Company Name	Title	City
Visiting Rehab and Nursing Services	Speech Language Pathologist - Full Time	Billerica
Urgent Help Chelmsford PC	Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant	Chelmsford
Visiting Rehab and Nursing Services	Physical Therapist - Per Diem	Easton
Visiting Rehab and Nursing Services	Physical Therapy Assistant - Per Diem	Fall River
ATI Physical Therapy	Physical Therapist Assistant	Acton
Vinfen	Clinical Care Manager (LCSW / LICSW / LMHC)	Allston
Law Offices of Christina T. Vassallo	Administrative Assistant/Accounting Assistant	Amherst
Fcp Live-in Llc	Live-in Caregiver - CNA, HHA, PCA, LPN	Amherst
Cognizant	Embedded Engineer	Andover
ServiceNet	Early Intervention Developmental Specialist	Athol
Evolve Therapy Services	Speech Language Pathologist PRN	Attleboro
Aegis Therapies	Speech Language Pathologist - PRN	Attleboro
Bridgeline Staffing	SLP opening for 23/24 school year	Attleboro
Acura of Auburn	Automotive Parts Advisor	Auburn
Nonotuck Resource Associates, Inc.	AFC/DDS Registered Nurse	Auburn
Patrick Motor Group - Volkswagen	Receptionist/Cashier	Auburn
The Tile Shop	Sales Associate	Avon
Nashoba Valley Medical Center	Registered Nurse	Ayer
Catania Oils	Forklift Operator - 2nd Shift	Ayer
LogixHealth	Revenue Cycle Account Manager	Bedford
ST genetics	ExpeditoBuyer	Bedford
Elara Caring	Home Health Aide HHA Blackstone	Bellingham
The Portland Group Inc	CDL Driver	Billerica
Factorial Energy	Purchasing Specialist	Billerica
Baker Hughes	Lead Mechanical Engineer	Billerica

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in ma. Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Hi everyone! I'm Ron Bautista, County Commissioner candidate for the Democratic Primary on June 6. The way I’m running for office is by going directly to the neighbors, without selling out to political bosses, so that we can focus on the needs of everyday people. I would love to hear from you on the issues you're passionate about and answer any questions you may have about this upcoming election.
Why should you care?

• At one point or another, you may have thought these roads are unsafe: 14th Street and the intersection by Trader Joe's, 15th Street, Willow Ave, Clinton St, Park Ave, Paterson Ave, or Paterson Plank Road. Because they connect us to other cities, they are managed by the county government.
• We should have a county government that is more active in tenant legal representation for excessive rent hikes, and a holistic approach to addressing homelessness. So far, the county is only doing the bare minimum.

What is a County Commissioner?
If you don't know, you're not alone (and that's part of the problem). Hudson County Commissioners are legislators that decide on projects and approve a $634 million annual budget at the county level of government. The representatives are split into districts, and Hoboken voters are part of District 5.
Who can vote?

• If you're a registered Democrat, you can vote in the primary. If you're a registered voter but not with a particular political party, you can ask for a Democratic ballot at the polling location and vote. Just FYI, everyone on the Democratic ballot is a Democrat, just that column A candidates don't answer to a political boss :)
• You can vote early (June 2 to June 4) at Hoboken City Hall lobby: Friday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m. Sunday, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
• For June 6, you can find out where to vote here.

