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TLDR: I just need to vent becuase I'm so heartbroken right now. I just want some support. My friend/ex died and before he died he told his other friend that he didn't ever love me.
My friend's celebration of life was a few hours ago and I can't stop crying. I loved him so much. We met eachother in kindergarten but weren't close until after high school. I grew up around him. He was just such an amazing, unique person but he really struggled with alcoholism. It was like I met the person of my dreams. When he was sober he was so charming, funny, intelligent, creative, passionate, energetic, and loving. We had such an intense connection and I've never had butterflies like that before. But I broke up with him only after a week of being official becuase he wasn't very reliable. He was blacking out, canceling plans to get drunk and then lying about how much he had been drinking. We took a break and then started being friends again and I would hear from him from time to time. I moved on to other relationships after that, but I still cared about him deeply as a friend. I just couldn't tolerate his alcoholism anymore as a girlfriend.
I had a dream about him saying goodbye, so I tried to reach out to him but I couldn't becuase all his accounts were deactivated. After that dream I would wake up comforted just to the thought of him and memories of him just kept popping up everywhere. there was one moment it genuinely felt like he was hugging me and resting his head on my shoulder. Until one night I get home from work and I start feeling an intense sense of grief and dread without reason. I could almost hear his name in my room, even though I live alone. So I google him and the first result is his obituary. It says his funeral happened just a few hours ago so I didn't make it. But I still went to the celebration of life. At the celebration of life one of his friends told me that they called him before he passed, and he was talking about me and how much he never loved me. That really broke my heart. I saw his mother too and she said he wouldn't stop talking about me in a good way and that he really loved me and cared. He just wasn't in his right mind to continue a relationship when he isn't sober. His best friends told me not to look too much into it becuase he wasn't well and before he got to that point in his alcoholism he really did care. I'm just so sad that he is gone and I just wanted him to care becuase I cared. I still care.

So I’ve been down the rabbit hole, trying to chase every off-the-cuff reference, stray allegory, allusion, comparison, and tangent. I’m going to need you to bear (hug) with me for a bit because I think I’ve stumbled on some truly insane parallels between this show and the myriad of references it makes and it will take a lot of text to justify to you that I'm not crazy (or that I am, but at least I do my research).
This is a show that employs a ton of intertextuality and what the poet T.S. Eliot (someone quoted frequently throughout the series) calls “the mythic method”: essentially using historical, literary, and mythological allusions to draw parallels between characters on the show and characters throughout history (real and imagined).
This method helps the audience to build both conscious and unconscious associations with each of the characters and, ultimately, underscores the Roys’ (and humanity’s) damning commitment to making the same mistakes over and over again. The show seems to draw a lot from Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, biblical parables, Shakespearean tragedy, and modernist poetry (among many other things).
These networks of symbolism span from the earliest recorded history to modern celebrity culture and yet they reveal frighteningly unchanged elements in the stories they tell. The parallels of these references throughout the show serve to highlight the cyclical (the illusion of progress) and deterministic (the illusion of free will) nature of existence.
While I will be dipping in and out of the existing references, I want to call particular attention to the poetry of the aforementioned T.S. Eliot (who champions the mythic method) and John Berryman’s poem Dream Song 29 because I believe much of their work has served as a foundation for characters.
In the show, Frank makes mention of his poem “The Long Song Of J Alfred Prufrock” more than once. Outside of the show, Matthew McFayden (the actor who plays Tom) references the same poem to describe his character. Jeremy Strong (the actor who plays Kendall) says Eliot’s work The Four Quartets is a huge inspiration to his acting and character. A line from this particular work did strike me as being quite on the nose, which is why I continued to comb the poem for more (which it does deliver on):

"In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf."

This will probably be a monster of a post, so I will attempt to break down the following sections between poetic parallels, visual and dialogic symbolism of eternal recurrence, and an exploration of the historical and mythological allusions. Ultimately, I believe all of these clues point to the overwhelming conclusion that we will end where we began, in some way or another.
Circles & Cycles: Endless Recurrence & The Futility Of Progress
The show toys a lot with the philosophical concept of eternal recurrence, which postulates that “time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity.”
These eternal loops are symbolized visually with mirrors, water, fractal reflections; in the “uh-huh” and “mhmms” of repeated, near-palindromic dialogue; and in the show events that echo and repeat: in-air death scares, asynchronous business deals, family betrayal, weddings, retreats, implosions, family reunions, trauma bonding, baptism, funerals, etc.
In this understanding of time, there is no linear progress — or even progress at all. Time is cyclical. People are cyclical. As are the events that transpire. This is particularly interesting in a show like Succession whose title alone implies the phrase “line of succession.” Viewers would expect to see what comes next — who comes next — but as Logan himself yells, “Nothing is a line. Everything is moving all the time.”
Logan consistently evokes the circle shape in his speech, “Put a circle around him” he tells Shiv. “We’ve been circling for an hour, tell them we’re out of gas,” he complains in a moment of grim foreshadowing on his plane. “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes,” he shouts during the game of Boar on the Floor.
And he is the bright, burning nebulous center of this circle. He’s described as “carr[ying] his gravity. He's not a man, he's a f*cking planet.” And the people around him are described like satellites and moons. Characters exist in his orbit. And every complete orbit (or “revolution”) leaves characters in exactly the same place. There are motions, there is the illusion of progress, but the result is the same. Eliot again:

“every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure”

