands of years. We have a single brush stroke for each part of the animal and for ourselves, and this commemorates the grace and fluid movements of both the hunter and the prey." She took down a small picture off of one of her shelves and handed it to me to inspect. It showed a tiny scene with a light deer running gracefully ahead of a pack of three wolves. The designs were very stylized and swirly. "We use red backgrounds with gold paint. You will see these colour combinations used a lot. The red represents the blood of The Mother and the gold reminds us that we are her chosen people." I thought back on the colour scheme that Matt had for his bedroom and on the food train as well, and could see the same theme being used in her livingroom. "I see. How interesting." I handed the picture back to Maya, who placed it back on her shelf. "So how have you been? With all of your memories returned?" Maya inquired. "Good. Very good..." I said, avoiding the subject, looking closely at the bust of a light deer. I found it interesting that they had no discernable features beyond their shimmering, radiant glow and their coal black eyes. It was like having a room full of animal-shaped lamps. They were very beautiful, with an almost porcelain-like smoothness. "You like these?" Maya asked me. "Wyatt hunted them... He likes to take the heads home when he finds especially beautiful specimens and has them mounted as trophies." "I love them. You have an amazing culture. I would love to learn more about it." "In time... Would you like to paint something with me? I can show you the proper brush strokes. You can take one home for Matt." "I would love that. Thank you." Maya went to collect her painting supplies and we sat down together and she spent the day showing me each motion for every anatomical portion of the wolf. After a few tries, I would paint over the canvas and practice again. After a few hours of this, I had a nice looking picture that I felt was worthy enough to give to my partner. As we worked together on our paintings, I asked Maya about Wyatt. "So how did you two meet?" "It was Matt who introduced us." She explained to me. "I was a frequent customer of their restaurant many years ago and finally I just had to know who the face was behind that fantastic food. It was Matt. We went on a date at my request, but, as you know about him, he wasn't attracted. So he set me up with Wyatt and we very quickly built a connection and the rest is history." "Oh wow, you and Matt dated?" I said, concentrating on painting my lines. I was having trouble with the single stroke that created the wolf's feet, there were a lot of twists and turns that you had to do with your hands to make it look like a detailed little paw. "Just the one date..." Maya reassured me. "I tried to set him up with clients, I meet a lot of people in my line of work, and it never worked for him. I couldn't understand why. Now I know. That looks good!" I had finally painted a decent looking paw. "Thanks!" When Matt and Wyatt got to the Broadview location, Wyatt brought Matt into the kitchen, fitted him with an apron, and gave him some gloves and a cap to cover his hair. "It's been a while, you know?" Matt mused, while putting on a glove. "Yeah." Wyatt said. "We kept everything the same. There's no use fixing something if it isn't broken. So, we start at noon, you'll work until ten and we close around nine. We spend the last hour cleaning up. Be sure to keep your station spotless before your shift is over. You know the drill, man." "Yeah. Gotcha." "This should give you about two hours to get everything set up. If you need time to go through everything, make sure it's to your liking, have at it, man." Wyatt left his friend in the kitchen and headed back out of the hallway, walking a bit further down to the back of the building to spend some time in the manager's office located in the far corner. This is generally where Sophia spent her time and it used to be Matt's office years ago, but Wyatt decided he would spend the day there and would put Sophia out in the kitchen for a day. He hoped that the two of them would get along until he was able to transfer her to another location. Matt walked around the kitchen, inspecting its cleanliness and making sure everything was pristine. The kitchen was a basic off white colour with a white stone tiled floor, and it was set up where each specialty cook had their own station with the correct tools for the types of food they made. The chefs would run about ten plates at a time, and the entire meal was cooked all at once at these different stations. There were five of them. One for meat, pastas, vegetables, desserts, and drinks. When a person ordered their meal, it would be printed out on six slips of paper. The cooks would each get one and they would clip it on a thin bar right above their stations for easy visual access. Every stove pit was numbered according to the correct table. When the dish was cooked, it would be rotated around the room to be plated and then set on a table in the center where it was given it's last identification tag for the waiters to come and take to the appropriate table. When the dish went around the room, the chef would call out, "Plate six, or plate three!" before passing it on. There were five chefs in the kitchen, two dishwashers and two assistants, who would gather up the supplies needed and distribute them to the appropriate station, pass out food slips, and put the plated meals in the center of the room to be taken to the customer. After walking around the kitchen and getting a feel for his environment, Matt went to his station. Station one. This is where the meat was cooked. He checked the kitchen's cooling cellar and found his designated shelves where different types of meat were organized according to species and cut and memorized where everything was. He went over all of his tools. Knives, spatulas, oils, seasonings, clay pans, and checked to make sure that the stove pits were fully cleaned out. When everything was organized to his liking, he took a bar stool and sat down to wait for the rest of the crew to arrive. Everyone spilled in, one by one. Matt only recognized two faces. Josh and Sophia. Josh was a smaller male demon, about 6.5 feet who sported a buzzcut and had full sleeve tattoos of traditional hunting scenes all across his arms. He ran the baking section of the restaurant and was very efficient. He could run many different types of dishes at once and was extremely valuable to the team. He was always an upbeat guy, with a loud, jovial laugh and a great sense of humour. Josh, upon seeing Matt, ran over to give his old boss a hug and tried to play catch up, but Matt wasn't interested in having any long conversations with anyone and gave Josh short, terse answers to any questions he had, especially pertaining to his opened lock. When everyone got there, Wyatt returned and introduced Matt to the team, explaining that he would be taking over this location soon and that he was the original owner. Everyone knew of him. He was famous. When Sophia saw Matt, she glared daggers, unable to keep her eyes off of him. He was someone that she never wanted to see again. And yet there he was, about ready to take over her job, and with an opened lock to boot! When noon hit, the kitchen came alive. Order after order spilled in and before long, Matt was working all ten of the stove pits, moving different pans higher or lower, turning the meat, stirring, and adding spices at just the right time. It almost looked like he was playing a complicated instrument with the way he ran the stove. He also kept two roasts and a meatloaf slow cooking in the oven below. Sophia straightened up her outfit and walked over to him, honing in on her prey. "Matt." She spat. Matt ignored her, not taking a second to look up from his cooking. "What are you doing back here?" Silence. "Matt. I'm speaking to you." "Cooking. That's what I'm doing here, you know? Plate four!" He called, sending over a steak to the next station. "I noticed that your lock was open..." She continued to instigate. "I feel sorry for the sad creature who ended up with you. Were you even able to get it up this time?" Silence. Matt stirred some sauce into a pan of square-cut light deer chunks before pouring the finished dish into a flat bowl. He sniffed in mild irritation. "I guess not..." She laughed to herself. "Still bringing those gutter rats home?" "Yeah..." Matt entertained her bullying. He noticed her key was still closed. "I fucking love gutter rats... Plate two!" He called, setting the deer chunks off to the side. "Figures." Sophia snorted. She got close and sniffed him to see if she could get an idea of who he was with. No scent. "Some things never change." "You know, Sophia." Matt said, sucking on an upper fang. He was starting to get annoyed with her. "It doesn't matter what you fucking say to me, what you fucking think about me, you know? In a few months I'm taking your fucking job. You can't even fucking fire me, now get the fuck out of my space. Plate nine!" She gave a quiet snarl and left him alone. Matt was already devising a way to get even. He was generally a well mannered guy but if you tried to bully him then he would often find ways of passive-aggressively sticking it to you. He didn't do this very often, but when he did, he usually won. Matt worked hard his first day. The restaurant was always packed and today was no exception. He spent his two breaks and lunch actively avoiding his co-workers, most of whom had been trying to get to know him, and completely ignored Sophia, who left him alone for the rest of the day but tried to let him know through many frustrated glances that she was not happy about his presence there. The fact that he had a cord and she didn't rubbed salt in her wounds. She both hated Matt and wanted him badly and he couldn't care less for her, so she felt the need to take him down a notch because she couldn't have what she felt she deserved. He had corded and she hadn't, and once one is created there's no turning back. And there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it. He was a taken man. When the day was over, Matt spent an hour cleaning up his station and then went to go put away his apron, gloves and cap in his locker in the break room before letting Wyatt know that he was finished with his shift. Matt calculated the time it would take to get back to Maya's and the time it would take to return to Broadview. He wanted to bring me here to have a tour while everything was closed before taking me home. Wyatt would leave around ten thirty. By the time he got back to Broadview with me, it would be around eleven thirty and no one would be left in the restaurant. Perfect. He left the building and sat down outside across the street to wait for the passenger train to take him back to the station right outside of town. As he waited, he stared at the large lake that the restaurant overlooked. Van Elluin Lake. The yang-oriented light source was positioned right over the water and illuminated a small portion of it. The city lights reflected in its surface like a mirror. Beautiful. The bodies of water in the demon world were as red as blood and were in fact considered to be the blood of The Mother herself. The passenger train arrived and stopped. Matt got on, sitting in front so that he could get off as quickly as possible. He felt good, but tired. He stared out of the window as city lights flashed by and was lost in thought. He didn't feel that the restaurant belonged to him anymore and it felt foreign to be working there. He wanted to come back later that evening and do some things that would make him feel as though the space still belonged to him. Matt had a territorial streak to him. It's one of the things that made him so good at manifesting new rooms in his mansion. To manifest a room, you need to command a sense of ownership over that space, and this was something that was instinctual to him. If he didn't feel that he owned a space that he felt rightfully belonged to him, he would take the appropriate steps to reclaim it. After twenty minutes, the train stopped right outside of the residential area. He got off, walked across the bridge and then turned into a wolf and made his way back to Maya's. He would just miss Wyatt coming home if he got there soon. And if he continued to run with me on his back instead of taking the train into the city, then he would get to Matt's Place by the time it was completely empty. Maya and I spent the day working on art and she showed me how demons cooked and manifested fire. By the time Matt got to her home, we had already worked on a few pictures and made two meals together. We sat on the couch talking, after having just washed the dishes, when we heard a knock at the door. I ran to the door to open it and Matt was there. "Matt!" I leapt into his arms and he hugged me tight. He smelled so good. Like first class food, sweat and grit. "Matt, Maya showed me how to make traditional artwork and taught me a few cooking techniques!" "Let me, uh, let me see what you made." I showed him the tiny canvas that depicted my first hunting wolf and he took it into his hand and gave it a serious look. "This is pretty good for a first try, you know?" "I used to draw sometimes back on Earth..." I told him. "I can see that." Matt looked over at Maya, who was still sitting on her couch, smiling at us. "Maya. Thank you. If you need anything at all you fucking let me know, we're gunna head out." "Of course." Maya said. "See you both tomorrow." I put on Maya's oversized jacket, and followed Matt out the door. "I'm ready!" Matt turned into a wolf and I climbed onto his back, wrapping my arms around his neck and digging my feet into his sides. "Before we go home, I thought I would, uh, take you to my place on Broadview. Give you a tour. If you wanna go, that is, you know? What do you say?" He threw the idea out, giving me a choice. I agreed to go with him. The taste of what I saw a few days ago while on the train left me hungry to know more about what his life outside of the house was like, and the city of Van Bien was so colourful and alive that I couldn't resist getting another chance to visit it. "Great!" He said, running off in the direction of the city. I clung onto him for dear life for about forty minutes before we got to Locust on Broadview. When he stopped, I noticed the lake that the restaurant overlooked. I had not seen it before as it was on the other side of the train when I had my tour. The blood red water looked kind of eerie and so I was eager to get inside. The building was a solid white, with equally white ivy-like vines growing all along its front and sides. The words "Matt's Place" were written in big, bold golden letters, but I couldn't read it as I still didn't understand their language. I recognized the aquarium that spanned from the very top of the front windows to the bottom. The restaurant was closed and everything was dark inside, but the tanks were still lit up and so you could kind of see the interior of the restaurant from the street. Matt turned into a man and placed his hand over a pad on the front door. "This recognizes your fingerprints." Matt explained. "Wyatt never changed it, so I've always had access to this place anytime I wanted, you know? Let's, uh, let's go inside..." "Okay!" I said. He opened the door and let me go in first. When I got inside I looked at the aquarium that spanned along the windows, through the entire the ceiling and over the train stop. The light fish were displayed in what looked like a miniature ecosystem. There was a set of stairs that went over the stop, so you could get from one side to the other. The restaurant held twenty booths, ten on each side, a well-stocked bar in the very front and a bunch of bar stools with a long wooden table all along the train stop next to the aquarium. The walls were painted in a dark mustard colour and the carpet was a deep maroon. The booths and barstools were brown, and looked to be made of a very comfortable leather-like material. Matt let me walk around the dining area and gawk at the fish displays before showing me the kitchen. When we got there, he explained to me the process of working the kitchen and let me explore all of the different stations. He showed me the cooling cellar and pointed out the various types of food that were in it. When we were done there, Matt brought me further down the hallway and right into the manager's room that Sophia was currently using. "This is going to be my office in a few months." He said. The room had an aquarium that spanned along two sides, from the top of the windows to the bottom, and you could see the lake off in the distance in the front, and the lights coming from the closest building in the other. When the fish swam around, it made them look like they were little residents of the city. "Could you sit up here, please?" Matt asked, motioning towards a large, sturdy desk in the middle of the room. I did as he asked and hopped up, sitting on a bunch of Sophia's paperwork in the process. He moved the desk chair off to the side and then pulled me close to the edge, opening each leg and putting his body in the middle. He leaned down to passionately kiss me and pressed his groin into mine. "I want you to wait right here, okay? I'll be back in a minute... If you could, um, if you could please remove your clothes for me?" I agreed and Matt left the room for a few minutes. While he was gone I unbuttoned the jacket, slid off my dress and underwear and unbuckled my sandals. He returned with a few items from the kitchen. Some bottled oil, a bowl of small ice cubes, a whisk, a hand towel and a smooth white vegetable that looked a lot like a carrot. "Thank you, my good girl..." He said, taking note of my nudity. Matt set the items down in an orderly fashion on the desk and then positioned himself in between my legs again. He opened my lips and grazed a finger across my bead for a few minutes before flicking it into my body. Wet. Very wet. "I want to try something new tonight." He took his thumb and circled my butthole. "Is that okay with you? I'll be very gentle..." "Okay..." I said softly, covering my mouth with my hands. "But if it hurts too much you'll need to stop." Matt nodded and asked me to sit up so that he could tie the towel over my eyes. He didn't want The Mother to make an appearance. Tonight was going to be for him. He folded the towel and wrapped it, tying it in the back. After he did this, I leaned back down again and opened my legs for him. "What are all these things you've brought?" I asked. "Oh, these, uh, these are my tools..." He said, rubbing my inner thigh and taking a whisk, twirling it into my folds until my legs twitched and I squeaked from the overstimulation. "Too much? Let's try this..." He took an ice cube and rubbed it over my bead and then pushed it in and out of me. I began to writhe around. He did this until the tiny cube melted from my warmth, and then took the carrot-shaped vegetable and coated it liberally in oil before gently inserting it into my ass. He see-sawed the smooth vegetable back and forth as it stretched me open while he rubbed me at the same time. The sensation of being slowly filled was mildly painful, but the pleasure that came from his skillful fingers cancelled this out. He pulled the vegetable all the way out and slid it in again and repeated this until he felt that I would be able to accommodate him. Matt removed it, still glistening with oil, and set it on the table next to the whisk right on top of Sophia's papers. He unzipped his jeans, pulled down his boxers and rubbed some more oil across his hardened length before sliding it into me, all the while slowly circling my little ball of flesh with another ice cube. I tried to relax as I felt his slick head easily pop in. I tensed up for a moment and he stopped and waited until I was ready before slowly rocking until it was all the way in. He stayed like this for a few moments, enjoying the unique tight sensation, and took the ice cube, dragging it up my navel to one of my breasts and circled it around until my nipple was hard. When the ice cube fully melted, he started to thrust. I could feel the entirety of him as he slid in and out of my body, rubbing my bead with his thumb until I came. He continued a soft, slow and steady pace, drawing out orgasm after orgasm for about twenty minutes. When he felt close he pulled out, just in time to spurt his liquid all over my stomach, while getting some in my hair and on my face. A few stray splatters of cum found their way onto Sophia's precious work documents. Matt took his hand to wring out everything that had collected on the tip of his head and then rubbed it into my inner thigh like a lotion before taking the rest of it and rubbing it all the way into my skin until there was nothing left but the strong scent of him. "Thank you..." He whispered. He pulled up his boxers and zipped jeans, lifted me up and removed the towel from my eyes before collecting my jacket, dress, underwear and shoes. "You can put these on later, let's um, let's go to the bar. I wanna have a drink and a smoke and then we can bounce." The desk used to belong to Matt and he remembered leaving some things in it. He put his hand under a secret compartment in the desk, manifested the appropriate space and then pulled out the demon equivalent of a cigarette, which was made from a plant leaf called 'mishwin', that when smoked made you relaxed and mildly high. Due to everything being made from a unified collective imagination, and only being partially physical, things didn't deteriorate and the cigarette was as good now as it was five-hundred years ago. He closed the compartment and lead me out of the room, but not before taking a quick and satisfied look at what he'd done to Sophia's work space. He left the glistening vegetable, the bottle of oil, the whisk, towel, and bowl of melting ice cubes sitting in disarray on top of the various, now scattered documents. The room smelled strongly of his sex and resting on some of Sophia's bank statements were three thick smatterings of cum. Matt grinned and shut the door behind him. Wyatt would be at the Heartford location tomorrow and she would return to work the next day with the room completely filled with his scent. She would have to spend the day working in there and he had complete deniability. Matt finally felt that he was reclaiming his space. Matt ushered me back through the hallway to the dining area and asked me to sit on a bar stool until he finished his cigarette and drink. I sat down, with the backdrop of the fish behind me next to the lit up human-like mermaid display. The light from the aquarium softly illuminated my body. Matt sighed and took a good look. He had the mermaids commissioned when he met Violet, but didn't stick around long enough to appreciate them. He went into the bar and pulled out a few ingredients and made himself a cocktail, then hopped over the counter and sat with his drink. Matt manifested a small flame at the tip of his finger and lit his cigarette, smoked it and enjoyed his drink, staring at me the whole time. He didn't take his gaze off of me even once. I gently swayed the bar stool from side to side with the tip of my toe, and shyly looked back at him and into his intense, glowing cat's eyes. Seeing his human lit up in his restaurant next to the aquarium statues gave him a sense of ownership. This was his place. Matt's Place. When he got to the end of his cigarette, he put it out under the counter and tossed it into an ashtray, then took a quick swig of his drink before hopping off the counter to hand me my clothes. "Here..." I took them and put them on. "Let's go." We left the building, and when we got outside he turned back into a wolf and bent down to let me climb up onto him. "Do you need to lock it?" I asked. "No, no one can get in." He replied. "You know, let's take the long route home tonight." "Okay." He instantly took off, circling around a wide path on the edge of the lake as I tightly held onto him, my face resting against his fur and feeling the anatomy of his form as he ran. I peered out at the blood red waters and the light source off in the distance shining bright over the surface and thought of the spirit of Maya's art. Matt was as elegant as one of her paintings. I leaned forward to whisper into his ear. "I love you..." You've got the devil in your eyes You went and took me by surprise Say what you wanna say I won't go back If you wanna hit the road then let's go then Let's just go and see the world and just show them What it really means to live life golden Yeah we're golden, baby girl we're golden They about to see us shine 'cause we're golden They can never break us down 'cause we're golden They about to see us glow 'cause we're golden