(You can also find this story, along with the previous parts here and here.)
A couple of months had passed since Halloween. The cool air of October gave way to the chill of November and December.
Before they knew it, Christmas had come. Enterprise and Irving were excited. It was Olin’s first Christmas, and their first Christmas as husband and wife.
Irving was busy helping Enterprise cook the Christmas feast. Yorktown II and Hornet II were already at their house, helping take care of Olin.
Hornet II smiled as she held Olin in her arms. “I can tell someone’s excited for their first Christmas.”
Olin giggled and cooed. Hornet II smiled.
The group heard a doorbell chime. Irving’s eyes went wide.
“I’ll get it.”
He opened the door to see Marsala, Vittorio Veneto, Littorio, and Fabio all at the door. Vittorio Veneto was holding Lucio’s carrier.
Irving smiled. “Merry Christmas, you guys.”
The group nodded and entered the house. Irving noticed Littorio and Vittorio Veneto placed the carriers next to Olin’s.
Irving smiled as he looked at Lucio. ”He’s so cute. He has his mother’s eyes.”
Vittorio Veneto giggled. “Yeah, but he got his father’s nose and dishwasher blonde hair.”
Enterprise leaned her head from the kitchen.
“Honey, I still need your help.”
Irving nodded and came back to the kitchen to help his wife. Vittorio Veneto was in the kitchen, helping Enterprise out, while Littorio was with Fabio and Marsala in the living room.
Enterprise smiled at Vittorio Veneto. “So, Vittorio, how did everything go with Lucio?”
Vittorio Veneto giggled. “It went well. All the walking I did on Halloween must have had a delayed effect, as I went into labor in afternoon on November 2nd. I first felt contractions during dinner, and I thought it was just bad gas or indigestion. My water broke while Marsala was taking a nap. ”
Vittorio Veneto looked at her husband and giggled.
“Oddly, Marsala was calm, as were Littorio, Fabio, Impero, Roma, and even little Maria. They drove me to the hospital. I thought Lucio was going to be quick, but he decided he wanted to take his time. Lucio Giancarlo Fasetti was born on November 3rd, at 12:01 AM. He took 9 hours and 27 minutes.”
Enterprise nodded as she listened to Vittorio Veneto’s story. “So you got a rule fallower like Joachim is to Bismarck?”
Vittorio Veneto nodded. “Yes. I have a feeling he, Louis, and Olin will get along well in the future.”
Enterprise looked at Irving and grinned. “Yeah, especially Louis and Lucio, as they have very similar-sounding names.”
Vittorio Veneto closed her eyes as she smiled and nodded. “I’ll be in the living room with my sister and the children if you need me.”
Soon, the doorbell chimed again. Littorio smiled as she got off the couch.
“I’ll get it!”
She smiled as she opened the door. “Ah, glad to see you could make it!”
Irving left the kitchen and walked to the front door. He smiled.
It was Fritz and Tirpitz. Bismarck and Heinz were behind them. All of their children had come with them.
Fritz smiled at Irving. He noticed Fritz was wearing his formal uniform, as was Heinz. Irving smiled.
“Glad to see you guys could make it!”
Fritz nodded as he sat on the couch. Soon, the doorbell chimed again. Fritz giggled as he got off the couch.
“I got it”
Fritz laughed and smiled.
“Ah, Herr Hall and Herr Jones! Glad to see you could make it!”
Malcolm and Oklahoma came inside, with Oklahoma holding Louis’s carrier. Samuel and New Jersey were with them.
Soon, everyone was at the party. Irving was busy slicing up the ham while Enterprise was getting the present wrapped up.
Suddenly, Irving heard a baby cry. He stopped what he was doing and checked on the children.
Both Louis and Olin were crying. Irving and Malcolm both looked at each other and sighed.
Irving held Olin in his arms. Malcolm was doing the same thing for Louis. Irving rocked him from side to side.
“It’s all right, little guy. Daddy’s here.”
Fritz smiled as he got up.
“Herr Reese, Let me try something.”
Irving nodded has he handed Olin to Fritz.
Fritz sat next to Tirpitz and held Olin. He smiled.
“Edelweiss, Edelweiss, every morning you greet me.”
“Strong and white, clean and bright. You look happy to meet me”
Olin stopped crying upon listening to Fritz’s soft singing. Soon, he giggled.
Tirpitz smiled. Irving's mouth was open. She looked at Irving with a slight smile.
“Heh. That song always calmed down Moritz and the others when they were babies.”
Fritz smiled as Tirpitz kissed him on the cheek. Fritz placed Olin back in his carrier. Bismarck giggled.
“Yeah. I remember you teaching me that song, sister. It was a great help with both Helga and Joachim.”
The group nodded. Littorio giggled.
“Mine was always Ave Maria. That always seemed to calm Maria down, and I told Vittorio Veneto about it as well.”
Enterprise smiled as she leaned her head from the kitchen.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but the food is done.”
“I hope I’m not too late!”
The group turned to see Nevada at the front door, her jacket covered in snow. Oklahoma smiled.
“Your right on time, sis.”
“Can you do me a favor?”
Nevada nodded. “Sure. What do you need?”
“I need someone to set up the watch over the kids' table.”
Nevada nodded. “Sure. I got that covered.”
Nevada got to work, helping set up the small table. She smiled as she looked at the children.
“Hey, kiddos! Come get a seat!”
Moritz smiled as he gestured to his siblings and cousins to follow him. With the children seated, Irving got the food out on the dining room table.
Irving and Enterprise served the food. After a while, everyone got some food.
Fritz smiled as he ate some ham. “This ham is amazing, Irving. It tastes like something Gert would make.”
Irving was confused. “Who’s Gert?”
Fritz smiled. “Gert was our cook on a U-boat I served on back in the day. That son-of-a-”
A glare from Tirpitz stopped Fritz. She pointed at the nearby kids' table.
“Gun. Could cook the best food with nothing but some hot plates, an electric oven, and a dream. I wish you got to meet him.”
Irving nodded. “I know what you mean by that last part. I wish you got to meet my old squad leader, Robert. It sounds like you guys would’ve gotten along.”
Fritz nodded.
“It’s alright. Let’s not lament the past and try to look towards the future.”
Tirpitz placed her hand on Fritz’s lap. He smiled. Bismarck smirked.
“Spoken like a poet.”
Samuel giggled. “Ay, to our futures!”
Irving smirked at Samuel. “I didn’t think you would be the one to lead the toast. Guess there’s a first time for everything.”
The group laughed as they raised their glasses in the air.
“To our futures.”
The group clinked their glasses and ate. Nevada was hard at work watching over the children, making sure they were alright.
After they finished eating, the group made their way to the living room for presents.
However, before they could begin, the doorbell rang.
Irving got up to answer it. He opened the door.
It was the Commander. He smiled.
“I hope I’m not too late!”
Irving smiled. “Well, you missed dinner, but you came just in time for presents.”
The Commander nodded as he entered the door.
“Sorry, I’m late guys. I was at the Royal Navy’s Christmas party.”
The group nodded.
The Commander smiled. “Oh, I got these for some couples here.”
He reached into a tote bag.
The Commander handed a small cardboard box to Littorio and Fabio.
The couple opened it and gasped.
It was a Christmas ornament with Maria on it, saying “Maria’s first Christmas.”
Littorio gasped. “Thank you, Commander.”
The Commander nodded as he handed both Vittorio Veneto and Marsala and Enterprise and Irving a small cardboard box.