With this understanding, the show may just end where it begins. Not only in “nothing” happening, but in repeating the same events ad infinitum: A kid tries to take over the family business, they try to align with their siblings, they eventually backstab their siblings, they end out in the cold, and then they reunite, swear not to do it again, until it all repeats.
As most of us are aware, the show has made very direct mention of the John Berryman poem Dream Song 29. The names of the past three season finales (as well as the name of the upcoming fourth) are all direct excerpts from the poem, which deals with grief and sadness and the guilt of killing someone when you can’t even confirm there’s been someone killed at all.
Berryman consistently wrote about the guilt and grief he experienced from his father’s suicide. Berryman himself would eventually end up taking his own life, which on its own is a brutal reminder of the cycles of trauma. It also doesn’t feel insignificant that Berryman jumped off a bridge.
What’s really interesting is how each subsequent finale is named for a line that comes earlier and earlier in the poem. It also toys with this concept that things come full circle and end where they begin. This echoes Eliot’s essential thesis of the poem:

“What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

But while the speaker of the poem comes to realize he has not murdered “nobody” by the poem’s last line; Kendall, moving through the poem backward, must reckon with the idea that he may have killed somebody even if they were a “nobody.” And while we may encounter this as a moment in which Kendall is genuinely despairing over his season 1 inadvertent murder, I believe we are far more likely to see Kendall embrace this moment.
We see "nobody" and "no one mentioned" a lot when it comes to Logan, who believes most people are "fungible as f*ck," and "pygmies" while he's "1,000 feet tall." When Kendall is involved in the accident, we see him echo "NRPI" or no real person involved.
The reason Kendall couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations is that he couldn’t be the killer his father needed him to be (even if his morality or basis of being a good person is off). This retroactive movement through the poem could be Kendall realizing he is, in fact, the killer his father always needed him to be, enabling him to take the necessary steps of seizing the crown on his own.
Allegories & Allusions: Mythic Comparisons & Determinism
It’s Shakespearean, like Roman says, “I kill Kendall, get crowned king, like we’re in f*cking Hamlet or something.” But it’s not just Hamlet, it’s King Lear, King Richard III, Coriolanus, Macbeth. And it’s not just Shakespeare, it’s Oedipus Rex, The Odyssey, The Waste Land, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cronus devouring his children, Romulus killing Remus, Noah cursing his child for looking upon him naked.
The concept of the monomyth was popularized in "The Hero With 1000 Faces" and discusses throughout history, throughout different times and places, different cultures, different religions, different people have developed stories with relatively similar fundamental elements. The show is rife with allusions of stories that follow that same thread. Logan is Cronus who is King Lear who is Romulus who is who is. This is another form of endless recurrence: the inability to break the cycle. Or, in a very Hamlet reference, "maybe the poison drips through."
The themes of patricide, fratricide, and incest in particular are rampant. Rhea (like Rhea Jarell) in Greek mythology is both sister and consort to Cronus. Both are part of the first generation of aptly named Titan gods. Cronus overthrew his father Uranus and learns his children are fated to overthrow him. So he eats them as soon as they are born. Logan does refer to people as food a surprising amount throughout the show, varying from red meat to vegetables. He outright calls for blood sacrifice, which evokes the language of the gods.
Logan is referenced specifically as one of the last real American titans in his obituaries and eulogies. The language around him is frequently god-like. He's known as "the big man" or even "the big man upstairs." Tom tells Greg to "be his representative here on earth"; Roman asks the audience, "who is going to climb Mt. Olympus and be the next Dr. Zeus?" And that's where the myth gets interesting.
The only child not to be eaten is Zeus, who does end up killing his father and was surprisingly interested in marrying his mother. We're familiar with this plot formula through a different archetype: the Oedipus Complex, which we see referenced in the show with “Oedipus Roy,” “Oedipussy,” and “stabbing my eyes out.” The same story is repeated again in Hamlet with brother killing and brother and son yelling at his mother about her milky breasts (something Roman does to Shiv more than once). In the show when Logan says to Roman, “You may want to f*ck your mother but I don’t.” We know none of these stories end well. As Connor muses, “It’s not right to kill one’s father; history teaches us that.”
In the story of Romulus and Remus (whose mother’s name is also Rhea), the two brothers were initially chased out of their city as potential threats to the King (yet again). They were left by the river to die and were saved by the river god (important). After successfully overthrowing the kingdom that left them for dead, they agree to found a new city. They ultimately disagreed on which hill to found it and decided to have a bird-watching competition to see who could see the most omens indicating they had divine approval for the hill. Remus says he saw 6 auspicious birds but Romulus claims to see 12. Romulus kills Remus over this.
It should remind you of Logan visiting his childhood home with Ewan: “I saw a mistle thrush at the bandstand,” and the log book he kept as a child of birds he “saw” that Ewan would cross out if he didn’t believe him. It may also echo a part of The Four Quartets, “Other echoes/ Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?/ Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,/ Round the corner. Through the first gate,/ Into our first world, shall we follow/ The deception of the thrush?"
There is much to be said about the themes of warring brothers. Also the themes of fathers worried their children would one day overthrow them who take action to thwart or murder their children, which inadvertently sets into motion the very outcome they fear. It happens over and over again in stories old and new. As Panhandle Pete says, “I push him, he pushes me, and around and around we go.” Or as Eliot puts it, “that the wheel may turn and still / Be forever still.”
Much of these works touch on a sort of determinism, or the slow crushing reality that every action you take — even if that action is an attempt to thwart your fate — will ultimately lead to the same inevitable ending. This is the illusion of free will on top of the illusion of progress. And Logan, in fearing his children would usurp him (and also disparaging his children for not being able to), set into motion his own death and his own messy succession.
It’s also a reminder that the greatest men in life are all the same when laid to rest:

"O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark…"

Structure & Symbolism: Water As Rebirth & Destruction
The show has very much been structured around Kendall, and we watch him move through bodies of water with what feels like different symbolism each time. Is he drowning, is he reborn? We witness Kendall at his lowest point face down in a pool and at one of his highest, splashing into the Pacific ocean. We watch a man drown. We watch Logan beg Kendall for water as they walk through Adrien Brody’s maze. We watch Roman clamor for water at the funeral when he needs to calm down. Poetry has long played with this life and death dynamic in water, like the sailors dying of thirst in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner who cry:

“Water, water, every where,. And all the boards did shrink;. Water, water, every where,. Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ!”