I guess it's a stereotypical day for someone like me Without a nine-to-five job or an uni degree To be caught up in the trappings of the industry Show me the locked doors, I find another use for the key And you'll see I'm well aware of certain things that can destroy a man like me But with that said give me one more, higher Another one to take the sting away I am happy on my own, so here I'll stay Save your lovin' arms for a rainy day Matt jumped down the steps from his front door in one giant leap before turning into his wolf form and raced off to Maya and Wyatt's. He had a few different emotions churning around. On the one hand he was very happy to have had our morning together. I had taken the right initiative to maintain eye contact with him and to let him know that I loved him, and this made him feel special and energetically reinvigorated. On the other hand, he understood that I was in pain emotionally and didn't know what he could do to fix this for me beyond giving me the extra space that I asked for. He could see that my life was becoming a bit more resolved now that I had my memories back, but he wanted to see me happy and thriving and not stuck in the past. He was filled with a renewed sense of purpose at the prospect of returning to work, and stopped for a moment to let out a loud, passionate, "Awooooo!" of joy before continuing on his way to his friend's house, taking long graceful strides as he made his way through the neighborhood streets. When he got to Maya and Wyatt's he turned back into a man, quickly hopped up their steps and knocked on the door three times, with a wide eyed, eager expression plastered on his face. Wyatt answered moments later. "Matt! Hey buddy. It's a bit early in the week for hunting, what's up?" "Hey, can I come in? I wanted to have a chat with you, and, uh, maybe Maya if she's home..." Wyatt moved away from the door and indicated with his hand that it was okay to come in. Matt stepped inside and walked into their livingroom, which was filled with Maya's artwork depicting hunting scenes in golden calligraphy styled strokes and taxidermy busts of various light animals that Wyatt had commissioned. Their livingroom had the common dark red and mustard colour scheme that demons used and their couch and two brown chairs were covered in woven blankets and scattered with little decorative pillows. The floor was a dark wood and had a large hide from a light buffalo that rested in the middle of the room. There were pictures and canvases everywhere that held Maya's completed and incomplete works of art on them. The lighting of the room was very warm and the overall feel of the house gave off a comfortable, lived-in impression. "What do you want to talk about, man?" Wyatt asked. He noticed that his friend seemed to be in good spirits today. "You thirsty? Want anything to drink?" "No, I uh, I'm good." Matt made his way over to the couch and sat down in between a bunch of blankets and pillows, tossing some of them aside. "I wanted to let you know that I'm gunna take you up on your offer. I'd like to come back to work." Hearing this left Wyatt beaming. "Really? That's fantastic news, Matt." When Matt left the house, I decided to take the time to go over my life once more and to try to get used to my new body. I took the large framed mirror that he had on his dresser and propped it up on his bed, using one of the feather pillows to keep it steady. I took the other pillow and held it close to my chest for comfort and stared at my reflection in the mirror for a long time. Just a week ago I was a human being, a middle aged woman in an average looking body with an average looking face. Now I look like a teenager again and absolutely nothing like I used to. And yet Matt said this is the real me. The form taken each time in between my life and death cycles. I leaned in to inspect my face. No pores, no blackheads, not even a single wrinkle. My blonde hair was perfect. Shiny, with soft, bouncy curls. No body hair, flawless skin, a gazelle-like body, and a perfectly symmetrical angelic little face... "If I looked like this while I was alive I probably wouldn't have killed myself." I said jokingly. I had always wanted to be a beautiful woman and I missed my youth when I lost it, but now that I was sitting here in this new form, it felt very foreign to me. Like someone else was looking back from the mirror's reflection and it made me feel uneasy. "My name is Annie..." I reminded myself. "And I died. My name is Annie. And I died. My name is Annie. And I'm dead. Hello, new me..." I pressed my forehead to the mirror. "You will have to get used to seeing out of these eyes." I gripped the pillow tightly as a few stray tears escaped. I repeated some of what Matt had told me the night before. "You were born in Arizona. You had a mother, a father, a brother. You were sick. Very sick. If it wasn't from suicide, it would have been something else. You were lost. You had no choice. And now you're here, in a completely different world with people that you don't understand and you have a new boyfriend. And your soul is stuck within his. Forever. And he knows everything about you. Every embarrassing moment, every flaw, every insecurity. And he still loves you... you're loved. Isn't that weird?" Maya, upon hearing Matt's voice, came out of the couple's bedroom to greet him. "Is that Matt?" She was dressed in a white kimono and had braided her hair into spirals pinned on the sides of her head. She wore black lipstick and matching nail polish. "This is unexpected. So how did Annie enjoy our little trip last night?" She came over to sit next to him on the couch, moving some of the pillows to make a space for herself. "You know, I'm not sure. When I brought her home I told her about her past life and The Mother gave her all her memories back this morning. We uh, we had sex again and she popped up in my eye while we were going at it, you know?" Matt ran an anxious hand through his messy hair. "She, uh, she wants some space to work through it..." "Oh no..." Maya placed a hand over her mouth. "Is she okay?" "Yeah, she is doing better, but I'm sure I'll find out more when I get home, you know? I uh, I came here to discuss some things with you both." Matt continued. "He wants to come back to work!" Wyatt interrupted. "I can get you set up in a few days, man. You can start in the back and we'll move you up to management in a few months. If everything works out and you feel ready for it, then I'll hand everything back to you in six months tops. We'll get a contract ready. By the way, Sophia's the manager now, but I can relocate her to the Mington location. She isn't doing well with Broadview, I think there's too much traffic." "Fuck. Sophia's still working there?" Matt sniffed. Sophia was one of Matt's very first sexual encounters. She was a very beautiful demon woman with a tantalizingly perfect hourglass figure, but she had a terrible personality to go with it. She really liked the idea of cording with Matt, especially because of his wealth and social status within the city. When they tried to have sex he couldn't keep an erection and, feeling completely embarrassed about the whole ordeal, he decided to end the night early. She took it personally and told everyone who worked in the restaurant that he wasn't well endowed and that he would never make another woman happy, and often publicly degraded him to cope with her own irritation that nothing ever panned out between the two of them. Before Matt quit his job, he had admitted to a few colleagues that he had brought a human home and that he was caring for her. Violet. He mentioned that he was developing feelings for her. Upon hearing this, in a fit of jealous rage, Sophia spread rumours throughout the three restaurants that he had a fetish for "gutter rats". Matt was actually a very attractive prospect to a lot of demon women but not finding them sexually appealing, he rarely took notice and had a string of broken hearts that, for the most part, he was completely oblivious to. He knew that when he went back to work, she would give him hell for being in the position to eventually take over her job. "Fuck that bitch." He muttered under his breath. Wyatt chuckled. "I know Matt." Wyatt knew about Sophia's temperament. "It's going to be okay, man. It's just a few months with her." Matt looked at the ground and sucked on his upper fang in irritation. "Matt, I am so happy for you." Maya piped up. "What made you change your mind?" "Well... I have someone now. And I love her. So... I feel fucking good, you know, Maya?" The two of them smiled at one another. Despite being Wyatt's wife, Maya absolutely adored Matt and wanted to see him happy. Before she met Wyatt, she was very interested in Matt and they had gone on a date together but he didn't feel a connection so he introduced her to Wyatt, thinking that they would be a better match. And he was right. Weeks later, they had a cord between them. She was always trying to find ways to bring him out of his shell and to help him facilitate a connection with someone. After he had found a partner for her, she had wanted to return the favour. Hearing this news was music to her ears. "She's waiting at the house for me. So I don't wanna stay here too long. But I have a favour to ask of you." "What's that?" "My house isn't safe to leave a human alone in. Could I, uh, could I bring her by in the morning before I head to work to stay with you, Maya? I can't just leave her in my room all day. It won't be forever. It's just until I can figure something else out." "Matt, of course!" Maya exclaimed. "I can teach her about demon culture while you're away. We'll have a great time." "I don't like the idea of a human staying in my home..." Wyatt intervened. "But if it will get you back into the kitchen, then this is fine. Temporarily." He added. "Be sure to bathe before you come." "Thanks Wyatt." Matt reached out to shake his hand. "I appreciate this so much, you know? But I gotta get going now. I just wanted to discuss this with you both and see if we could all get on the same page." Matt stood up. "I'll see you in a few days to go hunting, man, and maybe we can write up that contract afterwards. Go over everything. And then you can set a date on when you want me to start. Sound good?" "Yes. And Matt? I have something I made yesterday. Light deer roasts with mingfruit jelly marinade. I want you to take some of this and share it with your human. We'll see who's the better cook now, man." Wyatt gave a cheeky smile and left to get the roasts. He returned a few minutes later with a bag that contained the wrapped up meat. Matt thanked them both graciously and left the house with the bag of food in his hands. Once outside, he put the bag handles in his mouth, transformed into a wolf and made his way back up the hill. I went over my life in great detail, contemplating and speaking out loud in the mirror to my renewed image. I thought about all of the spiritual awakenings that I had while alive and how they had left subtle clues for me that this would be my fate. I had always felt that there was someone meant for me, just outside of reach and somewhere beyond the constrains of my designated reality. I wanted to speak to The Mother and to thank her for what she had done for me. I addressed her directly, "Hi..." I said sheepishly, looking at my reflection. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I wanted to thank you for Matt. He's a really wonderful person and I am so glad to have him. I also wanted to thank you for giving me back my history..." I held tightly onto the pillow and gently rocked from side to side. I was feeling anxious to be communicating with her. "I don't think I could have managed here without my memories." "You have created a beautiful world. Your people are very lovely... I don't know much about their culture or their traditions, but their cities are stunning and their food is delicious. Everyone on Earth equates demons to being these evil monsters. I had no idea that they could be normal, loving and so understanding. Just like human beings can. If it weren't for Matt's eyes, I would forget that he is a demon and not a human! We are so similar in a lot of ways..." I continued. "This connection between us feels right. It feels natural and easy. I'm happy, and so grateful that you picked me out to be with your wonderful son. I just thought I should let you know that." I didn't know what else to say to her and decided to end it on that note. I curled up into Matt's red velvet blanket to take a long nap. I had been oversleeping a lot in this new world. A large part of it was due to the stress of these changes coming at me all at once. There was so much to take in and I didn't know how to process it without getting a lot of extra rest. When Matt got home, he quietly moved the mirror back onto his dresser and then went to the kitchen to cook the light deer for us to have for dinner. He let me sleep in peace for a few more hours until the early evening hit. He came back into the room with a dinner tray and gently woke me up, asking me to sit with him on the rooftop again. I agreed and we both curled up together to enjoy Wyatt's meal while watching the stars twinkle and the souls move through the band in the sky. Matt told me about the discussion he had with his friends and his plans for me. I let him know that I was coming to an active resolution with my history and passively mentioned to him that I thought he was the better cook. Upon hearing this news, he took my face into his hand and rubbed a soft thumb across my cheek. "Good girl..." Say, say, my playmate Won't you lay hands on me Mirror my malady Transfer my tragedy? Got a curse I cannot lift Shines when the sunset shifts When the moon is round and full Gotta bust that box, gotta gut that fish My mind's aflame We could jet in a stolen car But I bet we wouldn't get too far Before the transformation takes And blood lust tanks and Crave gets slaked My mind has changed My body's frame, but, God, I like it My heart's aflame My body's strained, but, God, I like it

If there is an apocalypse, they'll survive... for a time, they'll just die slower than the rest of us. Which, in it's own right is also a well deserved fate for people like this. Slow death. With rotting corpses and meat everywhere. Even in places you wouldn't expect like in the washer or on a few rooftops. But then when resources start dwindling, the tiny armies won't be able to keep going and they'll fight amongst themselves or maybe even off the billionaires for access to the luxury bunkers. Then more corpses and meat. What a dream... I mean... what a terrible, terrible tragedy.

I dunno, I think this whole raising your consciousness, doing this, doing that, blah blah is old news. Everyone keeps adding these rules they need to follow for themselves to maintain a high state of consciousness. Be around people, or don't be around people. Personally, as a super introvert, I can tell you that it isn't fun not being around others, but like Leo pointed out to another person here, I am inept to the max so it is what it is, but I find that your body feels better, your emotional state is more regulated, you have an easier time maintaining a sense of reality and of sanity if you have people around you and you socialize to some degree. We are pack animals for a reason, you know? We aren't meant to go off into the wild all alone without anyone else. I think a nice balance is where it's at. I wish I knew how to socialize a little more because when I have it, it's nice and when I don't, it sucks. Everything in moderation. I once spent seven years in near complete isolation, just going out to get groceries once a week and to spend time with family once a week and that's it, and it literally drove me batshit crazy, by the tail end of that seven years was up, I was crying nearly every day, I didn't take care of myself and I just wanted to die, I was paranoid from not having other people to mirror a sense of cohesive reality - humans are not built to avoid their own kind. We need each other. Just my 2c. Now I live with family and I have had no psychotic delusions, I feel more integrated with the rest of the world, I'm not scared for my life nearly every day. That's another thing, when you are on your own and you have no one, your mind knows that it can't completely survive without a group and so your body lowkey produces cortisol 24/7. It takes a special kind of person to be able to isolate themselves from the world and come out unscathed. Most humans need a group. I am for the camp that in this world, you need a little bit of it, at least, to be a happy person. Maybe not immersing yourself in it everyday, but throwing society out the window is a bad idea.