The two couples gasped as they opened it.
Inside were Christmas ornaments, similar to the ones Littorio and Fabio had received, but they were different.
Vittorio Veneto and Marsala got one that was Lucio, and it said, “Lucio’s first Christmas.” While Enterprise and Irving got one of Olin, that said “Olin’s first Christmas.”
The couple smiled at the Commander.
"Thank you, Commander."
Irving got up to place the ornament on the tree.
The Commander’s eyes went wide as he reached into his tote bag. “Okie, Malcolm, I nearly forgot. This is for you.”
The Commander handed them a small cardboard box. Oklahoma opened it and gasped.
It was an ornament with Louis on it, saying “Louis’s first Christmas.”
The Commander smiled. “I figured I would make it special and have you guys have two baby-themed ornaments.”
Oklahoma smiled as she hugged the Commander. “Thank you, Commander. That was really thoughtful.”
The Commander smiled as she placed the ornament on the tree, right next to the one she received last year.
Soon, the group unwrapped the gifts they got for each other. Irving got all the children a comic book, while Enterprise got every adult a Christmas sweater.
Everyone smiled at the gifts they received. Irving smiled.
“Personally, being with all of you guys, after the hectic year we had, is the best Christmas gift of all.”
The group nodded as the Commander sat up. He pulled out the bottle of scotch that he got from Irving last Christmas. It was three quarters full.
“Irving, I’ve yet to finish this bottle of scotch that you gave me last Christmas. Let’s say we finish it.”
Irving nodded and got out some shot glasses. Soon, Fritz, Heinz, Malcolm, and Samuel all had shots of scotch in their hands.
After a while, the bottle was empty. The men were having trouble standing after doing at least three shots of scotch between them.
Irving was sitting in a chair. Samuel giggled.
“I suppose I’ll give the Commander his present.”
He reached under the Christmas tree for a long cardboard box that said “To The Commander: From Sammy:”
The Commander opened the box with some help from Nevada. Inside was a bottle of whiskey. Samuel giggled.
“I suppose we make it a tradition. Every Christmas one of us gets the Commander a bottle of booze, and he’ll use it for toasts. If that bottle is not empty by the time the next Christmas comes around, we all drink it at Christmas and get him another.”
The Commander nodded. “Sounds like a good plan, Sammy.”
Samuel nodded. “I suppose I’ll let New Jersey tell you the next thing.”
New Jersey got up.
“Everyone.”
She pulled out a small box. The group raised their eyebrows at her.
New Jersey opened the box. Inside was a golden ring with a diamond on it.
“We’re engaged.”
Enterprise’s eyes went wide. She ran up to New Jersey and hugged her.
“Congrats NJ! That’s amazing news!”
New Jersey smiled. “I figured you would be excited about it, Enty. The wedding will be in May. I hope all of you will come to the wedding.”
The group nodded. Oklahoma smiled.
“I would not miss it for the world.”
New Jersey sat down at the table.
Enterprise looked at the men. She looked at Bismarck and Oklahoma.
“It’s clear none of them are in a state to drive. You guys feel like being drunk wranglers?”
Bismarck and Oklahoma nodded.
“Yeah. We just need help to move them into a room and a person to watch over them.”
Enterprise nodded as she looked at Nevada and Tirpitz.
“Nevada, Tirpitz, can you watch the children?”
Nevada and Tirpitz nodded.
Enterprise looked at Hornet II and Yorktown II.
"Can you guys set up some sleeping bags and cots for the men to sleep on in the living room? Everyone else can help me carry them to the living room."
Hornet II and Yorktown II nodded.
Soon, the other shipgirls carried the men into a room. Samuel groaned.
“Should old acquaintance be forgot?”
Bismarck sighed. “Great, one of them is singing. What should I do?”
Oklahoma sighed. “Just let him sing.”
Irving giggled.
"Clink. Clink. Another drink. Plenty in the cellar when it's gone."
Enterprise sighed as she placed her husband on his side on a sleeping bag.
Soon, all the men were on sleeping bags, cots, and blankets that were spread out on the living room floor. Vittorio Veneto and Littorio all got things for the men to vomit in.
Bismarck sighed. “Jesus. This is reminding me of Irving’s bachelor party.”
Oklahoma laughed. “Yeah. And this is also reminding me of Enterprise’s bachelorette party, with all of her group passing out on my living room floor.”
Enterprise giggled. “I remember you having to be the drunk wrangler, even though you were eight months pregnant.”
Oklahoma sighed. “That feels so long ago.”
Enterprise smiled. “A lot can happen in a year.”
Oklahoma nodded. Her eyes went wide.
“Enty, we have another problem. Where are the children going to sleep?”
Enterprise froze. She placed a finger on her chin.
Bismarck smiled. “They could sleep with us. Moritz, Max, Marlene, Helga, and Joachim are old enough.”
Enterprise nodded. “That only leaves Maria, Olin, Lucio, and Louis.”
Littorio raised her hand. “The babies can sleep in the nursery in their carriers.”
Enterprise nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.”
“Alright, so who will watch over the men, and who will watch over the babies?”
New Jersey and Vittorio Veneto raised their hands.
“I’ll watch over the men. Vittorio Veneto will watch over the babies. The rest of us will watch over each other and the children.”
Enterprise nodded. “Got it. I’ll be in the room with the girls and the older children.”
Soon, the shipgirls went to sleep. New Jersey was on the sofa, watching over the unconscious men as if they were 24K gold bars.
Enterprise got Vittorio Veneto a cot to sleep on, and she joined the other shipgirls. She had some cots, blankets, and sleeping bags set up for the group.
A few hours passed. Suddenly, the night calm broke.
“AHHHH!”
Enterprise and the others looked around. They could see Bismarck was sitting up.
“Bismarck! You alright?”
Bismarck looked down at herself and saw an odd light brown-shaped thing in her sleeping bag. She sighed.
“Relax. It's only Joachim. He scared me. He must have gotten cold and crawled into the sleeping bag with me.”
She sighed.
“Can’t believe I almost punted my son across the room.”
The group sighed. But this calm was only temporary, as all the babies wailed, one after the other.
Enterprise and Oklahoma got up to check on Vittorio Veneto and the babies. They saw Vittorio Veneto. Her eyes were wide as saucers as all four babies were crying. She looked at them and sighed.
“I think Bismarck’s screaming woke them up.”
Enterprise held Olin in her arms. Oklahoma did the same with Louis, and Vittorio Veneto held Lucio in her arms.
Littorio joined the group, holding Maria in her arms.
“Ave Maria, Vergin del ciel”
Maria stopped crying upon hearing her mother’s singing. The other babies also stopped crying.
Littorio smiled as, one by one, the babies went back to sleep. She giggled.
“Huh. I guess the babies like music.”
Enterprise smiled and placed Olin back in his crib. The other women did the same by placing their babies back into their carriers.
Enterprise made her way to the living room, where New Jersey was. New Jersey was sitting on the couch, trying not to fall asleep.
Enterprise smiled at her as she sat next to her. “It sounds like this Christmas is one we will never forget.”
New Jersey giggled. “Yeah, but we will have one hell of a mess to clean up in the morning.”
Enterprise nodded as she grabbed a plaid blanket. She saw Irving lying on his side and smiled. She lay down next to him and covered themselves with the blanket.
Soon, she fell asleep.