This sub has noted Kendall’s connection to water, which has been represented over and over visually. But once you realize every metaphor, analogy, and simile he uses is water-based, you can’t unhear it. He calls his father “a tsunami of corruption” and describes things “as more precious than water”; he calls deals “choppy” and “dead in the water,” and asks to “help steady the ship”; he offers to “row back” on business deals, says timing is “high tide,” and that he has “bigger fish to fry.”
Logan is apt to use similar water symbolism, even telling Shiv that she’s marrying a man “fathoms” beneath her. As Rhea tells him, fearful of his own monstrosity, “I can’t see the bottom of the pool. I don’t know if you care about anything. It scares me.” ATN’s major scandal was “death cruises.” Even his operating nemesis is called “Sandy.”
In fact, there is mention of all elements and seasons — in particular, fire from Shiv, air from Roman, and earth from Connor. T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets confront these same themes and share some surprising similarities with show scene locations, dialogue, and plot points.
That’s because Succession is an allegory for the micro and the macro: the rise and fall of families, civilizations, monarchies, dynasties, and empires. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, the cycles rinse and repeat. Eliot modeled the four quartets on the 4 elements and the 4 seasons. And you can see even in Succession a similar manifestation of 4 elements. And, well, 4 seasons of the show. (And what occurs after 4 seasons? A full revolution around the sun, bringing you to where you began.)
Water seems to be at the root of it all. Even Ewan’s eulogy meditates on his and Logan’s journey on a boat. Even their abusive uncle is named Noah. In the show, we watch our nobody die by water, we watch our main character nearly die by water, and then we watch him revive in the ocean. As Kendall and his father wind their way through Adrien Brody’s circuitous Long Island home, Kendall remarks, “I think this leads to the ocean.” Because every path leads to the sea in some way or another.
The overarching narration from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is the Arthurian Legend of The Fisher King. This story is told a million different ways with a million different outcomes, but always boils down to an injured or maimed monarch ruling over a dying land. Or as Ewan refers to his "empire of shit": “He’s built a wasteland and called it an empire.”
He’s looking for someone, anyone, to heal him, rescue the kingdom, and ensure the dynasty survives. This is the myth of the holy grail, which, in this show, can be seen as the throne: The original stories of the holy grail were not Christian/religious but they do employ a lot of the same mythmaking from earlier religions and mythologies to tell their stories and thus construct their new realties. As Eliot says in The Four Quartets:

"The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere."

I believe Kendall (and the other children) represent the grail knights who try to save the king. (On the same level they stand in for the gods, the elements, or anything at all). When Christianity became more popular, these myths adapted to Christian overtones, but they still had the Celtic and pagan myths at their core: the grail becomes the chalice from the last supper.
That’s why Kendall’s easy comparisons of himself to Jesus feel less blasphemous than revelatory. Jesus is another hero archetype in the show’s mythology. He is willing to sacrifice himself, which Kendall must do in order to become the successor his father wanted. As he says, "this is a culmination of my life's journey to be crucified for you morons."
(It’s worth noting: In some legends, the knight saves the king; in others, he inadvertently destroys him. We know Logan dies, but it does feel less likely that Waystar Royco survives.) Drowning is a constant feature of Eliot's poems, but so is baptism and renewed life. It is difficult to determine the meaning of water in either instance, except that it doesn't discriminate as a life or death bringer, which is both beautiful and terrifying.
Parallels & Predictions: Piecing The Plot & Poetry Together
To repeat again, as this show is wont to do: “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes!” Logan Roy shouts during a game of Boar On A Floor. It’s an allegory, like many games on the series, and proudly says the quiet part out loud: Logan always wins. Here’s a little boar on the floor reference in The Four Quartets:

"We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars."

We’ve seen the L.O.G.A.N. system at work many times and with many people. He dangles a carrot, a morsel of love, as each character attempts to play the game over and over while expecting different results. They are doomed to crawl in that circle, to play that blind game, as Logan angrily shouts, “It’s fun!” And this game doesn't end in death. The children still ask. "What would dad do?"
Games on Succession (which are a consistent refrain), it turns out, are rarely fun and are often designed to humiliate or inflict pain. The same goes when characters say “I’m just kidding” after an eviscerating remark. Logan thinks life is a game, and as he says, games should be taken seriously. And because Logan explicitly makes the rules, there is no winning, just trudging around the board, passing Go, and collecting $200. The games are essentially Sisyphean tasks that the kids wouldn’t be able to win even if they were actually competent enough to run the company. And yet they keep rolling the boulder. It’s endless. The repetition. It ends where it begins.

"Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration. A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments."

Please also note the use of “the rose” and “the yew tree,” which are the names of Logan’s siblings Rose and Ewan, which derives from yew-tree. Other important name comparisons include Kendall’s association to spring/river valley; Siobhan’s nickname either a knife (Shiv) or Pinky (a variation of the name Rose); Roman’s connection to Romulus/Corialanus; Tom’s name meaning “twin” because there was already someone named Judas in the bible HELLO; Logan’s name meaning little hollow, which recalls another Eliot poem, The Hollow Men.
We know this show is a game, one that isn't fun at all, and one whose rules Logan made up. Even when there's a winner, there's no winner. So it's almost futile to play at all. That said, it’s impossible to make sense of any of it all without the ending — to confirm this ball has been rolling toward an inevitable conclusion, but given the show’s ending has probably occurred already, here are my thoughts:

• Kendall drowns

This may feel a bit on the nose given we’ve already seen this almost happen to “the Kurt Cobain of floaties,” but it would certainly be poetic. This could be sad (launched from a bridge); empowering (a la The Awakening); or metaphorical (a drug overdose). At some point Kendall says, "If dad didn’t need me right now I wouldn’t know what I would be for." The kids exist with Logan as their sun; they are moons, satellites, in orbit. And when their sun dies out, they repeat the motions in the cold, slowly losing their patterns and motions. The term is science is a rogue planet and the following lines from the poem remind me of Kendall and his broken, hollow stare.
“It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.”