You got a fast car I want a ticket to anywhere Maybe we make a deal Maybe together we can get somewhere Any place is better Starting from zero, got nothing to lose Maybe we'll make something Me, myself, I got nothing to prove So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk City lights lay out before us And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone This is part of an ongoing (poorly written) story - please see the previous page to start. I followed Matt into the kitchen and sat on the counter to watch him make our breakfast. He took out some supplies from the cooling cellar. Flour, light eggs, milk, cream and butter made from a light goat, baking powder, sugar, and mingfruit extract. He set them all on the counter and got a few bowls, a whisk, some spoons, a spatula, and a clay pan. I observed him whisk some cream in a bowl while I swung my feet back and forth at the edge of the countertop. "So why did you leave your restaurants in the first place?" I inquired. He seemed to really love to cook and he was good at it. I couldn't see why he would want to quit. "It's a long story." He said, adding some sugar and mingfruit extract to the cream before whisking it again. "It's because of a girl. Like you." "A girl like me?" I watched him take a taste of the whipped cream, and then add more extract. "Yeah. Um, like I said, it's a long story. But, uh, I'll tell you... So, demons are brought into the world with the purpose of having a special connection with someone, you know?" He looked at me. "A partner. A lover. But first, we build ourselves up. We spend a long time cultivating ourselves before we bond to another person. Everyone has a place in this society, and because we live forever we are given a lot of time to figure out what that is, and to develop it into something great. And uh, I always wanted to do this. Cook. You know? I figured that portion of my life out pretty early on. I fucking love to hunt, and I fucking love to cook. And I got good. Really good. Me and Wyatt. Together. We were a team." I listened closely as he set aside the whipped cream and began to mix the other ingredients into a batter. One by one, he poured each ingredient into the flour and stirred them together as he spoke to me. "At first, I thought I was a normal guy, you know? I had everything going for me. My life was in order. Wyatt eventually found Maya and I thought I would find someone in time, but it never happened. And uh, I tried. I tried to open my lock and I, uh, heh... I couldn't, I couldn't even get it up half the time. I didn't know why. I thought something in me was broken, you know? Maya kept bringing me new women, and I'd play along. I'd go on dates with them. But nothing came of it." He turned on the stove, greased the clay pan with butter, waited until it heated up and then poured four small round cakes onto it, and flipped them over every so often. "I felt depressed, you know? But I kept up appearances... for a while. To make everyone happy, to fit in... and then, um, on my way home one night I noticed a human girl wandering around the city and she looked so lost. I couldn't just leave her there, so I brought her home with me. Her name was Violet." "Violet?" "Yeah. She, uh, she looked a lot like you... A little older, a little taller, but very similar. I never did get her history, though. She stayed with me for about a month and I took care of her. I fed her, clothed her, I taught her about my world... and my life... and... and I felt something, you know? For fucking once. I, uh, I think it's the frailty, you know?" He took the first batch off the pan and made four more. "It makes me feel good. To be needed. But then I got a revelation one night from the creator that she would be brought back to the band of souls in the sky and I was told to bring her up to my rooftop so that she could be collected and returned to her rightful home. And I did... I hugged her right before the light took her away... She turned into an orb of light right in my arms and floated off into the sky. Back to the band. I uh, I watched her leave until I couldn't see her anymore and the next day I quit my job and gave everything to Wyatt." I felt a tinge of jealousy learning that I wasn't Matt's very first love, but swallowed these emotions and continued to listen to his story. It was fascinating to learn this about him, despite my possessiveness. He poured four more cakes into the pan and began to cook them. "I realized that they always return to where they're supposed to be going. That, uh, that you can't connect with one the way that a demon connects with its own kind, you know? So I gave up. I helped more souls as I found them. But they always left. I kinda figured my love would always be a one-sided thing. But then you came along, and it happened for me. There's a cord connecting us. And so now, I uh, I wanna go back to work. And I want to hunt for you and take care of you. I can live like a normal fucking person now, you know?" He removed the last of the cooked cakes and set them on a plate with the others, and then took a spoon and put a line of cream in the middle of each one before rolling them up. After he plated them, he poured two cups of juice and set them on a tray. "Let's go to the library. You wanted some time to think and I have some research I want to do." I hopped off the counter and followed him back to the wire room, where we took a set of stairs down to the library. When we got there, he brought the tray over to the table in the middle of the two plush chairs in the corner and we sat down to eat together. "You don't have to feel jealous, you know?" Matt said, taking a cake and biting into half of it. "What, no, I'm not jealous!" I lied. "I could tell." He replied, still chewing his food. "We have a cord. You can't hide that shit from me." I swallowed heavily, and took a small bite off of one of the cakes. It had a light, fluffy texture and a sweet flavour, while the cream in the middle was rich, buttery and fruity. Mingfruit tastes similarly to fresh blueberry jam. They were absolutely delicious. "Okay, I am. But I know that it's not a big deal..." I admitted to him. "I just wanted to be your first one." "You are." He stated plainly. "Waking up to something that you desire for yourself isn't the same thing as actually cording with another person, you know? One is still based on a fantasy and the other is, uh, it's a genuine connection. We demons, we don't take these things lightly. Once this happens, that's it. It's done. There is no other one. It's just you." He licked his fingers and took gigantic mouthfuls from his cakes. He wanted to finish quickly so that he could get started with his research. He was interested in learning more about The Mother's influence and to try to trace why this connection happened to us. I let it go and worked on my own breakfast. I found Matt to be a very understanding person. Matt set his dishes down on the tray, got up and wandered through certain sections of the library, picking out a book here and there, and then placing it back when he was done. He would pace back and forth from one isle to the next while he read, his eyes darting from side to side as he finished a page within twenty seconds. Demons are able to absorb and remember everything that they read. They're lightening fast learners and can get through a book in no time at all. I sat in the chair and thought about my life. All of my memories. From the time I was little until the time I died. I thought about what being alive felt like and I thought about how it felt to die from an overdose. I thought about the fear that I had in my last moments and the sense of regret for what I had done and I remembered how I felt when I realized that there was no turning back. I thought about how it felt to be lifted out of my body by The Mother, and how she held me closely to her before dropping me off here. I looked up at Matt. He was running a hand through his messy hair and one of his little fangs had gotten caught on his lower lip while he was frenetically pacing from one side of the library to the other. Snaggletooth. He gave me a quick glance before returning to his book. "I found something." He announced. "What is it?" I asked. "What's this symbol?" He walked over and showed it to me. It was a yin-yang. "That's a yin-yang. I don't know much about them. They spin into one another... darkness moves into light, and light into darkness. Masculine and feminine energies. Balance. That's all I know." "Yin and yang! I see, now." Matt recognized these words and had a good understanding of how these energies worked together. "I know all about that. I didn't know you humans knew about energetic polarity... Hey, that's like us, you know? I move into you and you move into me. Like a rotation, a circle." I nodded, but didn't understand what he was getting at. "So..." He continued. "So, maybe that's the reason for all of this. Maybe these two orientations are meant to come together? Light and dark." I started to see where he was coming from. "So you guys don't use this symbol?" I asked him. "No." He shook his head. "Maybe this is how things are unified, you know? That light and dark is supposed to meet together, to blend... it's destiny. What do you think?" "This could be possible... seeing what The Mother has done for us... but I really don't know..." "Fair enough. We'll keep looking. How are you doing?" "Just thinking about my life. I want to go over it, accept what happened and then move on." "That sounds good." "Matt, can you tell me anything more about The Mother?" Matt set his book down on the table and sat in the chair next to me. "Sure. What do you want to know?" "Anything that you can think of that I might not already know." "Okay... well, let's see. I was, I was, uh, born from her. I don't really remember her... Every year about four new souls are created from her energy. She made this planet around this particular light source to offer her people sustenance. When we, uh, started forming, we were just smoke in the miasma. No bodies, just consciousness, you know? But as more of us were born, we began to create a collective reality and we developed physical bodies. They aren't physical in the same way that a human body is, they're created from a collective imagination. Her energy runs through all of us, connecting us all together. That's why eye contact is so important. We can see The Mother's love for us. We, um, we are the first race that she made from her love - the Womb of Life - that ended up creating a balanced society. It's the reason that connection and partnership is so important here, it keeps reality solid, structured, and without it we would dissolve back into the miasma." I stared at him, wide-eyed, taking it all in. "Her energy is chaotic and violent, and so most of her creations destroy themselves or they feed on light sources from grey-oriented planets such as yours and cause world-wide disasters for your people socially and culturally. They, uh, they do it through memetics. Part of the reason that humans are unable to move forward is due to the influence of her rogue offspring. But The Mother herself, she is beautiful, untamable, like the lightening reflected off of a tornado, you know? She's one of the deities that yin-oriented creations meet at the end of their lives, if they have a life span. Being connected to her love, and having a body created from a unified consensus reality, we don't age and, uh, we don't die. The exception to this rule are demons who were forcefully uncorded early on in our history. If a demon loses the cord to its partner, then it will without a doubt go off somewhere to kill itself. If you lose that, you don't get it back and the whole point of being alive for us is to have it, you know?" I was starting to understand the gravity of what this connection between us meant to him. Not being able to pair bond was a matter of life and death for them. "The Mother gave us the lock and key system so that we, uh, we could share her love and maintain a sense of reality. The creator made The Mother from love, and The Mother made us from love. If a demon doesn't have this connection, then he loses a part of himself as well as a part of his society, his mental health and his vitality." I nodded thoughtfully. "We stay neutral, and this neutrality is what keeps us from becoming overwhelmed by her chaos. So instead, our darkness is reflected in the animals that we hunt. We need to do it. It's pure instinct. We inherited a part of her ruthless nature, and hunting and killing what we eat is how we express this portion of ourselves. We have to feed regularly from the light, that's why food is so important in our culture. It's, uh, it's why I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to share the light with others, and to satisfy them. I wanted to use my killing nature for something good and to make things that helped other people feel good, you know?" I reached over to take his hand into mine. "That's all I know about The Mother. And, you know, apparently she is a part of your world, too, but that's news to me. Is that enough?" "Yes, thank you, I appreciate this information..." I smiled at him. "Are we done in here, Matt?" I asked, not wanting to stay in the library anymore. "Yeah. Let's go take a bath. We fucking stink." He said while fondly reflecting on the morning we had. "Then I wanna get ahold of Maya. I think I have a solution. She works from home. She's an artist, you know? I could bring you over to Wyatt's place in the morning before work. They live a bit lower on the hill and so their house isn't a large as mine, and it isn't structured through manifestation. You'll be safe there, you know? And, I uh, I'm gunna talk to Wyatt about returning to the kitchen..." We both got up, headed back into his room to have a bath and then he left me there for the afternoon to go visit Maya and Wyatt. I stayed there with my thoughts to keep me company, while I traced my entire life from start to finish. I thought about The Mother and the influence that she had on my life while alive. Matt was right. It really did feel like she brought us together through destiny. "The Mother" All along the Western front People line up to receive She got the power in her hand To shock you like you won't believe Saw her in the Amazon With the voltage running through her skin Standing there with nothing on She gonna teach me how to swim I said, "ooh, girl Shock me like an electric eel Baby girl Turn me on with your electric feel" I said, "ooh girl Shock me like an electric eel Baby girl Turn me on with your electric feel" All along the Eastern shore Put your circuits in the sea This is what the world is for Making electricity You can feel it in your mind Oh, you can do it all the time Plug it in, change the world You are my electric girl

I still haven't heard any rebuttal against the reasonable idea that we need to be studying the most deranged and corrupt in order to prevent them from ever developing in the first place. When you kill them right off the bat, how do you learn from them? It's just sweeping a problem under the rug. We still don't fully know how to prevent people like this from being created, it needs to be figured out. I mean, aren't there drugs out there that can sedate people to the level where they're mostly harmless? If someone is so violent that they are fashioning weapons out of spoons, destroying the lives of their caretakers, I feel that there are probably medical interventions that can be put into place, just like you would do for anyone with a severe mental illness. And if someone is that violent, we need to be looking to see if they have brain damage as well. Also, if we are going by dangerousness and abuse, then severely disabled people can also be extremely dangerous, and yes, sometimes even malicious to caretakers. They are also a burden on the system, but it would be absolutely reprehensible to harm them in any way. I just can't see the justification for killing other people, no matter what they have done, if there are facilities that we can place them in and medications that we can give them to calm them down.

Welcome to being human. This is what people do to one another. I've had friends like this, boyfriends, randoms online do this to me. What I've noticed is that these people will treat others in that way, and then go and do it to me right out of the blue, and then I am surprised - which I shouldn't be, but it shocks me every time it happens. I'll confront them about it and they will usually deny it or lie about the circumstances. Generally people with personality disorders like BPD and NPD do this sort of thing, and then they turn it around on you so that you end up looking like the person who is doing what they have done to you - it's very strange, almost impossible to point out as their defense mechanisms allow for complete deniability, and they're often the biggest whiner in the room, so they can usually garner people against you if you try to defend yourself. If you see someone who has constant drama in their life, who has personality issues, who repeatedly talks bad about others - avoid them. Let them go. Because not only will they do it to you, but they will then pretend that it's you doing it to them to avoid facing the fact that they mistreated you in the first place. People like that are a dime a dozen, not remotely special or unique, so just work on your boundaries and it shouldn't happen again. When this happens to me, I tend to start researching into toxic people, how to avoid them, etc, and this helps me reinstate my sense of self when around these chronic con-men. One thing I have noticed, is if you allow people like this into your inner circle, they can take away aspects of what makes you special as they start crowding your brain with their drama. If you are a creative or work with ideas of any sort, then you have to be careful about what you feed into your mind. People like this can literally spoil something unique and valuable in you. They love to do this. Don't let them.

Honestly, just take a good look at the sorts of people this forum collects and you'll have enough subjects on your roster to understand double standards and hypocrisy easily enough. You don't even have to go too far on the internet to find it. This forum is an absolute buffet.