Company Name	Title	City
Staples	Maximo Engineer	Framingham
CHEP	Pallet Repair Operator	Acton
Oculus Search Partners	Industrial Maintenance Manager	Agawam
IntelyCare	CNA	Attleboro
Jobot	Wellness Nurse	Attleboro
Nesco Resource	Senior Revenue & Technical Accountant	Ayer
Staffing Now	Clerical Assistant	Bedford
Stability Healthcare	Critical Care Nurse	Beverly
Jobot	IT Policy Manager	Billerica
Jobot	Structural Project Engineer	Burlington
Burlington	Hostess	Burlington
Lahey Hospital and Medical Center	LMRT	Burlington
Cambridge Health Alliance	RN - PACU Recovery Nurse	Cambridge
Oculus Search Partners	LPN	Canton
Jobot	Wireman	Canton
Urgent Help Chelmsford PC	LMRT	Chelmsford
American Mobile Healthcare	Travel RN	Chelsea
Delaware North	Utility Helper	East Boston
Visiting Rehab and Nursing Services	Physiotherapist	Easton
Morning Glory Farm Inc	Chef Assistant	Edgartown
Visiting Angels Sudbury	Carer	Framingham
IntelyCare	CNA	Franklin
Advance Auto Parts Black History Month	store driver	Lawrence
American Mobile Healthcare	Travel RN	New Braintree
BAYADA Home Health Care	RN	New Braintree