• Kendall is king of the ashes

Any victory feels like it will be a Pyrrhic victory regardless when you've had to systematically take down everyone you love to achieve it. The same lines above can echo here "the purpose is beyond the end you figured/And is altered in fulfilment." A hollow victory. The Fisher King question Logan poses is, "Who can replace me?" Logan wanted each of his children to display the killer instinct. Kendall’s backwards journey through Dreamsong 29 may very well see him realize he is, in fact, the killer his dad always wanted — with open eyes. This will probably involve taking down his siblings. In this version, winning is a lot like losing, which feels very Succession.

• Mattson wins it all

These Shakespearean histories and tragedies rarely end well for existing houses. With Richard III (the-multiple-lineage-ending war of the roses) and Hamlet (the-whole-house-dies-but-a-norwegian-king-swoops-in-to-take-it-all dynastic struggle) references abound. We may just see a new house rise up and rinse and repeat. This would probably also occur if the kids take each other down and leave it open for another party. We saw last season that Roman thought he had an in with Mattson until it didn’t serve Mattson anymore. I see the same thing happening between Roman and Mencken. This puts Mencken and Mattson in a position to take over, which may make Mattson win it or…

• Mattson destroys it all

When Mattson is introduced, he is referenced as a trickster. Generally, in mythology, this character is quite intelligent or in possession of secret knowledge, and he uses it for trickery and commandeering situations. (Is that blood thing real???). Hamlet concludes with every major character killing the other with their own tragic flaws until a third party Scandinavian comes in to take the crown with no necessary action or bloodshed at all. We already know he's unscrupulous; what is his end game? It reminds me of one of his early lines to Roman, which would be an eerie foreshadowing:
“Success doesn’t really interest me anymore, it’s too easy. Analysis + capital + execution. Fucking, anyone can do that. But failure, that’s a secret. Just as much failure as possible as fast as possible, burn that shit out, that’s interesting.”

• Tom betrays Shiv

We’ve seen it happen before (which is why it should happen again). We’ve also seen Tom remove the thin veneer of his ambitions to the point where he almost feels like Richard III. He has played the fool, which is Shakespearean estimation, is often equivalent to the trickster. This would be a fun and distorted parallel to Shiv offering this job to him for Logan to offer it to her. This would probably happen in conjunction with Mattson winning. As I mentioned earlier, the name Tom means “twin” and the apostle Tom was only called as such because there were already one too many “Judas” in the mix. He's also from Minnesota (the twin cities!), so this is becoming very real, you know???

• Greg betrays Tom

While we know Tom has betrayed Shiv before, we also know Greg betrayed Shiv and Tom when he spoke to Geri in the first season about Tom having a press conference on cruises. He leads Tom to believe Shiv has betrayed him, getting one over on both of them. There may also be something with the Rule of 3 and being betrayed 3 times that feels biblical. The show also makes TONS of references to holding on to blackmail for opportune moments. Will we see something like this?
I’m not a big believer that Greg will fail so far upwards that he will win (this would feel like a betrayal in its own right), but do I believe there’s a world where Greg gets himself on a piece of paper with a question mark. Maybe???

• Geri finally beats Tom

This is my personal hope because I want the Tom and Jerry allusion to be real more than any other I put together (we love a good cat and mouse game). If Mattson wins, he needs a US CEO. Geri has collected a massive amount of dirt on everyone. And to call back to season 1’s interim CEO discussions, Shiv says, “I don’t like Geri. But I don’t hate Geri either.” It would feel particularly good given how much time and effort Logan spent clarifying Geri would be terrible at the position. Especially as Logan disparaging someone generally means he’s afraid of what they can do.
I’ll end at the ending. Or conclude where Eliot did on The Four Quartets:

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always— A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one."

PS. Given ‘Pinky’ is another name for ‘Rose’ does this mean Shiv wins??? JK let’s just watch the show tonight and laugh at our predictions in the morning.

My brother died in a car accident a week ago and I went and stayed a week at my parents with our daughter (1) so i could help plan the funeral while my husband stayed home and worked. He came for the funeral and had to leave that afternoon. He’s been as supportive as he can before the funeral. Me, my daughter, and sister (21) came back home to my house the night after the funeral because my sister didn’t want to be alone. After I got in bed last night, I said goodnight to my husband and he mumbled something that I couldn’t understand and he snipped at me saying that he said goodnight. I was annoyed at that point and said nothing else. And he said “I love you” and I said it back and he just sighed and said “why do I always have to say it first?” I got so angry and just snapped. I asked him why did he have to pick a fight with me right now, and he just turned over and went to sleep. I have so much grief with losing my brother, and I had to pick up the pieces of my parents and do everything. I created the obituary, I had to take clothes for them to put my brother in for the funeral, I had to pick up his belongings form the funeral home they sent. I haven’t been able to have a single moment alone to process my own grief. For my husband to obviously think I’m going to snap back into our life of normalcy just makes me so angry. I have felt no compassion from him since I’ve come back home. I’m almost considering divorce. Advice?
ETA:
The divorce comment seems extreme, I know. It’s just that this isn’t the first time he’s snapped or came at me while I’ve already been upset about something. It just feels like he’s lacking compassion. Do I truly want to divorce him? Of course not. I just want him to have some compassion. I have had to be strong for everyone this past week, and I just really needed his support and love. Not for him to already kick me while I’m down.