Where will I go When you don't need me anymore Filled with questions As you waltz right out the door I am beaten, cast aside and dragged through dirt You are needed, you are needed We are the only ones who know where we belong We are the only ones who know We are the only ones who know where we belong I awoke the next morning to find that Matt had stayed up the whole night with me. This news warmed my heart. "Good morning..." He whispered, nuzzling my cheek with the tip of his nose. "How did you sleep?" "Fine..." I realized that I couldn't avoid looking at him and that at some point I was going to have to face my fear. I didn't want him to get the impression that I didn't love him, as I was starting to develop very strong emotions for this man. So I turned around, took his face into my hands and looked him right in the eyes. And it was just his presence there. Nothing strange or unusual or frightening at all. Just the person that I loved. I sighed in relief. "Thank you for telling me, that probably wasn't an easy decision to make." I couldn't hold it against him for waiting. We had only known one another for about a week and it wasn't as though he kept my secrets from me for a long time. I knew that he was just confused and was looking out for my best interests. "No..." He admitted. "It wasn't." He took his hand and rubbed it along my inner thigh as I stared into him. "You're afraid of The Mother." He stated. "Look, um, The Mother isn't going to hurt you, you know? I don't know why she got involved with your life, but there's nothing that she can do to hurt you. The Mother is just an orientation of energy, she's my mom... she made me. If she made herself known to you, then there's a good reason for it, and uh, I think that we should try to keep our minds open and try to figure out what those reasons might be. It might bring you some closure. Even if you meet her again, she isn't gunna do something bad to you. You don't need to be afraid of her. And you don't need to be afraid of me." "Okay... maybe you're right." "I know I'm right." Matt took his hand off my thigh and slid it over my underwear, gently rubbing before lifting the fabric and sliding a finger into me. We hadn't done anything for a few days and he was feeling hungry. He dipped another finger in, quickly flitting them in and out, before pulling them both out and rubbing them over the little bead, distributing moisture onto it. A human woman was a novelty to him. He had a few encounters with demon women and they weren't soft, warm and wet like a human female. He continued gently rubbing for a few minutes before dipping his fingers back in, and repeated this a few times until I came. I mewled. "You like that..." Matt stared at me with a mischievous look on his face. He removed his hand and held his fingers in front of me and snipped them both together a few times like a pair of scissors, the slick wetness separating in thin, clear strings, before sliding them into his mouth. "Do you want to try again?" He asked, pulling himself on top of me, while nibbling on my neck. "Please say yes." "Yeah, let's do it." I had wanted to sleep with him again after our first night together, but I was afraid and had been holding myself back. Matt's reassurance brought me some much needed courage. He lifted my dress off of my body and then moved his mouth down to one of my breasts, gently teasing the nipple in between his sharp little teeth before running his tongue along it in circles until it was taught, and then he gave the other one the same treatment. He did this for a few rotations before moving down to my legs. He opened them and glazed a finger across the bead before darting his tongue inside of me, just to get a taste. Warm. Mild. He could smell my pheromones... Matt then decided that he didn't want to spend too much time on foreplay. He was too horny. He ran his tongue across me one more time before getting up. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, and so he had to undo his button-up shirt and remove his jeans. I hadn't actually seen Matt erect before - as we had slept with one another in total darkness, or he was flaccid when we bathed together - and I was very curious to know what it looked like. When he took off his pants I made sure to get a good look. It was a handsome size, not too big, not too small, not too thin, and not too thick. He was uncut. Demons don't circumcise their young, that's a human tradition. He pulled the skin back and I saw the head peek out. A blushing reddish purple. He climbed back onto the bed, placed one hand on my waist and used the other hand to guide it in. I watched with excitement and fascination as it slid deep into my eager body. The great disappearing act. He leaned on top of me, and I wrapped my arms and legs up high around him. "Let's see what happens..." He said, starting a slow and steady pace, hitting my cervix with force when he got to the end of his thrusts. I held his gaze while I felt all of him and allowed my soul to mix into his. Again, the cord thickened during our intercourse and I could feel it being pulled into him. This created a nice rotation, where I was pulled into him as he was into me. Staring deeply into his eye, it began to move forward just like it had done a few nights ago and I found myself gliding forward into a realm of pure infinity. The lines of the walls were made of his blue iris and they raced past me, while the pupil at the center began to inch closer. He continued to slam into my cervix and I felt the familiar well of energy in the center of my body start to collect. "Let me know if you see her..." The black hole in his eye grew larger, and then The Mother appeared, but she didn't say anything, she just continued to draw closer and closer until she almost filled his entire eye. "I see her, Matt." I informed him. "What does she want?" He asked. "I don't know." I replied. "Don't blink. Just keep going..." I kept my gaze steady as his pupil gradually covered his entire eye, and as soon as this happened the well of energy in my body broke open and flooded me with wave after wave of intense, pleasurable sensations that started in my center and gravitated outwards to the very tips of my fingers and toes. My walls began to pulsate in reaction to the orgasm, milking him as he kept his steady pace, hitting that spot over and over again, drawing it out as the waves continued to crash around me. I cried out. Generally I was very quiet, but I couldn't keep it in. It was just too good. I continued to look into his eye. The Mother's presence, ever watchful, gifted me back all of my memories. As the waves subsided, in an instant, everything that was lost was retained. Soon after I came he sat up and grabbed my waist with both hands, then pulled my lower body up into his and sped up, pacing like a jackrabbit. Hard and fast. I could hear him moving in and out of my slick entrance as my body bobbed up and down on his hunger. He gave a few sharp thrusts, fiercely slamming me down onto to it, arched forward in pleasure, gasped, and then I felt the familiar splash of delicious warm liquid as it coated my innermost recesses. We sat there for a few seconds before I came to my senses. "Matt!" I exclaimed. "I remember who I am!" I tried to catch my breath as I crawled out from under him, spilling his liquid out onto the bedsheets as I sat up. "I remember everything. My entire life." "What... do you mean?" He looked over at me, panting. His eye was back to normal. "I saw her! She filled up your entire eye and then I came and then... I remembered everything. All of it. She gave me back my memories." I got up and ran to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. I didn't look anything like the person that I was on Earth. I was young again. I looked to be about nineteen, with big blue eyes, no glasses and long blonde hair that separated into perfect ringlets with bangs. I was thin, with an elegant feminine body, small perky breasts with pink little nipples and pale white skin that was almost perfectly porcelain. "I'm not the same person!" I cried. "Yes, you are." Matt reassured, walking over to the mirror to look into it with me. He came up behind me and draped his arms around my frame, and rested his chin on the top of my head. "The dimension on Earth gives your soul a shell to live through - so you can maneuver in that density from start to finish. It's a cover of the book that is You, but it isn't indicative of what you genuinely look like, you know? Each new Earthly body looks different, but your soul, uh, it retains the same shape. You've always looked like this each time you died, with your human body being like a suit to cover it. You just don't remember all of the times you have died. And human souls always look young. You're probably not, though, you know, you guys end up living through hundreds of thousands of different lives. The less dense of a reality you are on, the closer you get to how you really look, which is in, uh, it's in actuality just an orb of pure light energy. And for me, it would be an orb of pure dark energy. But due to being more dense, we take up a physical form. Do you understand?" "Kind of?" I was in shock. "Matt, I fucking died! I'm dead!" "I know." "I can't believe this happened. I mean, I wanted to die. But I didn't think that this is what happens after you do. What the fuck?" "I uh, I don't know what to tell you. Are you okay with this? With me? Is there anything I can do?" "So, you have my memories, and I have my memories?" "I-I guess so, yeah..." "Holy shit." I walked out of the bathroom and sat back down on the bed to process everything. Matt took note that it was as if a light switch had instantaneously gone on in my eyes and in my mind. Like there was an actual person there instead of a confused shell. He sat down next to me and looked at me expectantly. "Matt. I need to tell you something about The Mother. When she gave me back my memories, I knew exactly who she was. We worship a form of her energy on Earth. They call her Goddess Kali. There might be a few different names for her, but this is the only one that comes to mind. She's a powerful primordial feminine energy that encompasses death and time itself. I used to pray to this goddess, and when I got sick she showed herself to me during a spiritual awakening. Matt, I would know that energy anywhere. It's like she had been following me my entire life and it felt like she dictated my life up until the point where I died. I could feel her pull me out of my body, like a warm, dark hug and then carry me to your world. It felt like, like I don't just have my memories back but that I understand what her presence in my life meant. I think she picked me out and brought me here for you." "Humans know of The Mother?" He asked. "Yeah, I mean kind of. I don't think that they know that in different dimensional layers that there are other species of sentient people. But the energy influences our world, too. She probably has more connections to different worlds than you're even aware of." "We wouldn't know, you know?" Matt explained. "We know of other souls, but our species is neutral. We don't get involved in the affairs of other beings. I had no idea that The Mother was that widespread. So you think she, uh, she brought you here... for me?" "I think so." "So what do you wanna do?" "I want... to... stay here... with you. But... I need some time to process this, and so I might seem kind of distant for a few days." I scooched over until I was resting next to him and placed my head on his shoulder. "Is that okay?" "Absolutely." He leaned his head on mine. "You know, since we're on about all of this, I uh, I wanted to let you know, I think I'm going to go back to working the kitchens. Wyatt offered me a job at the main location to start with and if, it uh, if it works out you know, then I can take over. But I need to figure out what I'm gunna do with you. I can't just leave you in this room all day and you don't know how to work the rest of the house." I smiled and nodded. I was thrilled that he decided to make this choice for himself. "If you need some space to uh, to think about your life I can give that to you. This will give me a chance to figure some of my own shit out. This is a lot to take in, you know?" "I know... thank you, Matt." "Anytime." He leaned in to kiss me on the nose. "I'm gunna make us some breakfast and then maybe we can spend the day in the library or something, ok? I have some stuff I wanna research, you know, in light of what you've told me and maybe you can take that time to think about what's going on with you - what is going on with you, by the way? Are you okay knowing all of this?" I looked him square in the eyes. "Honestly. Yes. It's better than trying to live here without any memories at all. I could feel everything leftover from what happened on Earth, but I had nowhere to place my emotions. And even though this is kind of traumatic it's still a better place to be then having absolutely nothing to go off of." "I'm glad." He looked away. "Matt?" "Yeah?" He looked back at me again. "I love you." "Yeah." He was smiling with his eyes. "Me too." We put our clothes back on, left the room and he made me one of the most amazing breakfasts I've ever tasted. Been counting all your aces you ain't winning Your phonebook full of numbers 'stead of names All them vain decisions keep you jaded You could have found the one but you won't change So aren't you glad to meet me I think you should I'd be glad to meet me If I were you Aren't you glad to meet me I think you should I'll make a real good soul out of you Time ain't ticking slow Yes you're overdue Aren't you glad to meet me I think you should I mean i really think you should yeah You keep on playing saying it's in your nature Then you go on sulking blaming all but you Won't admit you set your heart for failure Should be glad I'm here awaking you

We kind of need to understand how psychos like this work, what their motivations are, the genetic differences, so that we can spot it better when they're young and try to help prevent them from becoming evil. If we kill them off as retribution for the acts that they have committed, then we're killing off our chance at understanding why these people are the way they are. Plus, on the rare occasion that a person might be innocent, then you don't wanna be doing that, anyways.

After the dinner, Matt and I had a few days alone without company to spend time getting to know one another. He made for me three meals a day, a new dish each time, and showed me two new rooms in his home. One of which was his massive two-story library that the wire room overlooked, and the other was the guest room that he allowed humans to stay in. His library was painted a light green and had two large plush chairs to sit on in one corner with a little table between them, and a wooden staircase that went up to the second floor. All of his books looked very old, and were leatherbound. They didn't have covers on them, and most were inscribed with the golden lettering that his people used. I asked him what they were for, and he told me that he collected cooking books and history books as well as various alchemical and manifestation secrets. The guest room was a small light yellow room that had a very comfortable looking full sized bed in it, and wooden floors with a dark yellow circular woven rug in the center, a dresser, a closet and a brick fireplace at the end of the bed. All of the clothes that he lent to human women were kept in here and he took them out of the dresser and put them in his own room to give to me to wear. Most of them were plain, lace white dresses and underwear and a pair of white buckle sandals. After meeting The Mother the first time we had sex, I was afraid to initiate another encounter with him, and he never tried to push himself off on me, instead deciding to allow me to come to him when I felt ready. Sometimes I would crave getting close to him, especially at night, but I was nervous that his pupils would dilate and that The Mother would come and pull me into her gravity during intercourse. I was afraid that if she did this that I would be lost and would not escape. So I held onto my desire for him and kept my body at a distance, although our minds and hearts were on the same page. I could sense something was off, still having an emotional imprint of my previous life and I felt depressed and lost. One day, Maya came to visit us in the early afternoon and she brought with her one of her black jackets and told me to try it on. The sleeves were too long and it was quite baggy on my smaller frame. She suggested to Matt that the four of us take one of the food trains that ran through the city during the evening so that I could see what the city looked like, and so that the both of us could get out of the house. She told Matt that the train went right through his restaurant on Broadview and that he could show me what it looked like on the inside through the window, and that the food trains had little rooms in them where the guests would sit, so there wouldn't be too many strangers looking at us. Maya made a point that it would be a good opportunity to test the waters and see how a small portion of society would react to us. She mentioned to Matt that this is why she brought the jacket. It had a hood and it would cover my much lighter hair and obscure some of my features until we were seated at our table. He agreed to her proposition and she told him that she would return with Wyatt later that evening. We took a bath together so that when we went out the other demons would have a harder time smelling my human-ness. I noticed that Matt never combed his black hair, he just ran his hands through it and so he always had a kind of disheveled look to him. The two of us got dressed and spent the rest of the day in his dining space and kitchen. I looked out of the window, excited to get an in person tour of the city while Matt made us a small lunch and organized his kitchen space. When evening struck, Maya and Wyatt both came to the door and Matt let them into the hallway to wait while he went back to get me. "They're here." He said. "Are you ready to go?" "Yes, I am." I replied, hopping off of the couch and following him to the interim room, where we met up with the other two. Wyatt still wasn't looking at me. He looked over to his friend and mentioned that he was glad he took a bath this time, so that we wouldn't smell. I buttoned up Maya's jacket that she lent me and pulled the hood over my head and we all walked outside. When we got outside the three of them turned into large black wolves. Matt's fur looked as disheveled as his hair did when he was a man, while Wyatt was elegant, long and sleek and Maya's fur was feathered and so shiny that every bit of light that was outside reflected off of her. "We don't have transportation in the same way that humans do, you know." Matt told me. "We , uh, we have trains that go throughout the city, but if you're in a residential area, you gotta run to get there. But we go fast. I want you to climb onto my back and hold tightly onto my neck. If you need to dig in with your feet, that's fine, I can take it, ok?" I nodded and climbed onto his back and wrapped my arms around his neck and dug both of my feet into his sides. "Okay, let's roll." And off we went. As we ran through the neighborhood, I noticed that the streets were set up in a very orderly fashion, all of them in neat numbered rows. There were no lawns, no front or backyards, just houses with stoops and a very wide sidewalk in the middle that was split in two, one for demons walking around in their man-form and another for demons running into the city in wolf-form. There were light posts after each house that allowed the demons to see in the darkness and I thought they looked beautiful as we zipped by them. Matt, Wyatt and Maya were able to run at about 45 miles per hour and I had a hard time holding onto him, especially when he would make a sharp turn. We made our way into the outskirts of the city, where the train station was located and the three demons turned back into men. There were rows of about ten different tracks and a series of well-lit bridges that went over the tracks, with stairways down to each station. Each station had a ticket booth, a vending machine with food in it, and a few covered benches to sit on while you waited for your train. There was a scrolling sign above the booth that gave the expected arrival time. Matt took my hand as we made our way across the bridge. We walked past four stairways before arriving on the fifth and made our way down to the station. Matt sat with me on one of the benches at the very end, out of the way of other people, while Maya and Wyatt went to buy four tickets. We waited around for about ten minutes before a red train adorned in fancy golden letters all across its side stopped for us and a few other guests. We waited until they got on the train before Matt stood up, took two tickets from Wyatt and entered the train first with me behind him, and then Wyatt, followed by Maya. He looked down at the number on the ticket and matched it to a number written across one of the stalls and opened the door and ushered me in. "You sit by the window." He said. The interior of the train was a brighter red, bordered in gold with golden letters written in their language and intricate designs showing wolf packs in the middle of a hunt. It reminded me of the colour theme of his room, which was a deep red and mustard colour and I wondered if they used this colour scheme a lot in their culture. The booths had comfortable, well stuffed seats and a wooden table to place food on and had just enough space for a party of four. No one had noticed us when we took our seats, thanks to Maya's hooded jacket. Maya sat across from me, and Wyatt from Matt. "We'll be in the city at the next stop and once we're on Locust they should start taking food orders. This should give you about twenty minutes to decide on what you want to order." Maya told me, smiling at me with her eyes. "There's a menu in a pocket placed just below the window." I took a look and spotted two folded menus and handed one to Matt, while Maya took out hers and handed one to Wyatt. "What's the name of your city?" I asked Maya. "Van Bien." "Van Bien?" I repeated. "Mmhmm." She replied. "It's the largest city we have here. We don't have an overpopulation problem like humans do. There's only about five million demons altogether." She informed me. "We have three cities on our planet, no towns, just some farmland located right outside of these cities and we leave the rest of the planet alone. We're smaller than Earth, only about a fifth it's size." I nodded and felt Matt's hand on my leg and looked at him. "I'm gunna order for you, okay?" He said. "I think I know what you might like." I nodded again and took a look at the menu. It was written in their unusual lettering. There's no way I would even know what to order even if I could read the menu, so I set it down and looked out of the window. The train started moving and I saw a whirlwind of lights and buildings flash by me. "So, Matt..." Wyatt spoke up, speaking in their language so that I couldn't understand him. "Have you been thinking about what I told you, pertaining to coming back to the Broadview location?" "I don't know man." He admitted. "I'm still thinking about it. Give it some time, you know? I still don't know what I'm gunna do about this human, ok?" Wyatt let it go and glanced through his menu. It didn't take long before we were traveling through the city of Van Bien. The skyscrapers were two times as large as the ones on Earth and were covered in multi-colored lights and moving advertisement billboards and signs. It looked a lot like downtown Tokyo. There were trains that went along the streets, and also ones that spiraled through the buildings above us. We got to Locust and a waitress knocked on the door to our stall before entering to take down our orders. I made sure to face the window when she came in so that she couldn't see me, while Matt ordered for the both of us. She left and Matt leaned in to me and whispered, "The next stop is my place. Keep your eyes peeled, ok?" "Okay!" I looked out of the window in excitement. We got to his place on Broadview and the first thing I noticed was a fancy white building with an ivy like plant growing all along its exterior, and then on the inside it had an aquarium in the front display windows that were connected from the ceiling to the train tunnel. There were various schools of different species of light fish swimming all around, in between glowing rocks and flowing aquatic plants. I could see just beyond the water, at the booths in the restaurant where people were seated. In the aquarium display there were painted mermaid statues perched on the rocks that had light hair like mine and human-shaped eyes. The train stopped here for a few minutes before continuing on it's path. "Matt, this is amazing!" He smiled and leaned forward to look me in the eyes. One thing I noticed about demons is that eye contact is very important to them. The train continued on its way for another twenty minutes before the waitress came back with our food. This time she noticed that something was off about me. I had accidently looked in her direction and she saw my strange eyes, my small frame and light coloured hair peaking out of the hooded jacket. "What is that?" She asked, eyes darting back and forth between everyone there, before resting on the cord that Matt and I shared. "What is that? What's going on?" The woman seemed confused and somewhat alarmed. Matt snarled defensively. Maya kicked him under the table and spoke up for the both of us. "That's a human being. Please just let it go. They have The Mother's blessing." She insisted. "I know this looks unusual to you, but trust me, there is nothing wrong. Everything is okay. I promise you." "The Mother?" The waitress exclaimed. "What is a human being?" Matt and Wyatt were both looking at Maya, fully attuned to this new tidbit of information. "A human being comes from the band of souls in sky. The Mother brought her here. We don't know why." The waitress nodded, not understanding what was going on, and set our food down on the able with wide eyes that remained fixated on me. She was speechless and left the stall without saying a single word. When she left, Matt looked over at me. "How did you meet our mother?" "She... was in your eye... the night we had... sex..." I looked down at my food. It was a soup of some sort that had a large glowing egg in a bowl next to it. "I would like to discuss this with you when we get home, would that be okay?" "Yes." Matt told me about the soup I was about to eat. It was a light brown colour, and had various mild coloured straw-like vegetables in it. He showed me how to crack the egg over the soup. The yolk was a rich golden colour and the egg white was a glowing cream. He stirred it up for me, and the mixed egg gave the whole soup a metallic bronze colour. I took a sip. It was very light, but creamy and the vegetables that were in it didn't have much flavour. They absorbed most of the flavours of the soup, but offered an interesting texture. They were hollow on the inside and easy to chew. "You like it?" He asked. "I love it. Thank you." Matt decided that he would tell me about my previous life when we got home. That we needed to combine stories to figure out what was going on. He had been questioning if leaving me out in the dark when it came to what he knew, if this was an ethical thing to do and began to lean towards finding some sort of explanation for me, especially after seeing that the emotional residue of what had happened had not washed away. Demons were an honest species and he didn't like the idea of keeping things a secret. We rode the train all the way around Broadview while Matt and Maya showed me various features of the city. Wyatt spent the whole time with his nose in a book. The ride lasted altogether about two hours before it circled back around to the train station that we started at. Matt reached over to press a button that indicated to the driver that guests wanted to stop and we all got off. I took Matts hand and kept my face to the ground, just in case the waitress happened to be walking down the isle. Luckily she never showed up again. We walked down the steps of the train to the ground and back over the bridge before the three demons turned into wolves, ready to run back into the neighborhood. Matt bent down enough so I could climb on his back and we were off again in a flash, running in the direction of Matt's home. Somewhere along the way there Maya and Wyatt separated from us to go their own way. Both of them called out, "Later Matt!" Before turning down a different street. We finally got home and he opened the door and brought me to his room to discuss some things. I removed Maya's coat and sat next to him on his bed. "What did you want to talk about?" I asked him. "It's about The Mother, you know... how exactly did you meet her?" "Well, she appeared in your eye when we were having sex. It was like your eye turned into a room that kept going on forever and she was at the end of it, and then your pupil started to grow and it nearly filled up your whole eye." I explained to him. "And she told me to take care of you, that you were her baby." Matt took my hand while we both sat at the edge of the bed and spent a few minutes processing what I had said. The Mother rarely made herself known to demons once they were born, but her presence was always there, helping to guide her people. Despite never meeting her, Matt always felt connected to her energy. His people were unified under this connected energy. It was unusual for The Mother to interfere in the lives of her people, and it had never once been known for her to interfere in the life and death cycle of a human being. He thought about what he had witnessed when I passed away, how I was completely removed from the trajectory of the soul tunnel altogether, how it felt that a gravitational pull had forced my soul to move in a new direction and he equated this to The Mother's interference. But he didn't know why. He decided it was time to tell me about my history. "I, I need to speak with you about something, ok? And I don't know how you're gunna take it." He sounded anxious. I looked at him with a serious expression. "Okay... tell me, what is it?" "It's about your previous life... I know all about it. The whole story. That night when I found you, I was given access to your records and I got to live out your life with you from start to finish and I, uh, it was, it wasn't an easy life. And I feel that maybe, that maybe, that's why you're having such a hard time adjusting here is because you're still connected to it in some way, you know?" I looked down at the floor, taking in everything that he was telling me. "I watched you grow up, from a little girl into a woman. And you, you didn't fit in there. You loved nature and animals and drawing... and writing. You had a family. A mother, and a father and a brother. But you were sick, in the head, you know? For a long time. And in the body as well, you were absolutely fucked. And, well, your family died and they left you there all alone and you, uh, you took some pills and you died, too. It was in the middle of your life. You were lonely. You were sick. You were scared... You thought it would be an easy death, you know? But it wasn't. You vomited everything up, but it was too late. When you died, you left your body and I think that The Mother sent you here. It was like you were pushed off course right into my world, you know?" I started to cry with big, thick tears trickling down my face. "I'm so sorry, Annie. I uh, I wanted to tell you, but I thought you deserved a fresh start. I thought, you know, this world is so orderly and I know how to fucking live, and I'm exact and precise and I thought that if you stayed here with me that I could fix everything for you, and that you wouldn't need to struggle ever again. I want to take care of you... can you let me do that? What I'm trying to say is that I know how." Matt looked into my face, but I couldn't look at him. I was afraid that The Mother would appear in his eyes, so I kept staring downwards. He reached over to grab my face and moved it so he could look at me. I shut my eyes. "Oh, fuck. You can't even look at me, can you?" I shook my head. "I'm sorry... I can't..." I continued to cry. Everything that he told me fit in so perfectly with how I was feeling about myself. I couldn't remember anything, but I could place what he was saying with how I felt and knew that it was true. "Look, why don't you lay down on the bed, ok?" He suggested. "You don't have to open your eyes, I'll be here with you. It's going to be alright, you know?" I laid down and curled up while he grabbed a blanket and put it around us both before spooning me. I cried for a long time. He would occasionally reach over and take the tip of his nose, press it against my cheek and run it along my tearstains, but for the most part he just lay there and let me mourn my previous life. I finally fell asleep and when I did my cord moved closer into his. This gave him a sense of relief as he wasn't sure where he stood. I was afraid of The Mother's presence, but I trusted him completely and knew that he was a good man and despite being frightened, my soul still wanted to reach into him in some way. He stayed awake and contemplated on what his next steps would be - if he would go back to the kitchen to work with Wyatt, and how he would manage keeping me here at the same time. He thought about The Mother's actions and wondered what her plans were for us, if there were even any at all. He listened to the slow breathing accompanying my sleeping and wished that he could have done something, anything, to ease the blow. "Fuck..." I didn't want to know I just didn't want to know Best to keep things in the shallow end 'Cause I never quite learned how to swim Call an optimist, she's turning blue Such a lovely color for you Call an optimist, she's turning blue Such a perfect color for your eyes Call an optimist, she's turning blue Such a lovely color for you Call an optimist, she's turning blue While I just sit and stare at you