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in ma. Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Posting her email about her position, my stating my response into the void of the internet, and then sharing the email she was supposed to be replying to. This is mostly a local politics rant.
td;dr I'm glad she's not running for another term.
Council Member Jane Prince's position: "My position on the Summit Avenue Regional Trail is that the process that the city has used to date has created tremendous controversy and rancor. The city is going through a lot of tough issues related to crime and violence, and the development of a bike trail is something we should have found a way to bring people together to recognize this as a positive opportunity and to reach consensus.
As this moves forward, I will continue to push for greater opportunities to bring people together for a shared vision of what this can mean for our city.
At the same time, from an equity standpoint, the East Side where the highest percentage of people in our city live without single occupancy vehicles, we are seeing relatively little investment in building out our bike system. I can't quite figure that out either. Thank you for reaching out to me, I welcome your opinion, Jane"

1. I will grant that the City hasn't used the best process (the June 2022 meeting announcing this whole thing could have been a lot better) but the "controversy and rancor" has been entirely generated by SOS. They had an opposition website ready to go that they shared in the Zoom chat of that first meeting last June. Since they, they have been repeatedly mischaracterizing and lying about this project, while ignoring key facts.
2. Way to somehow tie this into crime and violence???
3. Isn't it part of a City Council member's job to "bring people together" and try to bridge understanding amidst "controversy and rancor"? Have you been doing that? (Not as far as I know)
4. I totally agree the East Side needs more investment, but this is a whole thing because Summit Ave was identified as a regional trail corridor by the Met Council. Its part of your job to understand how funding priorities are set, but she "can't quite figure that out either."
5. This email just completely IGNORES all of the points brought up in the email this was supposed to be a reply to. Its very long, but I've pasted it below.