It was December 31st, 1999 and we just blew out my first double-digit candles.
My parents moved from Louisiana to inner-city Seattle, this means that I was surprised and kinda shocked to have my birthday party in Graham, in the countryside.
We just blew out my candles. It was 11:50 at night. Everyone was tired and knocked out due to eating ungodly amounts of Southern food that my mother had cooked.
I was laying on a big branch in the forest, not too far from the farm, I just needed to breathe while everyone was asleep. I'm a fast sleeper, so the noises almost carried to Sandman's graces but my mother popped out of nowhere. She was carrying a bundle of fireworks.
My mother was a nice and intiutive woman. They say that women in general have intuition. I just say that insane intuition is an my-mom only type trait. She always knew that I wasn't good with social gatherings and liked to listen to nature...sounds. not be in nature.
My mother climbed on top the giant branch.
She told me a story. A story about the stars.
She told me that the stars in heaven are ghosts. The ghosts always liked to be together and they never really wanted to be too alone.
When we were in the city, we never saw the stars.
I asked my mother, "When we were in Seattle, we don't ever see no stars. Why?"
My mother stopped and started to think. She followed it with, "My child, the stars are people too. Maybe we if saw them in the city where there are lots of people, we would find their most mysterious secrets. Now, they don't want that just like we have secrets we don't wanna tell."
"Mother, that's kinda dumb, what secret might they have that we don't know?"
"My boy, that's a secret only God knows."
We didn't speak for the rest of the night. We just shot fireworks. We didn't see the stars that night. We only saw fireworks as the rainbow explosion covered the sky of Heaven over Earth.
That was the best memory of my mother.
She died in her sleep of a brain aneurysm. Instant Death
When they let me coordinate the funeral, I had the coffin covered in a massive golden leaf star. We put the coffin back in her home in Louisiana.
This happened when I was 15. I spoke to a psychologist, Dr. T, as he was commonly referred to by his other patients due to his facial hair.. Dr. Tallman helped me through my mother's death. This kickstarted my passion for psychological research. Later when I was 25, I was a leading researcher for both psychology and astronomy for astronauts and others that were exposed to bizarre events or circumstances that affected psychological health as well as recording events in outer space.
On April 25th 2018, I was called down to NASA. I had a Level 7, also known as Level Apollyon. I had to move to a military base in Washington in the Rocky Mountains. I was still in a state of confusion. I was called down and I was told to never reveal the secret as it was top-secret classified information.
I walked down to the Solar Observation Room, the room specifically dealing with observation of the sun's inner sound. They said that they had a theory that only the Level 10s, specifically world leaders and leading researchers in the entire world know about.
They said that they are only allowing a certain piece of information to be allowed to Level 7 for researching events that happened concurrently to this revelation.
The stars were alive.
The stars had hearts inside which pumped.
We found them out in 1986, when a satellite, was near the sun and found a crater that showed a beating heart.
The stars were alive
The stars are real
The stars are alive?
I was dumbfounded to say the absolute simple least. The stars however were lately releasing unknown radiation or energy that was affecting Earth, it started happening in West Virginia.
We had multiple messages in 1986 after the sun was discovered as a organism.
"WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE."
"SLOW DOWN"
"NO LEARNING"
"WOLVES KILL SHEPHARDS"
We have no idea what the hell these messages are talking about.
This was the beginning of the end. We really had no way to going back, we didn't know we were supposed to.
May 29th, 2020, West Virginia.
I was writing down ideas in my notebook for years. Google Doc upon Google Doc filled with theories and explanations.
Known effects on West Virginia have only been tied to West Virginia.
These known effects are: - Merging of human and wildlife. - Carnivorous herbivores. - Raining specifically on cemeteries. - Bizarre lightning related activities around churches
Nothing too wild compared to the events that are happening right now in Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami.
Special teams called the Flashbangs are sent out after a bizarre event. These use a special gas to make them forget approximately 10 hours. Some civilian who may be immune are euthanized in secret.
The first of these events happened in West Virginia.
At 6:30 PM, the rain had turn from clear to a red color and had started to rise up back into the air in the form of droplets. The water factory in West Virginia had to stop all water after finding out that a third of the water had turned into sheep blood.
The citizens and people at the factory were visited by the Flashbangs.
I landed in Virginia for the second event that happened. It was unusually snowy, it was reported in the forest. I drove on an ATV, alone into the thick wood. The trip was 7-ish minutes until I came up on a meateating doe was feasting a rabbit. The glowing eyes stared into my head.
"YOU ARE STILL LOOKING UP. STOP."
"THIS IS A WARNING"
"HAVE FAITH"
I immediately reported the findings to my superior.
I decided that I needed to breathe. I went to my home in Seattle and took a paid leave.
April 12, 2022
I decided to take around and out of the city for a minute. I was watching the sky as I was driving in my car. The stars were not there. It was just light pollution. I started to crack a smile as the stars begin to pop up as I went further and further away from the city.
I started to think, if the stars were trying to warn us, why didn't they tell the public?
I stopped the car when I looked down and saw another fucking doe.
The neck started contorting into a weird shape, new flesh was growing into the throat of the deer. The deer looked like it was going choke on it's own neck.
"Stop looking up."
It spoke calmly. More calmly than the last doe in West Virginia.
Then more of them showed up.
"Stop looking up, STOP IT."
They went away.
I immediately drew a connection to the stars in the sky.
This may be what I can write at the moment. I need to sleep.
My alcohol is getting low and I don't wanna talk about this. I'm going to speak on this, tomorrow.
(Day 2 of post)
So what happened?
I immediately drew a connection between the stars in the sky and the avoidance of the city.
My mother was right all along.
The stars had a secret.
April 27, 2022
I had went on the Internet and specifically a conspiracy theory discord server. They might be crackpots but they are smart. Kinda like detectives. So what do we have so far?
A connection between the stars, the avoidance of the city, intelligent carnivorous herbivore wildlife, weather and gravity control, and these messages
STOP LOOKING UP WOLVES EAT SHEPHARDS WARNING WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE
...
I have no idea what to do.
I had two major theories.
The Great Filter
Or another theory that is even more probable and even worse.
A slave planet.
It makes sense.
WOLVES eat SHEPHARDS.
SHEPHARDs(People) gather Sheep(knowledge)
So the wolves must be the stars?