I like making friends with demons You need special eyes to see 'em Have you got your Shinigami eyes on? Are you ready to die? Got my Shinigami eyes on Everything is fine Got my Shinigami eyes on you When we got to his room, he put our plates on the nightstand and I set the blanket at the end of the bed before sitting back down to straddle his lap. I kissed him and ran my tongue across his tiny little demon fangs. We were finally on the same page. He wasn't overbearing and crazed and I wasn't too forthcoming and awkward in the wrong moment. He slid a hand under my white dress and nicked my underwear with a claw on both sides and tore them off of me. "I don't have too many pairs of these for you to wear. Best not do that too often..." He mused. "Lift your arms, please." I did, and he removed my dress for me. We kissed for a while longer and I let him run his hands down my back and across my legs before I started to unbutton his black shirt. I removed it for him and leaned him down into me on the bed and we stayed like this for a while, kissing and staring into one another's eyes. I couldn't get over how beautiful a demon's eyes were. I wrapped my legs around him and hooked my big toes into his jeans and tugged on them a bit to passively indicate that I wanted them off. He stood up, got out of bed and removed them for me before walking over to the nightstand to turn off the light. I followed his glowing eyes as he made his way back to me, before coming over to rest on top of me ever so slightly. "Are you ready?" He asked. "Yeah." I said, wrapping my arms around him. He slid it into me. It wasn't painful, but there was some healthy friction there. Once in, I lifted my legs up around his back as high as I could get them and pressed my forehead into his. The cord between us that my soul that was continuously sifting into his heart was generally as thin as a thread, but in this moment it became as thick as a shoe string and the vortex in his chest was spinning in a circular motion a lot quicker than it normally did. This night meant a lot to him, but, but not knowing about his struggles, I was unaware of the level of emotion he was feeling about the events taking place. All I knew is that I could feel my cord being siphoned off and I surrendered into it. I looked deeply into his glowing blue eyes as he moved inside of me. We were both very quiet. I could feel him trying to regulate his breathing. His eyes were magnetic. I began to focus on just one eye. The lines connecting the pupil with the iris began to move forward, like being in an infinity mirror and I was entranced. It felt as though I was being pulled into a different reality, one where everything was eternal. I was drawn forward. Just beyond me, it seemed like they contained the secrets of the universe, of time and space itself, and the walls of consensus reality collapsed around me. There was nothing but me and the walls of his pupil, with the black hole that retained his stony stare looking right into me. They seemed to be getting more dilated the longer I looked into them. They held a genuine magnetism that pinned me there. His eyes, along with the moving cord, and the feeling of him inside of me combined - there was something extremely pleasant about all of this. Suddenly, it felt like there was another presence inside of his pupil. And then, almost immediately, there was! It was The Mother, reflected in his eye, a great, round, primordial black hole of infinite chaotic feminine energy. The womb that birthed all of demon-kind. This particular species was the closest she had created that moved in the direction of the creator's Love. All of her previous creations had gotten lost in the chaos of her true nature and became evil or devoured themselves alive, and so she took special liberties to make sure that her favourite people were happy and well cared for, but she also tended not to get too involved in their affairs. This was a rare circumstance. She was heavy and thick and almost overbearing to look at, but I couldn't look away, I was transfixed. The Mother loved all of her creations very deeply and had noticed that one of her sons was extremely lonely. She happened to be the gravitational force that pulled my soul away from the tunnel at the time of death and put me here in this world to make her unusual little child happy. She picked me out, from the time of my birth until my untimely death as a gift for her baby and had made her presence known to be a witness to her child's divine consummation and to offer her blessing to the both of us. "Oh little human-human-human..." Her voice sung. It rang like an echo and was as sweet as honey. "Do you love one of my babies-babies-babies?" "Yes..." I whispered, staring deeply into Matt. He didn't know there was a presence in his eye and thought I was speaking to him. "Can you care for my baby-baby-baby?" "Yes..." "Will you care for my baby-baby-baby?" "Yes..." "Good girl-girl-girl..." The Mother crooned. "Good girl-girl-girl..." "Good girl." I could hear Matt's voice crescendo behind hers. "Good girl-girl-girl..." "Good girl." "Good girl-girl-girl..." Matt's pupil continued to grow as the presence became stronger and stronger. It looked like it would fill up his entire eye, there was just a thin line of glowing blue remaining. I didn't know what would happen if the black hole took over his entire eye. My cord was being sucked out of me at a great speed, and the sensation of him inside of me was beginning to give way to an energy in the center of my body that if he continued like this, would spread from the center all the way to my hands and toes in great pleasurable waves. But this didn't happen. He abruptly looked away before The Mother completely overtook his eye, and he buried his head in the crook of my neck, speeding up his pace for a few moments before shuddering. I felt a sense of liquid warmth buried deep within me, and he was done. He stayed there for a few minutes, the both of us tangled up, before turning to look back into my face. I noticed that the pupils in both of his eyes were back to a normal size and the divine presence was gone. His eyes looked soft, and underneath that, relieved. He had never, in his entire life, had a satisfying, mutually connected sexual experience. This was the first time. He kissed me on the forehead, pulled out and rolled over onto his back. "Come here. Cuddle up." He said. I reached down, grabbed the blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it over the both of us before curling up into his arms. I rested my head on his chest and closed my eyes. Matt quickly fell asleep and had his first decent night's rest in a long while. I stayed awake for another hour, listening to the sound of his breathing and feeling my head move as his chest rose and fell and concentrated on the sense of warmth that he had put into me. I didn't quite know what to think of the events that transpired. Not having any previous memories to fall back on, I didn't know what could constitute a strange event from a normal one. Matt knew everything about me, and loved me very deeply and I was beginning to see his appeal and to feel the same way. I finally fell asleep, while the two of us were unaware of the divinity that had befallen on us both. I woke up the next morning to find that Matt was already awake. He had put his old jeans back on and was buttoning up his black shirt. He handed me my dress and told me he would fetch another pair of underwear. He left the room to retrieve one from the guest room where he allowed stray humans to stay. I stood up to put on my dress and immediately felt some of his liquid from last night run down my leg. "Oh, uh oh..." I thought, blushed and wiped it off on the sheet before putting my dress back on. He walked into the room and handed me a fresh pair and I put them on. "It's already mid-day. We overslept." Matt said. "Wyatt and Maya should be here in a few hours, you know. Let's get busy, we'll, uh, we'll take a bath later this evening, alright?" I nodded. Generally demons take baths after intercourse because they have such a strong sense of smell, this is a social courtesy, but Matt wanted to passive-aggressively stick it to Wyatt for the previous night's comments and to let him know that he succeeded in what he wanted to do. "Let me show you my kitchen. I'm going to get everything set up and you can wait in the dining space, ok?" I nodded at looked at the ground. "What's the matter, are you nervous? Don't be nervous..." He bent down to look me in the face and then gently scratched the top of my head with his claws. "Come on." He opened his bedroom door, hit the button by the wire room and the metal panel moved across to cover everything. We walked across it and he put a hand on the interim door to manifest his kitchen and dining room. When the door was opened, I took note of the space. It was a large room with a wooden floor, a stone fireplace, two high-back chairs with a table in between them, and across from this was a long couch with another table in front of it. Behind the couch was a large window that looked over the entire hill and beautiful red curtains. The room was connected to his kitchen. In his kitchen, he had a rack to hold all of his pans, a stove, an oven, a bunch of cabinets that held various spices and cooking tools in it, and at the end of his kitchen was the door to his small cooling cellar, which he kept all of his meat and produce in. The floor was made of uniquely shaped grey stone slabs that were fit into all kinds of interesting designs. Matt showed me what was in his cabinets, all of the types of food that he had in the cellar and what their names were and told me how they tasted. He showed me how demons manifested fire and how the clay pans levitated inside of the stove pits. Once he had shown me everything, he gave me permission to either stay with him or to go into the dining space. I opted to sit down on the couch and look outside of the window while he collected his pans, knives, silverware, plates, bowls, trays, and thought about what he wanted to make. He knew Wyatt would probably bring something with him to cook. I looked out of the window. It was midday, but their planet stayed in perpetual near-darkness, as the light from the energy source was not enough to offer full visibility. This is why their eyes operated like a cat's. The plants that grew were also very light in colour, as they didn't need enough sunlight. They didn't come in a variety of many different colours. Mostly different shades of white and light brown to grey. The cities were very bright, enough to offer plenty of visibility. I stared out at the tall skyscrapers off in the distance. It almost looked like a carnival waiting for me, sitting just past the residential area. The residential areas had a lot of posts that contained balls of warm, soft yellow light to guide people along the sidewalks. I rested there, transfixed for some time until Matt came out of the kitchen and told me that Wyatt and Maya had arrived. He asked me to wait there and went into the interim room where he manifested the entryway hall. He opened the door and greeted his friends. Wyatt had some meat wrapped in a paper, tucked in a bag, and Maya was over dressed for the occasion. She was smaller than both of them, standing at about 6.5 feet, with long black hair that went down to her ankles and bangs that almost covered her hooded eyes. She often wore red lipstick and painted her long, sharp nails with the same colour. She had on a long red dress and wore a fur jacket from a light animal that glowed in the limited visibility. "Hello Matt!" She beamed. "We're here!" Wyatt and Matt nodded at one another. He let them both in and as they walked down the hallway, Wyatt noticed a strong smell on him and he squinted his eyes in disapproval. He had never smelled a human, didn't know what they were like, but he knew that was not the scent of another demon on his friend. "Matt..." Maya inquired. "I noticed your lock was open. Wyatt told me that it was a human who did this, is that true?" "Uh, yeah..." Matt placed a hand on the interim room and manifested the door to the dining space and kitchen. "She's in here. Please try to be pleasant with her." "But of course." Maya said. "I've never seen a human before. How fascinating." Matt opened the door and they all walked in. I looked over from the window to see three demons enter the room. Wyatt took a quick look at me, sniffed the air, and walked into the kitchen without saying a single word, while Maya came over to me, grabbed my face in her hand, bent down and smelled one side of my neck, and then the other. She noticed the cord coming from my chest and could see that it matched Matt's lock. "I can't believe it. You really did it, Matt... are they all this little?" She continued to hold my face in her hands and studied my features. I looked into her eyes. They held the same energy that Matt's had. I could see the demon mother's essence running through them both. "Yeah. They are." He responded. "Um, I'm gunna go help Wyatt in the kitchen, get this shit started." When they spoke about me, they spoke in a language that I didn't understand. It sounded rough and Germanic. Usually Matt would speak to me telepathically, but when around one another, they used their native tongue. Matt walked into the kitchen. I could still see him, and watched as Wyatt took some meat out of a bag and placed it on the counter. Maya sat next to me on the couch and smiled. I couldn't read her very well and didn't know what she thought of me. "What's it like for you... a little creature like you to have all that running out of your chest?" She looked down at the cord. I couldn't look at her face any longer. There was something about the eyes of these other demons that weren't like Matt's. They all held the same structure, but they felt distant and unloving to me, and yet wise, with a level of previous experience that I didn't have. I couldn't hold a candle next to one of these beings. I felt as small as a pet dog in their presence. "It feels..." I said slowly, thinking on my words. "It feels... good. Warm. Connected. Like I'll keep moving forward forever and it feels... final." I looked Maya in the eyes on my last statement to emphasize on its permanence. In the kitchen, Wyatt and Matt had set everything up and were cooking and preparing the meal that we would all eat together. I looked over at them. They worked so efficiently together, and each demon knew what the other would do and how they would move, that their cooking looked more like a dance. "I want you to come back to the kitchen." Wyatt said in their native tongue, placing a slab of meat on a rotating clay pan. Matt was silent. He chopped some vegetables and placed them into another pan before placing it on the stove. "But you can't come back smelling like that. We could have you work in the back, on the roasts. No one would see you. No one would know. You could have a fresh start man." Matt stayed silent, stirring the vegetables with a glowing sauce made from the thickened blood of a light deer. He swallowed. He wasn't sure of what he wanted to do. "If it works out, I'll give you back the main one." Broadview. The Broadview location was on a hill in the city on the main street of Locust and it overlooked the water. It had a train that ran through it and an aquarium that spanned all along the front of the building, atop the ceiling and through the train's tunnel. Matt used to breed light fish in his waterfall for this feature of the restaurant. He continued to stir the sauce into the vegetables, looking intently straight ahead at the pan, without saying a single word. "So what was it like for you, being with one of us?" Maya asked me. I turned back around to look at her. "I don't know what you mean..." I admitted. "Sex." She stated plainly. "Did you enjoy yourself? I can smell him on you." I bit my lip and thought about the presence of The Mother in Matt's eye. I drew in a slow breath. "It was...sweet. I am... happy. And I think he is, too. But... there was someone in his eye... I don't know who. She told me he was her baby and to take good care of him." The playful, teasing tone and mood that Maya had displayed changed on a dime. "You met our mother? How did-" "The food's ready." Before Maya could finish her sentence, Matt and Wyatt came in with two trays of food, each containing a plated meal and a glass with a drink on it. "Can I sit here, Maya?" Matt asked. "Of course!" She exclaimed, quickly getting up to sit at one of the high backed chairs across the room, next to Wyatt. Matt set the tray down on the table and took one and handed it to me. He showed me what the food was. The dinner contained a large semi-rare slab of light pig roast that was marinated in it's own juices, and a starchy type of vegetable that was cooked in the sauce of a light deer, everything was seasoned perfectly. The drink was from the fruit of a small tree that demons farmed, and tasted a lot like pear juice and was a light brown colour. I noticed that for this meal, there were utensils. He took his own plate and dug in. I looked over at Maya for a moment, who had not looked away from me for a single second since I told her about The Mother, before darting away from her to stare nervously at my food. Wyatt on the other hand was actively avoiding looking at me at all, and quietly dug into his meal without saying a word. Maya took a petite little bite off of her plate and then looked over at Matt and asked in her language so that I couldn't understand them, "Matt, what is it about humans that you like so much?" Matt stopped to think on this for a few minutes before speaking out loud as well as telepathically communicating to me, so that I could understand his words, "I like that they're like books, you know? Um, they don't come with just one story. They contain thousands. They aren't, they aren't just oriented to the light or the dark, they have free will. The creator made them for a special purpose and if we spent more time studying the different souls that come our way, we would know what that reason was. And I wanna know, you know? They're fragile and fleeting and there's something genuine about that." He nodded thoughtfully to himself before taking another bite of food and then finishing off his statement. "And you know, Maya, they're soft. They don't feel like a demon. They're warm. And small..." Speaking of them, reminiscing of the night that he had with his own human, Matt seemed noticeably more open and warm than he usually was and Maya could see this being a window of relief into her long-suffering friend's sadness. Maya gave a small smile and then went back to her own meal. We sat around until we finished everything and then Wyatt stood up and told his partner that he was ready to go home. He thanked Matt for inviting them over, but didn't give me a single glance, and then walked over to the interim room and opened the door and then went through it. Maya followed him, but realized that she forgot her fur coat and came back to get it. When she returned she noticed Matt looking down at the floor, lost in his own thoughts, and I was staring out of the window at the cityscape below, reminiscing on the remaining emotions left over from my previous life and not knowing where to place them. She took note that although we were connected through love, we were still worlds apart in our own way. Maya genuinely wanted to see her friend succeed. "Matt..." She said. "Yes Maya..." Matt whispered, not looking up. "I forgot my coat... and, I just wanted to tell you that I think you should come back and work for Wyatt. He would be so happy to see you and I think that it would do you some good." "Thank you, Maya..." Still staring at the floor. "And Matt?" "Yes, Maya?" "I want you to know, if you explained things to people the way that you did to me, I don't think that any harm is going to come of this. I think you underestimate people and that they can be more open minded than you might realize..." She thought of The Mother, and that if The Mother had gotten involved that there must be some reason outside of what was readily apparent to any of them. "I hope that the rest of your evening is pleasant, Matt. I will speak to you again very soon." "Thank you, Maya..." He looked up at her and they locked eyes, both with small smiles on their faces. Maya gave a quick bow and then left the room. She was already devising mental plans to get the both of us out into society and Matt back into the kitchens where he belonged. We sat in silence for a long while until Matt stood up to gather the dishes. He looked over at me, staring into the city. I was clearly still quite lost and he wasn't sure if he should tell me about what had happened during my time on Earth, but something in him was questioning if keeping my past a secret was the right move to make. He brought the dishes into the kitchen, washed them, came back into the dining space and manifested a fire in the fireplace, then sat back down with me and we both looked out of the window together. Ever since I was a kid On the backs of my two eyelids I hid two Teleprompters there Transmitting words from who knows where Walkie-talkie on a mission Roger, roger will I listen Or will I just pass it along No form of a sing-a-long When muse annoys, devoid and null I feel a tingle in my skull Like ticker tape the words appear There's a parade between my ears I preach self-love I know it's true It's easier to say than do I send the messages to you But now I need to hear them too I am beautiful I am powerful I am strong and I am loveable I am beautiful I am powerful I am strong and I am loveable