Dear Councilmember Prince,
[Redacted identifying info]
I am writing to ask that you support the Summit Ave Regional Trail Plan. What is your current position on the Summit Ave Plan? I am concerned that you don't support this plan due to your remarks at the March 21 Save Our Streets meeting at Saint Thomas, where many parts of the plan were significantly misrepresented.
Fundamentally, this is a plan to protect drinking water, ensure we have a good road, and protect infrastructure in Saint Paul for decades to come. The water main under Summit is from 1888. Summit Ave's roadbed is fractured and breaking down from its base several feet below the surface. A mill-and-overlay, as suggested by SOS at their March 21 meeting, would only last 10 years and effectively be painting over a broken wall. Roads need to be completely rebuilt every 40-60 years, and Summit Ave is long overdue. In order to do this Summit Ave needs to be completely dug up from its current curb to its current curb.
This essential roadbed removal and replacement from curb to curb must happen whether Summit is rebuilt with a bike lane or not, and is the part of the project that impacts trees. Whether we have a bike path or not has nothing to do with the unavoidable tree loss Summit faces.
After digging up Summit from curb to curb to do this essential road work, we have the option of rebuilding what we currently have or making changes that would protect human life and make Summit even more park-like. The basic plan is to swap the bike and parking lanes and move the curb inwards, so that the curb is between the parked cars and bicyclists.
Do you care about the lives and bodily safety of people on Summit? Because this reconfiguration would save lives and bones. Two people have died biking Summit Ave since 2008. From 2012 to 2021, 63 people were injured in pedestrian- and bicycle-involved crashes. This is definitely a minimum number - many bikers feel ok enough to get home initially but later in the day end up in the ER or urgent care.
Bikes are currently assailed by distracted or drunk drivers from their left, car doors from their right, and amazon or landscaping trucks parked in the bike lane itself. In the winter, the bike lane disappears entirely. If a biker falls, they are falling next to cars whizzing past or into the car lane. A bike path replaces these risks with those associated with folks backing out of their driveway. A bikers might still get hit by a car turning left or right, but the car will be forced to go slower due to the raised/tabled crosswalks that serve as a speed bump. The path might still be snowy and/or icy, but it won't entirely disappear like it does when it is between parked cars and the car lane in winter. If a biker wipes out, they wipe out away from cars doing 20-40 mph and instead contend with e-bikers, scooters, walkers, and/or cars backing out of their driveway. All of these are moving much slower and thus reduce bikers' risk of dying or getting severly injured while biking. Merely painting the lane green would not reduce any of the current safety risks of biking on Summit.
Moreover, moving the curbs inward will make Summit an even better environment for trees and humans. Tree roots can't grow into a 3 foot deep road bed. Moving the curbs inward will in turn move the edge of the road-bed away from the trees and replace this volume with soil. The bike path that is now closer to the trees will only be inches deep, not feet deep, because it is carrying lighter and slower bike traffic instead of car traffic. Overall, this project will give tree roots on Summit more volume underground to grow in.
Moving the curbs inward also means the park-like medians and edge of Summit Ave will be expanded. There will be more green space, making Summit Ave even more like a linear park. Asphalt road bed isn't what makes Summit great and historic, it's the unique linear park design and architectural treasures.
You heard at the March 21 meeting that the proposed bike path would be less safe than the current lane. This is a misrepresentation of a weak scientific study. SOS is basing this assertion on this study https://www.iihs.org/topics/bibliography/ref/2193. According to this study, a bike path with "light separation" has a 1.19 times risk of crashing or falling compared to biking in a street without bike infrastructure. If you look more closely, this number is meaningless. The 95% confidence interval for this number is 0.46 - 3.10, aka twice as safe to almost three times as risky. There is a large confidence interval because this study has a very small data set. This number is also for a lane with "lighter separation (e.g., parked cars, posts, low curb)," when the proposed path is more appropriately categorized as a lane with "heavy separation" with "grade and horizontal separation." Per the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study they cite, bike lanes with this heavier kind of separation are safer no matter how you slice it. Bike paths with grade separation have a 0.10 odds ratio of crashing or falling compared to a regular street, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.01 to 0.95.
Another lie you heard at the March 21 meeting is that this project would have no improvements for pedestrians. This is wrong - raised crosswalks and a shorter crossing distance will provide significant pedestrian safety improvements.
A part of the Summit Ave plan that has been overlooked is the use of raised or tabled sidewalks. These are also called continuous sidewalks, because instead of the sidewalk lowering into the road and pedestrians needing to walk in the road, the sidewalk stays at the same height and the cars need to drive over the sidewalk. These act as speedbumps, slowing down cars as they turn on-to and off-of Summit. They also position pedestrians and bikers taller relative to car sight lines in intersections.
In addition to the tabled crosswalks, the proposed plan will decrease the crossing distance for folks crossing Summit. Currently, east of Lexington, street-crossing distances are over 48 feet. The proposed plan decreases this to approximately 31 feet, making crossing Summit less like crossing a highway, and more like crossing your neighborhood street. Less time in the roadway means there is less time for a car to accidentally hit a pedestrian.
Given all this, how do you plan to vote on the Summit Ave plan when it comes to the City Council? I hope you will vote to support clean water, good roads, and human lives.
Sincerely, [Redacted]

Here is your Friday update of the best job listings for today.

• Medical Assistant - Infectious Disease Specialist office
• Machinist
• BMC Firmware Engineer Secaucus NJ
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• Day Camp Inclusion Leader – Students Welcome
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Stay ahead in the job market with our daily update on 2 million job opportunities in the USA. From entry-level to executive positions, find your perfect fit and get hired now Friday May 19th new jobs available list

• Medical Assistant - Infectious Disease Specialist office
• Machinist
• BMC Firmware Engineer Secaucus NJ
• Amazon Warehouse Worker - $3000 Sign On Bonus - Day Shifts
• Physician Assistant or CRNP, UPP Department of Otolaryngology Laryngology, UPMC Mercy
• Day Camp Inclusion Leader – Students Welcome
• Family Nurse Practitione Physician Assistant at Ascension Saint Thomas Urgent Care - FT/PRN
• CCT Nurse- Inland Empire - Located in Riverside, CA
• Registered Nurse Home Health Full Time
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Stay ahead in the job market with our daily update on 2 million job opportunities in the USA. From entry-level to executive positions, find your perfect fit and get hired now Friday May 19th new jobs available list

• Medical Assistant - Infectious Disease Specialist office
• Machinist
• BMC Firmware Engineer Secaucus NJ
• Amazon Warehouse Worker - $3000 Sign On Bonus - Day Shifts
• Physician Assistant or CRNP, UPP Department of Otolaryngology Laryngology, UPMC Mercy
• Day Camp Inclusion Leader – Students Welcome
• Family Nurse Practitione Physician Assistant at Ascension Saint Thomas Urgent Care - FT/PRN
• CCT Nurse- Inland Empire - Located in Riverside, CA
• Registered Nurse Home Health Full Time
• Bus Driver