After I (35) confronted my mother (55) about her abuse of me, I went no contact with her. Shortly after, her husband died under suspicious circumstances.
Her husband was a little over 20 years older than her and had dementia and alzheimer's. I had talked her into getting a home health nurse several times to help provide care because it was very obvious that she was not. She inevitability came up with reasons to fire each one and she made a big deal out of it every time. Without the care he needed, her husband continued to deteriorate and I wound up reporting for elder abuse, but nothing ever came of it. I really, really regret not pushing harder.
I had a sit-down with her a couple of years ago to talk about all the medical abuse she put me through as a child and an adult and confronted her about munchausen and munchausen by proxy. It went about as well as one would expect and she became super dodgy and passive aggressive with me after that, but maintained communication. However, it got to a point where I no longer found the relationship worth maintaining and went no-contact. After that, things escalated extremely quickly and very severely with her committing several state and federal crimes in attempt to get back at me for cutting contact with her. I have since moved (no one knows my address), do not own a phone, and have no contact with any members of either side of my family.
During the time she was escalating her lashing out and while I was moving, her husband died, and I know that she killed him. He had one of the most storied lives that I'd ever heard and his obituary is two sentence long. This is it, in it's entirety, with identifiers changed: "John Doe, age, passed away on Day, Month Date, Year. He was born on Month Date, Year, to Jack and Jill Smith in City, STATE. John is survived by his wife My Mom." He was cremated, which was against his wishes, and there was no funeral service or memorial. There are also things like how he had money set aside for donations that didn't get donated but that's not the point.
The last time I saw my mom's husband, I was at her house. He was wearing clothes that were extremely dirty and way too big on him due to weight loss. His hair and beard were unkempt where he used to always shave and get haircuts. It was also very clear that he hadn't been bathed in a very long time like on the scale of months. My mom and her roommate were constantly getting on to him for his pants falling down (talking about how they didn't want to see his body and how gross it was) or dropping cigarette ash/food crumbs on himself and making too much noise. It's like they were watching him just to catch him doing something they didn't like so they could scold him about it. I noticed that he didn't speak at all while I was there beyond a mumbled greeting when I came in. At one point I went to the bathroom and there was poop all over the toilet and sink and around that whole general area. I went to grab cleaning supplies hoping my mom wouldn't notice but she did. She all but physically rubbed his face in it like a shitty dog owner trying to housebreak a puppy. She was angrily chiding and shaming him like he did it on purpose to make her life even harder taking care of him. I left and went to the nearest health and senior services center and again reported what happened and what I saw and made several follow up calls, but I don't know if they ever even did anything.
On the outside, she presented herself as loving her husband and that she was a warrior sticking by the side of and taking on the care of someone with dementia and alzheimer's. Her whole thing was that she wasn't going to be like other people that put their loved ones in care facilities when things get tough. She's better than that.
I don't know if she did some of the same things to him as she did to me like the poisoning and inducing illness, but it's beyond clear that she neglected and berated him and got pleasure from seeing him deteriorate. I'm not entirely sure what happened with the exact circumstances of his death, but he was so frail from the abuse at that point that I assume either her or her and her roommate went too far with some sort of torture while they were all keyed up from doing shit to me that she/they wound up killing him either accidentally or intentionally. I didn't witness the act, but I know that she killed him.
One of the details that's always stuck out to me as strange is that, months after his death, my partner got a text from my mom telling them to pass on the message 'I thought you should know that "John" died'. No further information, no details, just 'my husband died'.
This has been weighing on me because I could have done more to stop it. I knew she was abusing her husband and I didn't get him out of there. I'm not saying this so someone can give me a hug and tell me I tried, I say it because I genuinely don't know why I didn't do more. I don't like the psychological implications there. I'm terrified of becoming something like her. My mom killed her husband, but I feel like I let it happen. I feel an immense amount of guilt but I also recognize that my mother is a monster and is the one that perpetrated these acts. It's a lot of complicated feelings and they're all bad. I almost feel ashamed of how much I let the trauma I carry from a life lived with her control me, because she at least never successfully killed me. I don't know. I don't know what to do with this.