Keep it short and sweet to start out with, and then as things progress you can add in more detail. For me, when guys start out with long blocks of text and I don't know them well, it kind of stresses me out and I'll ghost them. As it is, I'm a very shy person and so communicating with new people is already going way outside of my comfort zone. It also says to me that the person is more invested in me than I am in them, when I am just trying to get a feel for them to start out with. Things are actually much easier and more memorable when you keep it simple. K.I.S.S. - keep it simple stupid

I've been trying to think of some inspiration for Matt's look, and the general soul behind the personality, the energy and the essence that I want to convey with him. He kind of looks like the guy from Sandman, but with a much gentler, softer face, messier hair and dresses more casually. Usually just a black button-up shirt and some jeans with dress shoes. His eyes are also a tad bit larger and are shaped and coloured like a cats eye. He doesn't look like an Edward Cullen look-a-like, but the semblance and perfect facial symmetry is similar. The energy, however, is not. He isn't just a "pretty face", I want him to be a multi-layered character with struggles and faults, such as depression, some social anxiety/blindness and mild neurosis, as someone who struggles with women and with understanding their own sexuality - and to be relatable, especially for anyone who is dating someone that is different - be it race, sexual orientation or ability. Carmy from The Bear = Matt's soul - I love his energy, his voice and what he strives for. If I could put the troubles that my character goes through into a similarly well written narrative as Carmy's monologue here, then that would be my Matt in a nutshell. I've drawn from a few different sources of inspiration, but these two - looks and personality, make up the bulk of it all. The struggle that Carmy faces to fix his dead brother's restaurant is the same struggle that Matt faces when trying to come to understand himself in the heart of demon tradition and in trying to fix the humans around him. Sandman's face + Carmy's voice and personality = A good chunk of Matt's essence Matt is a badass, and is very capable of accomplishing all of the things that he sets his mind on. He's at the very top of his game with everything that he works towards - but he's also a very strange guy who doesn't always fit in with other demons socially. He's a good person who takes care of the innocent, strives to keep his compulsions in check and tries his best to be a good friend. He has become a social recluse due to his chronic depression, and Wyatt and Maya are the only ones who stand by him after he has pushed everyone else away and has given up on everything that he worked towards. But he finds some relief with a human partner, and everything in his life begins to change for the better. He begins to see himself not as just some weird outlier, but a demon man who is capable of great love and who deserves to be happy. -------- Matt sighed. He wasn't usually so emotional, but Wyatt had said some things he didn't want to hear. He walked around the kitchen and picked up his knives, then wiped them off and saved the ones that he would use for later, setting them back onto the counter according to size. He took out the pig's heart and put the rest of the meat in his cooling cellar, then unwrapped the heart from the paper it was in and began to slice it into small, fine pieces before putting them into a clay pan. His stove had four pits in it, where fire was started through manifestation. The clay pans would magically float above the fire pits and could be spun and rotated or moved higher and lower depending on the temperature needed to cook the food. Matt took a clove of what his people considered to be like a garlic and chopped it up into very thin slices and placed it into another pan to cook separately. He cooked the garlic at a higher temperature, and the meat at a lower temperature before adding them together. When this was done, he took it off the pan, put it onto a plate and then portioned the meat onto thin slices of dough before folding them into little triangles and adding them to another pan. When these were done, he sprinkled some various spices over the top. He took two plates, added a type of vegetable that had the texture of seaweed, but contained a rich, brothy flavour and put the triangle meat-pastries over the top of this. The heart of the light pig was still glowing white, and one could see the contents of the pastries shining from the inside, like little jewels. Matt put both plates onto a tray and carried them to his room. He sat the tray down on the nightstand next to the one he had placed for me earlier this morning and took note that I had finished all of my food and drink that day. Hands now free, he went to turn on the bedroom light and this woke me up. "Hey..." He said. "I'm home. I was, uh, wondering if you could come with me to the rooftop tonight and we could eat this food together. I thought maybe I could show you some things, you know?" I agreed to do this. I was happy to see him back. "Okay, cool, I'll take this." He grabbed the tray. "And you bring the blanket." I got out of bed and grabbed his blanket and wrapped it around myself before following him out the door. "Oh, I wanted to let you know. The wire room here, there's a metal panel that can cover it." He pressed a button on the side of the door and the room that contained all the wires that held the other rooms together was covered over with a single metal sheet. We walked to the end of this and he placed a hand over the interim room that allowed him to summon various spaces in his home and brought forth a winding staircase that went to the top of the house. At the end of it was a large window that could be pushed open that you could walk through to get onto the roof. We walked outside and sat on the roof. It was a completely flat surface. Some portions of the house slanted upwards, but the part that you could walk out onto was safe. We sat down next to one another and he handed me my plate of food, and then he took a portion of the blanket and wrapped it around himself. We both looked up at the nights sky. I noticed in the dark, that the food was slightly glowing from inside of the pastry and was curious to know what it tasted like. "Eat with your hands." Matt said. "That's how you build a connection to the food." I took a triangle and a bit of the vegetable that it was sitting on and ate them together. The flavours were rich, brothy and savoury. There was a sweetness to the meat that was hard to pinpoint. "So, you're a cook?" I asked. "I was. I uh, I ran three restaurants but that was a long time ago. I'm a simple man you know, I like to cook, I like to hunt and I'm a good businessman." Matt spoke in between his bites of food. "What were they called?" "Matt's Place. My friend runs them now. You'll meet him and his wife tomorrow." "Oh." I took a look around the neighborhood and the city lights off in the distance. The partition that Matt put up was no longer there and I could see the rest of the sprawling city. Their skyscrapers were especially lit up. He pointed out various areas in the city to me to show where they were located. "Broadview." He said, chewing on another bite, motioning towards a hill. "Heartford." He pointed in another direction. "Mington." "This is really good Matt. Thank you..." "Yeah!" He smiled. He had tiny little demon fangs. Cute. "So I uh, I wanted to show you some things while we're up here. I thought you should know about where you come from, you know?" I nodded and looked him in the eyes. Demons had cat-like eyes that glowed in the dark. There was no white in their eyes, just a solid cerulean blue with various little stripes that moved into the center of the black pupil. "So uhm, right behind you there, you see that band shooting across the sky? It has what look like little stars moving in it? That's what you are. Well, were. When humans die they move along that tunnel and they keep going past a few layers of density within reality. Their light source is a few densities away from ours, you know?" I nodded, taking in everything he was saying. "And that other band, the one that's farther away, that's where humans return to - they have a planet called Earth - it's in the densest layer of reality. We're right behind you guys. So, uh, sometimes you guys fall out of that tunnel and get stuck here - for a while, but someone always comes back for you..." He looked down at his finished plate of food. "When a human lands here it never remembers anything about its past, you know? Once the body dies, your story is fresh and you get a new one. You keep returning to your planet until you finish a cycle of some sort. We don't know what that is or what the reasoning is for why your souls develop this way. We try to stay out of it, you know? But it's very unusual for a soul to be structured like this. Demons like us, we get one story and we live it out, day after day, but you guys, you get a start fresh after a period of time, you know? The weight of reality doesn't stick to you..." I looked up in wonderment at the two bands. They stretched from one end of the sky to the other, and the tunnel looked like a thin aurora borealis. "Do I go back there?" I asked him. "No." Matt said strongly. "No..." Softer this time. "You stay here. With me." "Why?" "I don't know if you can, your key opened my lock. A part of your soul is moving within mine. How could it leave?" "I wish I could remember what it was like to be a human. I don't remember anything..." "No. You don't. You know, sometimes not knowing things is a blessing. It's better this way." He thought back on what he had learned about my suicide and didn't want to spoil my fresh start with the knowledge of my past life. "You know..." He changed the subject. "On the other side of the sky, you see the circle of light right up there? You can't miss it." I nodded as he pointed out to me what looked to be a large moon. "That's our energy source. You have yours that you come from and reincarnate back into, and we have ours that we built our world around. We use this light to keep our species going. There are three orientations you can be born into. Light, dark and grey - and we're dark. That doesn't mean we're bad guys, though, you know? Dark is just the chaotic element to reality. Yin. We come from the main source, The Mother, she gave birth to all of us and made our planet next to this source so we could live from it and grow. There are different species of animals that migrate through yin energy, but rely on yang to feed from and we follow these patterns and keep track of when and where to hunt so that we maintain a balance with our energy source." Everything he was telling me was fascinating, but I still felt uneasy. Despite not having any memories of my past life, I still had the emotional imprint of what had happened and this was giving me a chronic sense of negative feeling. I liked Matt, quite a lot, and I was happy to be a part of his life, but I felt naïve. Like I had been just placed there, without any previous understanding into who or what I was and I didn't know anything about these people, their customs or how I would fit in with them. My future felt unsettled in many respects. I didn't know what else to tell him and didn't have anything to say in regards to what he had told me about his people. So I set my plate down and crawled into his lap to place my chest against his so that I could feel our connection. It was the only thing that gave me a sense of ease. I buried a portion of my face in his chest, one eye near his neck and peered out with a single eye off into the sky - to watch the band of souls travel across one point in the sky to the other. Matt put his arms around me and looked at the energy source from the other side of the sky and thought about his own problems - how society would handle his new connection, how he would bring me out into the world, and thought about what Wyatt had told him earlier that night. The one thing that held everything together was this cord between us, and to us both, it was the only thing that mattered. "Annie..." He whispered. "I wanted to apologize for, uh, for what happened in the basement the other night. I, uh, I wasn't thinking straight. You know?" "Why did you let me break into your own house? Also, why do you have a waterfall in your basement?" "It's where I used to keep fish for my restaurants... and I was just curious to see what you were on about, is all. Do you forgive me?" I nodded. "Good, I'm glad to fucking hear it, let's go back inside. I'm gunna do things to you." I climbed off of him and he grabbed the two plates. I took the blanket and we went back downstairs to his bedroom. I'll be falling down You be watching by my side (By my side) I just need a helping hand, I just need you in my life (In my life) Clouds keep turning black Baby please just call me back You keep living in my mind Feel your soul inside (Yeah inside) Falling into pieces, I'm so alone