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Night Cycle New Jersey Information, Route, and Mutual Release
A. Meet up is at Rittenhouse Square, south east corner, 6pm. Roll out is at 6:30. If you want to start in NJ, you can jump on at Devil Creek Brewery in Collingswood at approximately 7:30. We’ll stop at Flying Fish brewery if it’s open when we pass it. There’s no food served at NJ breweries but you are free to bring your own. We’ll pass every PATCO station, but the only planned full stops are Haddonfield and Lindenwold. There’s no planned post-ride hang spot.
B. You can pick up a lot of speed riding down the Ben Franklin bridge and there’s a fun descent in Haddonfield, plus Camden’s streets are in rough shape: this is the kind of ride it’s smart to wear a helmet on. You need a front headlight because it’s the law and the streets after Haddonfield can be dark. You also need a red flashing rear light, a reflective vest, preferably both because of the nature of suburban roads and traffic. Remember: each town we pass through has its own police department with its own norms. They’re more likely to be inquisitive about a group ride at night compared to Philly cops and may not be tolerant or forgiving of public partying. Let’s be respectful and non-confrontational if we have interactions with them.
C. CYCLESCENE RIDING STYLE: We go out to enjoy riding with friends and go to fun places, not to make trouble. We take the whole traffic lane when appropriate, sometimes even when there is a frustrated car behind us – we have the right to the full traffic lane and we do it because sometimes that’s the safest, most pleasant, and best way to ride. We are traffic, so we we ride with traffic on the right hand side of the road. We don’t ride against traffic on a one way or on the left hand side of the road. We let cars pass on the left by moving to the right when safe and appropriate. The ride is a party, not a protest – we’re having too fun much to wreck the vibe by arguing with drivers and we let the little stuff slide for the sake of the safety and happiness of the others on the ride. We stay off the sidewalk, but if we have to hop on it for a moment, we are extremely deferential and respectful to the pedestrians. We respect traffic lights, road signs, and police instruction. We do our best to move through intersections as one, like a bus, so if we’re halfway through an intersection and the light turns, we stay together until the whole ride gets through, so long as its safe. We thank drivers when they extend us courtesy, show patience, and work with us. We show love for the neighborhoods we pass through. We don’t litter.
D. The Route (https://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/5533213045) (subject to modification as necessary due to conditions)
PHILADELPHIA (PATCO Speedline Stops: 15/16 Locust; 12/13 Locust; 9/10 Locust; 8th & Market (passing on Chestnut); Franklin Square (under construction))

1. Exit park, head east on Locust
   
   1. Left on 9th
   2. Right on Chestnut
   3. Left on 7th
   4. Right on Race
   5. Left on 3rd
   6. Left on Vine
   7. Left on Larence

FULL STOP BEFORE CROSSING THE BRIDGE
CAMDEN (PATCO stops: City Hall (Market & 5th); Broadway (Walter Rand Transportation Center); Ferry Ave (passing on Venner)
FULL STOP AFTER THE BRIDGE

1. North on Fourth
   
2. Navigate the circle to get on Elm/Main
   
3. Navigate the circle to go under the bridge via 3rd
   
4. Cut through Rutgers
   
5. Right on 5th - the City Hall speedline station is on the right a block and a half up and is the best option to get home if you don’t want to do anything beyond the Ben Franklin Bridge
   
6. Left on MLK (train tracks and heavy traffic. Be careful)
   
7. Right on Haddon (train tracks and heavy traffic. Be careful)
   
8. Left on Pine
   
9. Wrap around the school and then left on Park Blvd
   
10. Right on Vesper
    
11. Left on Haddon
    
12. Right on Venner
    
13. Left on Ferry
    
14. Go under 130 via underpass
    

COLLINGSWOOD (PATCO stop: Collingswood)

1. Left on Narberth (different from the map my ride)
   
2. Right on Maple
   
3. Zig zag left and Right to stay on Maple
   
4. Right on Harvard
   
5. Left on Haddon Ave
   

MID POINT/REST STOP/NJ MEET UP: DEVIL’S CREEK BREWERY

1. Continue on Haddon Ave
   
2. Right on Stiles
   
3. Left on N Atlantic
   
4. Right on Conard
   
5. Left on Park
   

HADDON TOWNSHIP (PATCO Stop: Westmont)

1. Continue on Park after Cuthbert
   
   1. Left on Walnut
   2. Right on Westmont
   3. Right on Ardmore
   4. Zig zag right and left across Crystal Lake to cross by the speedline
   5. Right on Stoy
   6. Left on Westmont Ave

HADDONFIELD (PATCO stop: Haddonfield)

1. Continue on Westmont
   
2. Left on Euclid
   
3. Right on Rosedale
   

FULL STOP AT THE SPEEDLINE – FROM HERE ON THE RIDE IS INCREASINGLY IMPACTED BY SUBURBAN SPRAWL

1. Continue on Rosedale, around the bend
   

2. Left on Washington 

TAVISTOCK, LAWNSIDE, CHERRY HILL (PATCO stop: Woodcrest)

1. Continue on Washington
   
2. Right on Tavistock
   
3. Left on Warwick
   
4. Left on Oak
   
5. Cut through the industrial park
   
6. Right on Burnt Mill
   

VOORHEES/SOMERDALE/LINDENWOLD (PATCO stops: Ashland, Lindewold)

1. Right on 7th
   
2. Left on Railroad
   
3. Right on Evesham
   
4. Left into shopping plaza
   
5. Exit shopping plaza onto Kennedy
   

STOP AT FLYING FISH IF IT’S OPEN

1. Continue on Kennedy
   
2. Zig zag left and right across Somerdale to get on Osage
   
3. Left on Browning
   
4. Right on Colgate
   
5. Left on Station
   
6. Cross White Horse Rd Carefully
   

END: LINDENWOLD PATCO
YOU MAY BE OFFERED TO SIGN A VOLUNTARY MUTUAL RELEASE. Riding on the streets with a group, both in traffic and off road, sometimes at night, and stopping at urban explorer destinations, involves inherent and often unforeseeable risks of serious injury or worse. Even death. I know this – yet I still ride because it’s fun. I want to keep it fun and friendly no matter what. I’ve reviewed the ride information, talked to the organizers, and mingled with the rest of the ridership. If I didn’t like what I saw, I wouldn’t go on the ride. Therefore, I promise not sue anyone that has signed this agreement for their participation in group bike rides in exchange for their promise not to sue me for my participation in group bike rides. If I get hurt, I’m free to seek indemnification from third parties - but we the undersigned all agree that none of us sues each other in the event something bad happens. My signature indicates that I have assumed all risks and agree that to waive all claims as to anyone that has also signed this agreement, including claims of negligence against any co-signor that planned the ride, led the ride, or participated in the ride. IF YOU ARE NOT OFFERED THE MUTUAL RELEASE AND WOULD LIKE TO BENEFIT FROM ITS MUTUAL PROTECTION, OR WISH TO RESCIND YOUR MUTUAL RELEASE, SEND AN EMAIL TO [email protected]