Please feel free to correct me if any details are wrong. I literally whipped this up at work this morning. Also worth noting, some info was featured on the "extra footage" episode of the reunion on Peacock, the Call Her Daddy podcast Ariana was on, WWHL and VPR episodes. And lastly, anytime "Tom" is used, assume I'm talking about Sandoval.
Edit: watching again for the 3rd time and added a couple dates I missed and made a couple corrections.
Dec 2021 - James and Raquel call off their engagement.
Beginning of 2022 - Tom tells Andy during 1:1 this is around the time he starts having feelings for Raquel. 🧐 🤨
Mid April (at Coachella) – Allegedly, Tom tells Raquel that he and Ariana are in an open relationship. Raquel tells others, and it gets back to Scheana, who tells us this at the reunion. Rumors start swirling that Raquel and “Tom” were seen kissing at Coachella. It’s assumed to be Schwartz, but little did we know. 😠
Sometime in July – Schwartz tells us at the reunion Tom confided to him that he and Ariana are having problems. He's setting the narrative.
Aug 2 – Ariana’s Dog Charlotte passes away :(
Aug 3 – Guys night at the Mondrian hotel. Raquel and Charlie show up after leaving the girls trip.
Aug 4 – Schwartz tells us at the reunion that Tom told him he confided into Raquel about his relationship problems with Ariana and they had an "intimate moment”.
Aug 9 - After filming wrapped at “C-U-N-Tuesday” a bunch went to the Abby and that’s the night they had sex. Tom tells Andy this during his 1:1.
Aug 13 - Tom and Ariana host a pool party where Tom defends Raquel against Lala
Aug 23 – Scheana’s wedding in Mexico (Schwartz and Raquel kissed) Tom caught in footage smacking Raquel’s ass. There are rumors Tom and Raquel were seen making out in the hotel.
Aug 31 – Schwartz tells us at the reunion that’s when he finds out about the “one night stand” between Tom and Raquel. Says Tom blamed alcohol and it absolutely won’t happen again.
Sept 2 – Lala’s birthday – Katie tells Tom that Ally saw him and Raquel at the Abby “enjoying” each other.
Sept 5 – Ariana’s Grandmother dies (according to the obituary)
Sept 5 – Labor Day cook out in LA, Raquel is also in attendance. Tom says he “couldn’t get a Lyft” back home to Ariana while others confirmed Lyfts and Ubers were in and out of there all day long.
Sept 12 – Raquel’s B-day, she buys the Lightning Bolt necklace for herself around this time. Also Glamping trip. This is also when Schwartz confirmed at the reunion he was including Tom when he mentioned Raquel having a type of going after men that are taken.
Sept 16-18 Life is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas – Pictures shown of Raquel on Tom’s shoulders. Tom tells Andy at the reunion this is when the affair “amped up”. (Ariana was in attendance.)
Sept 19 - Raquel’s Instagram post from life is beautiful featuring her wearing the lightning bolt necklace. Captioned “It’s giving Harley Quinn falls in love with the joker vibes ⚡️”
Sept 24 – Ariana’s Grandmoms funeral. Ariana flies to Florida twice this month to be with family. Unclear what those dates were.
Sept - While Ariana is home in FL, Ken Todd drops the mother of all gossip bombs. “I can’t believe, that Tom Zandaville had Raquel, over, when Ariana’s away, in the ju… jacuzzi as well. AND SHE STAYED ALL NIGHT, YEAH?!”
Sept sometime - Tom tells show runner in unaired footage that he feels guilty he’s not sharing his issues on the show and thought it was unfair to the rest of the cast. Again, laying the groundwork.
Oct 14-16 Bravocon – Raquel shows up in TomTom hoodie. Schwartz tells Katie that Raquel isn’t there for him. 👀
Oct 31 – Tom dresses up as Raquel for Halloween
December – Tom takes Raquel home to STL for Christmas.
January - Scheana says she has a convo with Ariana and she said she and Tom are in a good place. Communication and intimacy were good.
January 2023 – Big Bear trip with Schwartz, Jo, Tom, and Raquel – Ariana was not invited. Schwartz claimed he did not know about the affair at this time.
“Mid/late Jan” – Tom tells us at the reunion that’s when he told Schwartz about the affair. Neither can get their stories straight however.
Feb 8 – Both Toms on WWHL. Schwartz is extremely nervous. Tom acts very composed and laid back. (Meanwhile, Raquel is in their hotel room based on info Ariana shared on the CHD podcast)
Feb 14 – Valentine’s Day, Ariana and Tom go to V-day dinner, Tom gifts her flowers. Fight all night about their relationship. (Details provided by Ariana on CHD podcast)
Feb 28- Tom records him and Raquel fapping to each other on Facetime at Schwartz’s apartment.
Mar 1 – Scheana & Raquel are guests on WWHL. Raquel calls Sandoval the “hotter Tom”. Ariana finds out about affair by looking in Tom’s phone in a bathroom stall at Tom Tom restaurant.
Mar 2 – Affair made public by TMZ.

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part of my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to my home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, told me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.

I hope this is the correct sub for this, if not, kidly direct me to the right one. Now, let me start by saying, I have no knowledge in dream reading, multi universes or quantum mortality/immortality. I've only heard about it, maybe read an article about it, but I want to hear your thoughts on this...
I was having this dream and in it, I was driving home w a friend in her truck, it was night time. We were talking, catching up. I was in the passenger seat and she was driving. All of a sudden while I'm talking to her, I start panicking. I can see the road but I can see another layer, like im in another place, but I can still see where I am. In this other layer, im focusing in and out of it, like I'm im the car w my friend and Im also in this other place. What I see is I'm in a crowd during the day, Im with some person and we're downtown. We round a corner and hear shots being fired. Its a long stretch of road with businesses and more people. Everyone starts running and I see the shooter pointing down the direction where I am. I start running and screaming, "No, no, no no! Run" When I'm screaming I'm screaming in the car again w my friend in the original setting. I can see her driving, but I also see this street where Im running in a crowd full of people from this shooter. She starts freaking out and trying to talk to me, she asked what's going on and Im still screaming, "Its a shooter its happening, run, run!" And Im saying this as im sobbing and choking through my words. So Im in the crowd again, all the while I can hear my friend screaming asking whats wrong and it gets muffled out. I am north of the shooter and I am able to run around the shooter in the crowd and he begins to turn and shoot west where I just went w the crowd. I keep looking back as I run to make sure he isn't running or walking with/towards the crowd. He stays standing in the same place and I can see him shooting into the crown. I make it south of him then he begins to turn south and shoots. This time I keep looking forward. I can see the street w people, but I can also see myself in my friends car. I hear the shots go off behind me and people screaming even louder around me I look back, see him shoot, I turn my head as im running to look forward. Then I feel a burning in my neck. In that split second, I'm back in the car w my friend and I just slump over dead! Everything went black and in that moment I opened my eyes in real life and Im at home on the couch...
When everything goes black I see flashes of a funeral, news articles, my obituary, my friend screaming in the car, her driving to the hospital, the date Oct 20th (😱) and I can FEEL heartbreak, sadness, sorrow, all in a split second before my eyes flew open and I actually woke up...Usually if I have an intense dream I'll wake suddenly sometimes crying, hyperventalating, sad, still scared... but nothing? Even if I dream about getting cut or stabbed or something crazy, there is usually a lingering sensation when I wake. I even expected my neck to hurt when I woke, but nothing...
Maybe being in a dream state my psyche was able to tap into this other universe?? The emotions of the crowd and myself were so intense that it took over and I was able to "be" in these two parallel places?... I've always been open to the unexplained and I've heard a handful of stories similar to mine on podcasts or other places, this is very interesting to me, especially the fact that I saw a date. I also saw street names but I've tried google maps and there is no place where these two streets are in the same place? The streets were Research and Brackenridge, unsure of "street", "Lane", "Avenue", etc.. Now I do live in Austin Tx and we have these streets, but theyre in no way similar or near each other like they were in this other setting I experienced.
Anyways, let me know your thoughts! I appreciate any feedback! also did I flair this correctly? So much unsure-ness.