Back to my story - I have a few chapters written that I will post over the next few days, but currently I'm on a short break with it because I'm not quite sure where I want to go with this and I need to give it some direction. But by the time I am caught up on posting the chapters, I might be reinvigorated again. The more I write, the greater appreciation I have for people who are actually genuinely good at this craft. It isn't easy. I'm at the level of a bad fanfiction writer. I'm trying to add more depth and dimension to my characters; this is my first time writing a story like this and I'm a total noob, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's supposed to be my personal little after-suicide world. I have hopes that in some way, we get to create what happens next in our story and so I wanted to write about a possibility for myself that allows me to not only world-build, but to create the prototype for a relationship that I would have been okay with if I were younger. Writing this gives me a second chance to work through some of what happened to me when I was in my early 20's and to re-write the script into something more pleasant and controlled. As I write it, I am noticing that it is healing a lot of my relationship wounds and allowing me to explore a side of myself that I haven't had the chance to do, that ultimately I don't want to do in the real world, but that I'm having a lot of fun doing in a strictly fantasy setting. ------ "Try me." "Okay... well sit down for this. It's... a human..." Wyatt sat down, poured himself a drink and looked at Matt blankly. "A human what?" He asked, taking a long, slow sip off of his mug. "I brought a human home, you know, sometimes I like to help them out for a little while until they get sent back on their path..." Matt explained to Wyatt, taking nervous intermittent swigs from his own drink. "And this human I found, well, she seemed interested and - things transpired, and... I didn't stop it. You know, I uh, I just kind of lost control and I don't know how it happened but I woke up next to her and a cord was there. I wasn't thinking straight, you know? It-it just happened. And then, I got to see her entire life flash before my eyes and it was so fucking distressing and brutal, and it left a bad taste in my mouth, man - and... she, she wasn't even in the tunnel after she died, you know? So, so maybe she was sent here for a reason, and maybe I could keep this one, you know... I don't know man, I don't know..." Matt looked at his friend, eager for an answer. "How is that possible? I have never heard of this happening, maybe you've made a mistake? Is there anyone else you've been around that could have opened it?" Wyatt inspected his friend's face closely while Matt took large gulps to calm his nerves. "No, it was her. I can tell. I feel it." Getting to the end of his first mug, he poured himself a second. Wyatt shook his head. "Matt, how did you get yourself into this mess? When you left all your restaurants and you handed them off to me, I always thought you'd come back. I thought, maybe you just needed some time to get yourself together. You're one of the best chefs in the world. You have a talent. No one else can do what you do. And then you just left, like it was nothing. And I've been running everything in your absence for all these years without you. Five hundred years, man." Matt stared at his drink, unable to look at his friend. "And when you told me that you started getting involved with humans, I knew it went against our neutrality, but I didn't say anything because I thought it was just a phase. I thought you'd get over your obsession with these creatures, and find a nice girl and settle down. Maya and I have been trying to find you a decent woman. You've let these compulsions get out of hand and now you've fucked yourself over. If you stay with a human, you're screwed. If you uncord, you're screwed. What do you think is going to happen when people smell a human on you? They may not even know what one is, but they're going to know something is off. And what about the human? Their souls never stay here. What's going to happen to you if they send her back to her light source to reincarnate? And if she stays here, how are you going to explain yourself? She'll never even be able to leave your house. No one has ever fucking done this - what if they force you to uncord? You've gone against everything that we are, and you've ruined yourself, your life, your fucking future." Wyatt, finished with his mug went to refill it and noticed that the pitcher was empty and so he went to prepare a second one. He got up and walked to the kitchen, leaving his friend to sit with his thoughts for a few minutes while he made a fresh batch of the greyish brew that their people loved to drink so much. He carefully measured out the appropriate amount of light blood and alcoholic bark extract, mixing the two together until it bubbled and fizzed in the container. Wyatt took a spoon, sipped a bit of the drink to test it and brought the new pitcher back to the table. Matt had quickly downed his second helping in his friend's absence and was ready for a third. Everything that was happening to him was so unexpected and confusing, that he just wanted to come home later that evening with the meat, cook something nice and enjoy his new partner's company, maybe even try to initiate a sexual encounter. But Wyatt had made some good points. "Well, you know, I've been thinking about this and uh, like I said, she wasn't in the tunnel. Maybe... maybe no one is coming for her, what then? What if, what if she's supposed to be here? And, you know, in life - when she was alive, she wanted the same things that I do. I saw it. I felt it. We're the same. The creator made us all with the idea of unification. Maybe, you know, maybe things aren't supposed to stay the same way forever? Maybe things are supposed to veer off and unify in different ways? Wyatt, I mean fuck dude, it's been five hundred years, what was I supposed to do? Just remain alone until then? And when the fuck is unification going to happen? Consciousness just keeps expanding, I don't see it fully coming together anytime soon. You know me, man. I've tried. I couldn't get my lock to open, and now it is, you know? I don't think that all of society is going to collapse because of one fucking human." Matt, halfway done with his third mug was starting to get drunk, and he felt agitated. He knew both of them made sense, but he wanted to be the one who was right. "Have you slept with her yet?" Wyatt inquired. "I'm not sure, you know? Some things happened in my basement. Maybe kinda, but not really... I was thinking I'd go on a hunt with you, clear my mind, talk about this shit, maybe go home and make some fucking food and then try and see where I get with her, you know?" Matt took a sip, then ran his hands through his hair. "I mean, she's my partner now, you know, it should be fucking fine..." "Matt, I don't know what to tell you. I don't think this is going to end well for you. What else do you want me to say?" Wyatt knew his friend had made up his mind and he knew that once he made a decision about something, it was almost impossible to change it. There was nothing more to be said. "I don't know, man. But you know what, fuck this shit, I'm going home... and I'm going to do what I feel is right for me." Matt stood up, went to the cooling cellar and pulled out the bag of meat portions that he had hunted from earlier that day. "Thanks for the drinks." "Of course..." Wyatt took note of his friend's mental state. It wasn't a usual thing for him to have a strong opinion on anything, or to fight for something, but on the rare occasion that he did, he never backed down. He was generally a quiet, thoughtful and observant person and the fact that something like this happened was out of character in some respects. But then again, his friend had been acting strange for a long time. He had gradually become more reclusive, putting more time and energy into understanding human beings, compulsively bringing them into his home to help guide them. Wyatt knew Matt liked them, fetishized them, and that he helped them as a means of getting close to the types of women that he found attractive, but he didn't ever think that something could come from it. All of this was a complete shock to him and he was worried for his closest friend, who seemed to him, to be getting involved with things that could destroy everything that he had built himself up to be. He knew that if Matt became sexually active with a human that there would be no chance of him ever having a normal life, but maybe that's what he wanted? Wyatt felt a bit resentful. The two of them were a team. They worked side by side for over a thousand years, and it still greatly hurt him to know that Matt just up and left, as if everything that they made for themselves meant nothing to him. He knew his friend was going to go home to try it, and would probably succeed, and that it could cost him everything. Matt made his way to the door, but before opening it to leave, he called out to Wyatt. "I want you to come see me tomorrow. Meet her. We'll make something for dinner." "Okay." "Bring Maya." "Okay..." He slammed the door behind him and walked down the steps to the sidewalk. He just wanted to get home, to make some food and to think about what he was going to do with his life from now on. Everything changed for him; in an instant he was given everything he wanted, but he wasn't sure of what the cost was going to be. A deep part of him hated himself for being different and a deeper part of him resented society for trying to force him to be normal. He was afraid of what could happen if people found out. He wasn't sure if they would make an exception to their neutrality to damage his connection with his human in some way, or if their neutrality extended to his relationship. He wanted to be open about himself, to be able to feel safe enough to let his partner outside, to share the city with her. He was well known, his three previously owned restaurants were permanent long standing fixtures of the city. What would he do when people found out? Eventually they would - they would see that his lock was open and he wouldn't have a partner to show for it. How would he explain this when they asked him about it? Matt put the bag handles into his mouth and turned into a wolf and raced down the street. In this form it would only take him maybe five minutes to get home from Wyatt's. As he ran back up the hill, he would sometimes pass by happy couples minding their own business and think to himself bitterly, "Fuck you bitches." He ran past another happy couple. "And fuck you, too, cu***." He kept going, with the bag of meat bobbing up and down and side to side in his mouth. Matt made his way back home, turned into a man and hopped up the steps, then unlocked the door and immediately walked into his kitchen. He threw the bag of meat onto the counter with such force that it knocked over the wooden block that contained all of his chef's knives, and they scattered all over the floor. "FUCK!" He gripped the counter with one hand and smashed his palm repeatedly into the counter with the other. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Didn't I warn you not to? Didn't I warn you good? Maybe we couldn't help it Maybe we never should Didn't I say it slowly? Didn't I make it clear? Is it unfair to ask you? Why it is you're still here? You cut your teeth on the lack of answers, singing Come back home and it don't feel the same Well I've bled words onto a page for you And you never knew my name Didn't I make it harder? Didn't I leave you that? Was it too much to ask you? Why it is you still care? You cut your teeth on the lack of answers, singing Come back home and it don't feel the same Well I've bled words onto a page for you And you never knew my name

Hmmn - gum and sunflower seeds.

Yeah there are toxic elements to this place. You can't mention this though or people will gaslight you, or the mods will be on you. It's kind of like a toxic family system, where if you call it out or see it for what it is, then you are the one who is castigated instead of those who spread genuine toxicity. The best you can do, just like in a regular society, is to ignore it and go about your business. Karma catches up to people who spread badness everywhere they go, be it online or in person, either that or they stagnate and never change, which is in the end a worse fate than being the whistle blower on an obviously somewhat toxic place. But if you just don't let it affect you, go about your life and realize this, then it doesn't really matter much at the end of the day. You can't escape situations or people like this, it is engrained into society and there is no good filtering system for these things. So what can you do? You can bring attention to it, sure, but what's shown here is that, just like in my case, when you mention it, people don't really want to look there. Not really. Not truly.

I'm trying so hard not to Mary-Sue my characters. It's annoying, I have their personalities fully fleshed out in my mind, their struggles, their drives, but I can't seem to translate this into words. The amount of detail I can think on when it comes to putting this would equate to pages and pages of information, but then when it comes to writing it out I can't seem to hack it. It amazes me how genuine, quality writers are able to do this and I envy their skills. Maybe the solution is to use this as a rough draft and expand on it, but I don't know that I ever will. So, onto the hunting scene, my favorite scene to imagine so far. Matt walked to his friend's house, which was farther down the hill. Wyatt made just as much money as Matt had, now that he owned the restaurants, but wanted to save up everything he had. Wyatt was a taller demon, standing at about 8 feet, with long straight black hair that went down to his waist, a large hooked nose and high cheek bones, thin lips and a lightweight, wiry body frame. When he and Matt would go hunting, Matt took the center formation, with two other men flanking on either side to drive the prey, and Wyatt along with two other long distance runners, that were long and lanky, would arch ahead of the prey and then run towards it, so that when they made a full circle, the animal was completely cornered. Wyatt being in the middle in the font, and Matt right behind, depending on whichever direction the prey would run in would determine who made the kill. Matt's favourite thing was killing the creature. If he needed to, he would run and grab them from the top and sever their spine with his teeth, but he mostly loved running along the underside of the creature, grabbing it by the jugular and ripping into it, holding it there in his jaws until it suffocated - and he was able to drink the precious milk of light that came gushing out of it's wounds, lapping copious amounts of it on his tongue into his eager mouth. Matt thought about the events that took place earlier that morning before he left for his friend's house. He woke me up and brought us both into the bathroom together to take a bath. They didn't use showers, and didn't have toilets, either as the body was able to use everything that it ate and drank. Bodies themselves, being partially ethereal, didn't excrete waste, but you did have an endocrine system, and you also have a signature scent on you; you collected smells from your environment as well. Demons have a very good sense of smell and would often take baths, especially before hunting or after sex to hide their activities from others. A large portion of your immediate history could be smelled on you by others and it was considered kosher not to bring that history into the room with you, so they bathed often, many times twice a day. Matt drew the bath, the water would rise from the bottom of a large porcelain tub that you would walk into. Demon culture views bathing as an important task, and so the tubs are much larger and deeper than the ones humans have. All of their soaps, shampoos and conditioners are made from the various parts of animals of the light that they capture and harvest as well as adding some plant/flower material for scent. They didn't need to brush their teeth, as germs don't exist in this plane, but in order to remove scent and food residue they had a type of oily mouth wash which pulled everything from your gums and tongue. He showed me which substances were which, and how to draw the bath. The lettering on the bottles was very unique, like a mixture of Sanskrit and runes. He helped me bathe, washed my hair for me and rinsed everything out by collecting water into a large bucket and pouring it over my head, and then cleaned himself off. He didn't want to smell like a human when he went to visit Wyatt, or to go hunting. He still wasn't sure how he was going to explain himself to his friend. After we bathed, he gave me a towel to dry off, and a lovely white dress with some underwear to wear. He told me that his people didn't have clothes that fit creatures of my size and so he had a few things made for when humans would stay with him, but that he would have some clothes especially made for me in the future, depending on what my preferences were. I liked the dress, though. It was simple, lacey and feminine. He told me to wait in his room, and he left to bring back a tray full of some different types of food and some drink and when he got back he set them on the nightstand next to the bed and asked me to wait here in the room until he got back. He told me that he generally went hunting once a week with a friend of his and today happened to be the day for this, that he wanted to bring something home that was fresh to cook for us to eat. He told me to rest in the bed until he got back, and that human souls generally have a period of needing extra sleep as they adjusted to their new semi-ethereal bodies, their lack of memory, and that generally a partial-death experience was taxing on the soul and this required a transitional period. He asked me to please not go into any other part of the house as there were certain rooms that contained things within them that wouldn't make sense to a human mind without some prior education, that I could get stuck in a room. I agreed to his terms, curled back up into the bed to take another nap - he was right, I was tired again already - and he left for Wyatt's place. Matt finally made it to Wyatt's, which only took about a half an hour to get there if one was just casually walking, and knocked on the door. His friend, who was expecting him, as they had a weekly schedule, opened the door. He looked down at his shorter friend and immediately noticed that his lock was activated, but he couldn't smell anyone on Matt. "Matt! Hi buddy, it's good to see you. Your lock. It's open! When did this happen?" "Uh, I uh... just last night man... that's something I was hoping to discuss with you. I was hoping we could go for a hunt first and then have a few drinks and I'll tell you about it then..." Matt wasn't sure how his friend was going to take it. He wasn't sure how anyone was going to take it. Something like this had never happened before. His entire species, tradition and culture was predicated upon maintaining balance with the light, on working with certain migratory patterns of prey animals and of bonding - specifically, to someone of your own kind to maintain the collective reality and it had always been this way, for as long as they were able to create a functioning society. Not only did nothing change within it, but outliers were not heard of, ever. Maintaining a sense of neutrality towards other species on their incarnational and after-death cycles was essential. Some yin-oriented species liked to tip things in their favour by damaging or interfering with the lives of denser species, but they had learned early on how to create a system that allowed for a renewable energy source without needing to take more than they needed or to prey on other sentient life-forms and this was something that they were proud of and was for the most part effortlessly maintained. And what Matt had done was basically throw all of that out the window, possibly damaging the balance that his people worked so hard to create. He genuinely had no idea of what the ramifications of his actions would be. He knew that it was an accident, for both parties, but he took full responsibility for allowing himself to be blindsided by lust and allowing the situation to cultivate. And yet, another part of him felt that he had paid his dues to his society. He played the part his whole life. He had planned to have an ordinary life, just like anyone else. He worked hard to build himself up to becoming one of the best chefs in the world and one of the best hunters on top of that. He had tried with women to make it work. He really did. But he just couldn't hack it. Why should he suffer for having been created differently, after having done so many things that were right? He played the fucking role, time and time again, followed every rule as straight as an arrow. Why shouldn't he have just this one thing - for him - just this one time? He had no answers, just a million questions, one after the other piling on top of each other. And this is why he needed to go hunting. He needed to clear his mind, to do something that he knew he was good at, that allowed him to be the demon that he was, the predator, the hunter, the killer. "Yeah, sure, of course. Let me get my things and we can head out." Something was off about Matt. He didn't seem happy, he seemed lost in thought and confused. Wyatt went back inside to get some meat bags, handed a few to Matt and they both left for one of the many hunting buildings that were scattered around the city. They both decided to walk. Matt didn't say a word the whole way there. When they got to the building, they went inside, entered in their information and the animal that they wanted to hunt onto a piece of paper and put it into a box that kept track of various hunting parties. When a party was gathered, they would be taken into a room where they would collapse reality down to yin-miasma in the right location and chase down their prey. They both sat in the waiting room for about an hour until four more men of the right body shape were gathered and the six of them were ushered into the hunting room. The hunting room was a white room that had some butchering knives, a table, a few bags to put the meat in, and some paper to wrap the meat up into sections. The six men gathered into a circle and meditated, until reality collapsed around them and there was nothing left but the miasma. When they opened their eyes they turned into their wolf-forms - completely invisible in the darkness, sans their blue eyes that glowed like a cat's. Everyone knew what running position to take and they moved into the correct formation. Matt had two runners on either side of him to help drive the prey, and Wyatt had two long distance runners, also flanking either side of him. Wyatt had the physique of a cheetah while Matt was lean, but a bit shorter, more muscle, a bit more stout. They knew exactly where the prey was located. Demons, being connected to the miasma, were able to sense, once in it, everything that moved through this material and could pinpoint with exact accuracy where their targets were. Wyatt ran ahead of Matt, so that when Matt drove the prey, the prey would be cornered in a circular pattern on six sides, front and back. They located the prey ahead of them. It was similar to the pigs that we have here on earth, but light creatures had no distinguishable features about them other than taking the form of something that was an animal, that glowed a pearly white and was easily spotted in the complete darkness of void. The flankers spread out so that they ran along side of the pig, with Matt right behind, and Wyatt and his flankers way in front, although the prey didn't know this. The flankers would keep the animal from veering off in another direction. When the hunt started, the wolves would begin to make an Ooo-wooo-wooo-wooo-wooo sound that sounds like a group of throat singers. This startled the prey and allowed them to know where the other ones were in the pitch darkness. They prey would not be able to see the wolves, as they blended in with the black, and it would hear and echo of these sounds coming in all directions. Matt continued to drive the animal until he could hear Wyatt's party in front of him making the same noise. The pig would try to run in another direction, only to be met by a flanker driving it back straight forward. It had nowhere to run. In front of it was Wyatt, and in back was Matt. Depending on which direction it ran, the boys would decide who went in for the kill. It kept running in Wyatt's direction, which allowed Matt to go in for the kill. He hadn't been running at full speed, he then sped up until he was alongside of the pig, opened his mouth and ripped into it's neck from underneath it, and halted the creature, pinning it down. As he dug into it's throat it let out loud, guttural "Weee-weee-weeeee's!" "Bleed delicious creature..." Matt thought as he tightened his jaws as strongly as he could around the animal's neck. "Give me your milk..." His tongue lapped up large volumes of blood that gushed out of the open wounds and drippled down his muzzle into the vast aether below. The animal screamed and struggled, bits of phlegm and sputum coming out of it's mouth as it gave its last cries. A few minutes passed and the animal suffocated. Matt let go of his grip, turned back into a man and wiped the glowing white blood that was dripping from his face. The hunting party put their hands on the animal, together in a circle and meditated on the hunting room again, and all of them, pig included, were materialized there. Matt, being the one who made the kill was given first dibs on what parts he wanted to take. He brought the animal up onto the butchering table and took some ribs, the heart, a buttock and the ears. He liked to bake the ears and nibble on them throughout the day as a little treat. As he put the parts into wrapped paper and tucked them into a bag, Wyatt went to work on his portion, choosing parts that would be good for some soups he wanted to make for the restaurants that he ran. The two boys thanked the other four men and left them to dissect the rest of the pig. Wyatt and Matt made their way back to Wyatt's home, when they got inside, they placed their bags in a cooling cellar and Matt sat down, still silent. Wyatt made some drinks for them, which were made from the blood of a light animal, and fermented bark that became alcoholic with age that came from a type of forest tree. When the two substances combined they would fizzle and turn an unappealing grey colour, but the men of this culture loved this type of drink especially after a hunt. It was often custom to come home and have something to celebrate. Wyatt poured the contents into a large pitcher and handed Matt a mug and set one down for himself. "Pour as much as you like." He said. "You've been off today. Something is wrong, is that what you wanted to discuss with me?" "Yeah..." Matt whispered, taking the pitcher and helping himself to an entire mug. "We might need a few pitchers tonight Wyatt. I don't think you're going to like what I'm about to tell you..." "Try me." "Okay... well sit down for this. It's... a human..."