Advice...family's drama ahead:
My cousin cut off his mother (my aunt) from contact months ago; she's an elderly woman and had sent numerous people in the family some monetary gifts. Cousin was VERY upset and he turned off her cell phone, home phone. He was expecting a hefty inheritance and didnt want anything leaving the house. He had recently got power of attorney over her.
She had in the past help pay for my degree and promised to help pay my kids college too... and I knew eventually he would change her will if he found out.
No one in the extended family could contact her either, even our family in Europe couldnt reach her. My dad (her brother) called the non-emergency police line to do a wellness check up, and then he got sent a letter from an attorney to never contact her son or her again.
Obviously everyone is concerned, my aunt was a busy-body and loved to chat with everyone for hours daily, before the cut off my cousin had even taken away Christmas and church, she wasn't allowed to decorate or celebrate. (She was a super-religious Catholic). Which she would complain about often to my mother. My mom had thoughts that the cousin would drop off the aunt in a nursing home and move on with his life. She calls around in the city in AZ (We're in FL)and the first nursing home answers with "We're not allowed to to let anyone speak with her on family's orders." So we assume she's there, my mom sends her flowers in April for her birthday.
My dad, worried about his only sister... calls her church today, whom she used to be VERY involved in. Church tells my dad she passed away May 2nd.
We're obviously heart broken to have found out like this. I've checked obituaries, the family funeral plot... and I can't find any information. I just want peace of mind, that she passed.
What do I do?
TLDR: cousin cuts off wealthy aunt from family, doesn't notify anyone she's passed.

The letter comes the week after your funeral. I only notice it because of the hand written description of The bereaved Wife.
The envelope contains no note of sympathy, instead a Polaroid and an article that looks like a newspaper clipping. Both the photo and article are aged, yellowing and curling at the edges, but the picture itself is clear, just are the words on the newspaper. “Husband and wife perish in house fire: Two bodies have been recovered from a house on Jingle street, where a fire broke out around 9pm last night. It is not confirmed yet, but the bodies are believed to be that of Charles and Debbie Fosher. Neighbour’s are helping police with their enquiries and at this stage the fire is not deemed as suspicious.”
The photo in the newspaper article is the same photo as the Polaroid, it shows a young man in a suit and tie, standing tall and proud next to a raven haired young bride. They are smiling at the camera, and I can imagine them saying cheese! In union, as the photographer clicked the camera and captured the image. The man is my husband, but the wife is not me.
I have never seen the raven haired girl before and my husband had never mentioned being married before, let alone being dead and coming back to life under a different name. I log onto your computer and search for your obituary notice, but not the one I wrote for you, the one for Charles, who you were before me.
Until now, despite it all, I believed this was all wrong, but I began to truly remember the beginning. It was so early on in our relationship, you were living with your roommate and I was in the city. We spent weekends together at my place, your preference as you told me your room mate was dodgy. I didn’t mind, I liked having you to myself.
On valentines day you told me you were interning overseas for three months, it meant your dream job. We celebrated with sizzling bottles of cheap champagne. You came home at the start of April, you had been hurt in a mugging and were scratched up. I remember seeing the gouges that ran deep on your arms, the nasty bump on your forehead and that was when I realized I loved you. I’d felt sick at the thought of loosing you.
Your camera, which held all of your travel photographs, and your backpack with your ID had been stolen, so you had to get everything new. You’d dropped out of the internship, moving in with me to my small city apartment, after your room mate had gone missing with your share of the rent and not so much as a note.
Three weeks ago you died in a car crash.
You were unrecognizable because of the impact, only identifiable by your wedding ring. I hear a floorboard squeak behind me.
I’m not alone.

I'm used to researching traditional obituaries officially published by a designated family membefuneral home-type style.
Can anyone now make up obituaries/memorials about anyone? In researching recent deaths of some far-flung relatives via internet search, it appears it's possible anyone can simply enter a person's name, death, and residence (with or without a formal obituary) and anyone can flock on to say whatever.
This feels like it can be used badly. Plus, I've already seen at least one comment made by someone who got the wrong person who happened to have the same name (no obituary was included in the"memorial" page) and said something rather unpleasant like: "was so proud Jim overcame his addiction and..."
This could be a mess for future genealogists, not to mention very upsetting for family members.

Is it more appropriate to send sympathy flowers to the home of the deceased person's family's house or the funeral parlochurch itself? I tried googling and am seeing mixed things.
I don't want to send it to the house if it's considered offensive or unconventional, but if that's not the case, I feel like one's more likely to notice who sent it/appreciate it if it's sent to the home than if it's mixed in other flowers at the funeral home.
This is on behalf of a best friends parent who suddenly passed away. They're a Greek Orthodox family, not sure if culturally one method is acceptable or not.
Thank you.
Edit: there is no information on the obituary regarding sending flowers, in lieu of flowers, etc.