I'm sure this will be a "classic" before too long.

I've expanded much more on the world, my characters - but seeing as I am not really the best writer, I don't know if I will have an easy time translating what's in my head to the world that I've built. I've been thinking about their personalities, how they interact with the world and have been trying to bring a bit more depth to them. We'll see how it writes, I have a few days worth of material to go through. First, the lock and key system, then try to integrate that into the narrative I've been working on. Worldbuilding is hard. I love my characters so much now, they're a lot of fun. Matt's my favourite, he's like everything I would want in a guy, but imaginary - which actually makes things way easier because you can pick the story up again when you want to or put it aside when you want to and you can't do that within a real connection. It's real enough, they're "alive" in my imagination, just like I am alive within God's. So the lock and key system is what helps keep consensus reality for my made-up demon species. It's a pair-bonding system, but it also works similarly to yin-yang, in that it continually rotates and is also an analogy for masculine containment. There is an energetic component in men, like a black hole or a vortex, that draws the soul of a woman forward into it when it is activated. Being more attuned to cosmic flow, most of them have a general sense of understanding of who is and who is not compatible. There are no "soul mates" or "twin flames", as there can be many different ones who are compatible, it all depends on who you meet at the right time. But once activated, you create that connection consciously, and once a cord is formed it can't ever be disconnected. On the very rare occasions that a cord was cut, these were the moments in which these creatures did end up killing themselves, because when that part of them is cut, it becomes inert and there is no way to grow it back again. Without that connection, a large portion of who they are is lost. They're a telepathic species and they rely on the love contained in order to grow, to continue to understand the world and to have a sense of companionship. The reason that they have this at all is the only reason why a yin-oriented species is able to work together and so much of their culture is based on facilitating these connections, keeping them maintained and flowing properly. It starts with the man. If he sees that something is compatible, and this happens subconsciously, then it will begin to open up and to flow in a rotating pattern that draws feminine energy into it. If a woman is receptive, then her energy will merge with it, continuously being drawn out of her - and this is the "cord" - that string that connects, and it merges and twists with the energetic vortex in his chest. A woman can facilitate this by sort of submitting into it, moving her energy forward so that it rests within him. The more she does this, the better she is at it, at letting go and allowing her energy to flow into his, the stronger the connection. If she isn't interested in him, then the movement in his chest will stop, but generally most of these demons are able to simply know, or are able to find compatibility with a great many, and so most of them do not struggle to find life partners. They don't have the concept of "everyone has someone made for them", they have the reality of being able to create a strong, telepathic connection with a wide range of people, but whittle it down to, and build upon something strong and unbreakable with one person. This is called the "lock and key system", and it can happen during sex, cuddling, generally you just need to be close to the person's chest. When this happens, you gain access to their thoughts, emotions, and at times, their life's history, but not always. Partners are generally in sync and don't need a lot of verbal communication. This allows them to run a household much easier. They also don't have children to attend to, as their population is regulated by three to four new souls being born from the yin miasma. The events from - "Eat it Annie - extrapolated" Matt - for whatever reason, he could not get his to activate. He liked humans, but didn't think that they worked in the same way his kind did, so he just lived a life half alive - inert for the most part, and lost his passion. His activated completely by chance. He noticed a human soul come crashing down close to where he lived, and he put up a partition of miasma all around the area until he could find the spot the soul was located. He set out some food, as he often does, he finds that most of the souls are ravenous and that food made from the light is extremely nourishing to a high density soul which is generally kept away from, or unable to access light during it's time on earth. He went to go find this soul, while it - I - found my way to the house and tried his food before running away when he came home. He noticed that things were eaten from and went back out to find me. He saw me move across the same area quite a few times before deciding when to approach me, and wanted to bring me back to his home. When we broke into his own house - I brought him into a small sleep room that he kept in the basement that was pretty much never used. I decided I wanted to sleep with him - a quick decision to make, I wasn't sure why, I just did - and brought him into the room. He had wanted to know what it was like to be with a human for a long time, but wasn't quite sure of what to do with one. When close to him, I had pressed my chest against his and he noticed something moving within it - and tried to remain still in order to keep it from opening, but when I flooded the room and ran out, he lost control of himself and chased me and caught me on the waterfall bridge. This is when I noticed the sensation coming from him and inspected into what exactly I was feeling. I was able to get away from him and ran down the hallway into another room. He ran after me, turning into his wolf form and unable to control the demon inside of him, snarled and snapped at the door. The house works in an odd way, most of the rooms both exist and don't exist at the same time, they are connected by one hallway that has wires on the floor, it oversees a large library and at the end of the hallway is his master bedroom. When opening this door - there is a waiting space, two doorways - one that contains the room, the other that contains the hallway, and the third is the bedroom at the very end - and depending on what the person opening the doorway is thinking/manifesting, this brings a possibility of about 200 different rooms - so each time you open the door, a completely new room would be there. So I did this a few times before getting to the end of the rotation, and finding my way into the wire-room, where I walked to the edge of that, went into his bedroom and was caught there by him. Having full awareness of where everything was in the house, he was just a step behind me and I didn't know it. He caught me, pinned me onto the bed and then felt me up and spooned me for a while. He'd already gone way too far and didn't want to do anything towards me that he would later regret - anything more than he'd already done, so he held me there and we went to sleep. That part of him was awake and I could feel it drawing me into it - but I didn't understand what it was for. Waking up to this himself, he wasn't quite in his right mind. Generally he was a respectful creature, but at the same time, something that was not supposed to be opened, opened and he didn't want to let me out of his grasp. It all happened very quickly and was completely unplanned. I was warming up to him, I had wanted to get to know him sexually, at least, I was just taken by surprise when I saw that there was a lightening-quick predator underneath all of this - but I didn't feel that part of him was relegated for me, and so I felt safe, even after he had chased me all over the place and pinned me to him twice. When I woke up, I made my way down to the wire-room and noticed that when he slept, it was inert, and so I was able to walk through the door, into the interim-room, and back to the waterfall area and then into the unkempt sleep-room in the basement. I looked out the window there and was able to see, now that I had a taste for what was activated inside of him, I could match it to the material that was used to corral me in the neighborhood, that masked the rest of the city from me - and I could see that this was made from him as well. I went back up to the room and wrapped myself in him, and inspected the sensation coming from his chest - and feeling "safe" and "okay" with whatever had happened, I surrendered into it and an aspect of me was moved into that space - and this created a cord, a permanent lock and key. I didn't know that this is what had happened - it was very instinctual - that this is what I should be doing, it feels right and good to have this part of me move into this heart-space. I fell asleep cradled into him. "After the events from "Eat it Annie" - He woke up at some point in the middle of the night to find that he still had this human girl that he was spooning and felt something being pulled into his chest, rotating like the substance from a galaxy. It was the essence of my soul, merging into his. A cord was there! What the hell! He laid there, trying to keep his breathing steady and to not move so that I wouldn't wake up. "What do I do now? What the fuck is going on? Oh shit, oh shit, what do I do? What do I do? How did this happen?" He tried to peel his limbs back to move away from me, but when he moved his arm from under my head, I woke up. I turned around groggily and wrapped my arms and legs around him. I was never so forthright in life, but in death, I had no memories to fall back on and there was a lack of filter in restraining from the things that felt right to do in the moment - it felt like both moving with the human-like instincts of "I want this" with the universal flow of what was going to happen anyways. Everything was unfolding as it should, but neither of us knew this or knew why. It was this awkward teeter-totter of either being too close to him too quickly, or him too close to me. I was half-asleep and he was wide awake, with a million questions. "Humans and demons don't cord. They don't mate. How did this happen? I mean... can I? Could I...? She's right here. Where's that bravery you had earlier? No, no, no, just stay still and go back to sleep. You can figure this out in the morning." Matt swallowed heavily. "Fuck..." I fell asleep wrapped up around him, chest to chest. It was very clear to him that there was something moving. It was right there. There was no denying it. When I fell asleep again, he was given access through the Akashic records to my life's history as a human. This wasn't something that happened very often and he treasured the moments when he could learn more about humans and their culture. But this time it was different. It was as though he was there in person as a passive observer to everything that had happened in my life. He witnessed a young girl being born into the world, going through her school years, different friends and boyfriends, trying different foods and traveling to new places, he experienced her mental illness, isolation, a chronic sense of loss, family that had passed on, a feeling of not knowing quite where to go or what to do, and that finally gave way to a night where the girl swallowed pills. She didn't die right away, she seized on the floor, foaming like a rabid dog, holding onto her stomach before passing out. Her pulse slowly faded away, and she died right in the middle of her humanly life. He saw her soul leave her body - it was a golden orb - and instead of moving along the same tunnel that every other human had done, her path was shifted to land here. It wasn't like when a soul moves along its path and gets caught in the gravity and sort of shakily lands in the wrong spot, it had made its own path, not anywhere near the tunnel that other human souls took. It was put here by some outside force. When the vision ended and he found himself brought back to his room, he wrapped his arms around me. "I'll keep this human..." He thought. "There's no where to send her back to, she was brought here. Clearly." He sniffed. "Fuck." He felt a bit secondhandedly traumatized by living my life. After a few hours of staring at his ceiling, he finally fell asleep. He woke up the next morning feeling more mentally clear and reinvigorated. He wanted to go hunting, to take the edge off a bit and to bring me something home to cook up. Whenever he felt stressed or needed to take the time to think, he would visit his friend Wyatt and they would go hunting together, and he would bring the kill home and cook it. Cooking was his passion - aside from humans - it's what allowed him to think, to express himself and to meditate. Wyatt was born at the same time as him about 2,500 years ago. Being raised together, they became best friends with a strong and brotherly bond. I was still sleeping. His took his nails and scratched them all along my back. "Wake up." I lifted my head and nuzzled his face. Without the weight of my previous life I was affectionate, innocent and free. He made the decision not to tell me about my previous life and not to let me know what he knew about me. This is getting too long, so tomorrow I will go into the hunting scene with Wyatt - to explain how this works in more detail, along with Matt's discussion about what has happened with his lifelong friend, finally to end on the note of him coming back home, and sharing wisdom about the sky - where humans come from and go, and how the light works pertaining to migratory patterns of light-oriented animals and how their society is built around this light-hub, how they use it to fuel themselves and their planet.

I'm older, 34 - generally if I'm looking for a partner it's going to be in the mid-30's to early 50's range - preferably mid-40's as I like to be the "little one", and I see guys in their 20's as still being children. They even look like kids to me. When I was in my 20's, guys in their 20's looked like adults, but I can't see them that way anymore - I view them as people who are getting their lives together, who may want to start a family someday, who are still struggling to find themselves and if I were to go for a guy that young I would feel like I was not only impeding on him finding what he was actually looking for, but that I would be wasting what little youth I have on something that couldn't be a long-term thing. I would become way more worried about my looks, I would feel insecure about what people would think of me, it just wouldn't work. But with a guy who is around my age or older, he has more of a chance to have his life together. The thing is, most guys at this age who do have their shit together are married or in relationships. If things went ideally for me, I would have found someone who was ten years older in my 20's. That's what I suggest for women, to avoid their guys walking out on them when they hit the 40 year mark, a lot of them cheat for younger women, so if a girl in her 20's goes for a guy in his 30's, she still has her looks to get her through a man's midlife crisis, avoiding that mark where you find a lot of perv scouring for high school age girls. Honestly, I would stick to your age range as a guy\ if you can, but that's just my 2c. It is unusual for an older woman to want to go for a younger guy.

@Happy Lizard Haha, lol I mean no disrespect to OP, it's just my sense of humour to extrapolate on it in this way. Sometimes I just find things funny and they hit my thought train in a weird way.

Imagine being stuck in Fuck World for eternity. They bring you into a room with a giant bed and strap you down every day. Woman after woman comes in and rides you and or sits on your face. You can't breath. You can't move. Your balls are so dry at this point from constantly being drained that each orgasm feels like a needle being shoved up your pee hole. Then they unstrap you, take you to a large bathroom and hose you down. You get about an hour in a nice garden, but you're surrounded by women there, too, you don't even have a moment to yourself before some chick comes over to you, rubbing her hands all over you asking to get some. Once the hour is up, they take you back to the room and you're used again as a toy for a harem in a never ending cycle. Never again to try food or drink, never to have any other experiences, ever. Just this. For eternity.

P.S. - What about an eternal life of sax?