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Content Warning: This story contains depictions/mentions of abduction, torture, incest, cannibalism, normalized drug and sexual abuse, and verbal child abuse.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the bright glare of an overhead lamp. After a few seconds of dull confusion, panic set in when I realized I couldn’t possibly be in my own bed. I tried to jolt upwards, but found that my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak or scream or even voluntarily control my own breathing.
The only things I could move were my eyes. As they adjusted to the bright light above me, I was just able to make out enough detail to realize that I was in an operating theatre of some kind. Had I been in an accident? I strained my simultaneously drowsy yet adrenaline-shocked brain to remember how I could have ended up here.
I was just barely able to recall a slim young man with slicked black hair and blue eyes. I had been on a trip and ran into him at the hotel bar. During our conversation, he mentioned that he distilled his own whiskey with home-grown corn. It sounded intriguing, and he told me that he had a small bottle of it back in his hotel room. He said that I was free to try a glass, and if it pleased me, he could arrange for me to purchase some.
He had been charming and affable, and with his slight frame I didn’t deem him much of a threat to me personally, so I followed him back to his room.
Then I felt a syringe being plunged into my back, and everything went dark before I could so much as utter a whimper in protest.
Someone repositioned the swivel light so that it wasn’t pointed directly at me, and I could see that the operating theatre was ancient, likely dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Instead of the sterile white that would be expected in any modern medical facility, everything here was browned and yellowed and stained with time. There was wood where there should have been ceramic tiles, and cast iron where there should have been stainless steel. It was decrepit, but not quite derelict. Someone had kept the place functional, and given my present circumstances, their motives couldn’t possibly be innocent.
The tiered rows of seats that encircled me were all dimly lit, but I could tell there were figures sitting in them. I could discern no details, so they were all merely humanoid silhouettes to me. They moved only slightly, and I thought that here and there I could catch the light reflecting in their eyes, but they were a deathly quiet lot. There was no whispering, no coughing, and I couldn’t even be sure they were breathing.
Squeaking wheels and the bellows of a respirator began to creep towards me, and from the periphery of my vision, I witnessed a brain in a bubbling jar slide up beside me. It was mounted on some kind of antique pedestal, with a gramophone horn, tesla coil, and all matter of steampunk-looking contraptions built into it. The oddest thing about it was that there was a bowler hat placed on top of the jar.
At least, that was the oddest thing until it spoke.
“Welcome, welcome, scholars and students of forbidden gnosis and the damned sciences. Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” a voice boomed from the gramophone horn as the brain bobbed and flickered in a strange blue light with every syllable.
“Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” the audience murmured in unison.
“Thank you all for coming. For those that don’t know me, I am High Adderman Professor Whitaker C. Crowley of the Harrowick Chapterhouse; Preternaturalist, Parapsychologist, Crypto-anatomist, Alchemical Consultant, and – when the occasion calls for it – enthusiastic vivisectionist! For your education and entertainment, tonight I will be demonstrating the neuro-ethereal functions of the human brain with this fully paralyzed, yet fully conscious, test subject. Though he cannot move an inch to save his life, he can see, hear, and most especially feel everything that happens here tonight. Whether or not he’ll survive or be in any mental state to remember any of this when it’s over is… uncertain at best.
“Of course, due to my physical limitations, I will not be performing this vivisection alone. Assisting me tonight will be Master Addermen James and Mary Darling.”
The audience began murmuring amongst themselves, the names evidently meaning more to them than they did to me. I heard footsteps crossing the wooden floor, and when they stopped, I saw the young man from earlier standing beside my bed. He wore a blood-stained leather apron over a dark Howie lab coat, his cloth mask drawing focus to his gleaming and gleeful blue eyes.
By his side stood a young woman so much like him that she could only be his sister. She had the same pitch-black hair, worn in bunches, and the same striking blue eyes that glittered with a manic psychosis. She was dressed in a red and white nurse’s uniform from a bygone era that I couldn’t quite place, and was likely just intended to look old-fashioned without actually belonging to any actual time period.
“Please, please, there’s no need for concern,” Crowley said, trying to assuage the misgivings his audience apparently had with the visiting surgeons. “It’s the Darlings we have to thank for bringing us this test subject in the first place. I’d like to remind you all that the Darling Twins are fellow members of the Ophion Occult Order, and you are all to treat them with the respect that they’re due. I’m aware that they don’t technically possess any formal medical training, but their extensive self-taught knowledge of human anatomy should prove quite useful.”
“I’ve always found that the difference between a butcher and a back alley surgeon was one of entrepreneurship,” James added.
“That’s exactly the sort of amoral heterodoxy I like to see in my colleagues!” Crowley heartily agreed. “I do however feel the need to point out that your personal protective equipment is simultaneously inadequate and, given the circumstances, not strictly necessary.”
“It’s mainly for show. I like to get into the part,” James said, holding up a pair of hands clad in old leather gloves that were surely far more unsanitary than any bare hands could ever be.
“And so do I, just not as much as I like to drink and smoke,” Mary said, and I saw her raise a martini glass to her unmasked face and take a sip. “Oh, that reminds me. Professor Crowley, I’d like to apologize for you having the misfortune of witnessing me during one of my rare lapses into sobriety at our last encounter. I want to assure you that that dreadful experience was enough to knock me back off that horrible wagon and I’m proud to say that I have not been sober since.”
“That’s… good information to have, I suppose,” Crowley said. “To be blunt, your cannibalistic tendencies are a far greater concern to me than your proclivity for inebriation. I trust you’re able to refrain from entering your ‘Wendigo psychosis’ when the situation calls for it?”
“Wendigo psychosis? We’re not Wendigos,” Mary corrected him. “Wendigos are cursed with an insatiable hunger as a punishment for resorting to survival cannibalism, which seems a little judgmental if you ask me. The spirit cursing you couldn’t be bothered to intervene when you were starving, but once you solve your own problem it suddenly gets off its high horse just to condemn you for it? Regardless, James and I are not Wendigos. We are Randian, Nietzschean Übermenschen. We recognize our intrinsic superiority and reject morality as a means for the weak to oppress the strong. We do as we damn well please, and we find living off the flesh of our victims incredibly pleasing. If no one can stop us, then why should we stop? Also, Wendigos have antlers.”
“No, they don’t,” Crowley objected.
“Ah, White Wendigos do. I’m pretty sure those accounts take precedence,” Mary said.
“Right. Well, random racism and self-serving philosophical butchery aside, I was referring to your propensity to strip down and wallow in your victim’s viscera as you gorge yourself on their raw flesh,” Crowley clarified. “Whatever it is you call that.”
“I call it a good time,” Mary said, raising her glass in a toast before taking another tip.
“You will refrain from resorting to any such debauchery tonight,” Crowley insisted. “Tonight, you’re here to work. Is that understood?”
“Work? Me? Absolutely out of the question. James promised me I’d never have to work a day in my life. Isn’t that right, James Darling?”
“Technically, I forbid you from working. But, you being you, took that as a very loving gesture,” James corrected her.
“Hmmm. If you say so, James Darling. It’s a moot point, regardless. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; that a pretty girl like me would ever need to work or that a drunk like me could ever hold a job.”
“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Mary Darling. You’ve always managed to be a spectacular homemaker in spite of, perhaps even because of, your drunkenness,” James complimented her.
“Now don’t go getting all women’s lib on me, James Darling. If being a homemaker was a job, then the invisible hand of the free market would give it a salary,” she disputed. “As rational, Randian Übermenschen, we do not question the existence or wisdom of invisible hands.”
“Well, you’ve got me there, Mary Darling,” James conceded.
“But if you’re not here to work, then why – I mean, if you don’t mind my asking – why come at all?” Crowley demanded.
“We couldn’t find a sitter, and we thought this would make a nice family outing,” Mary replied.
“You… what?” Crowley asked.
It was then that I saw James smile with his eyes in the worst way possible.
“Sara’s here,” he explained, waving up at the tiered seats. “Hello, Sara Darling!”
“Hello, Daddy Darling! Hello, Mommy Darling!” the cheery voice of a preteen girl called out from somewhere outside my field of vision. I heard the audience react in dismay at the revelation of her presence, which was very confusing as I couldn’t fathom how a young girl’s presence could have gone unnoticed in such a setting, or why it would be a cause of such trepidation.
“You brought your forsaken child into my operating theatre!” Crowley demanded, a violent outrage somehow surging through his mechanical voice.
“Forsaken? How dare you! We may not be helicopter parents who oversee our daughter’s every waking moment, but we gave her everything she needed to grow into the truly magnificent abomination she’s become,” Mary said.
“It’s true we don’t often take her out hunting with us, as she often prefers much more elaborate means of tormenting her prey than we do, but this isn’t a hunt,” James added. “This sort of thing is much more her style, and we thought it would be a genuinely educational experience for her.”
“Educating bright young minds full of potential and advancing intellectual progress is always a valid reason for vivisecting a low-utility plodder like this,” the girl asserted.
“You see how conscientious she is? Always thinking about the ethics of things,” Mary dotted. “I honestly have no idea where she gets it from, but if she says it’s morally obligatory for superior beings like us to do as we please in order to maximize overall happiness, I’m not going to argue with her.”
“Is everything all right, Crowley? You’re looking more wrinkly and pickled than usual,” James said with a menacing grin that stretched out his mask. “Our Darling daughter is welcomed here, isn’t she?”
“I promise I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Crowley,” the girl said sweetly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse who’s terrified of what the priest will do to him if he tells his secret.”
The brain pivoted in his jar, turning back and forth between the Darling Twins and their unseen child in the audience as if he could somehow see despite his lack of eyes.
“Yes. Of course, she’s welcome here. My apologies. I’m just not accustomed to having children around, but of course, your daughter is the exception,” Crowley muttered a forced and flustered apology.
“She’s more than exceptional, Crowley. She’s a Darling,” James boasted proudly. “When you’re as perfect as we are, inbreeding only makes the bloodline stronger.”
“I’ll defer to your considerable expertise on the matter of incest. However, I feel we’ve kept our spectators waiting long enough,” Crowley said. “Whenever you’re ready, we can begin the procedure.”
“Of course, Ducky. You might have to bear with me a bit though. Usually, when James and I play doctor, I’m the patient, not the nurse,” Mary explained. “I get drugged up, stripped down, and felt up. Always a good time.”
“That’s not how Daddy and I play doctor,” Sara chirped out.
“Oh, Sara Darling. That’s because Daddy loves you and knows that if I ever saw you as a sexual threat, I’d kill you,” Mary replied, casually taking another sip from her martini.
For a moment there was dead silence, not a single person daring to risk interceding in this bizarre and disgusting threat between mother and child.
“…You mean you’d try to kill me,” Sara said at last, her tone flat and cold, the juvenile joy and innocence I’d heard before now utterly absent.
I may have spotted a transitory glint of fear in Mary’s eyes before she burst out laughing.
“Atta girl, Sara Darling. Sometimes I forget how much we’re alike,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Mommy’s just a jealous old drunk. So long as you don’t get any older, you can be Mommy’s little monster forever.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy Darling. I won’t,” the girl promised. “Puberty doesn’t sound like it’d be any fun anyway.”
“That’s because you don’t have a brother to play with,” Mary chortled. “Which I suppose I should get back to. James Darling, what should I do first?”
“Well Mary Darling, even though you’re not playing the patient today, I would never dare deprive you of your beloved drugs, and I think it would best if I gave them to you now before I get too occupied with the surgery,” James said.
“Goodfellas?” she asked hopefully.
James nodded, and Mary eagerly outstretched her hand and allowed him to tap a few pills into her palm. She raised the pills to her mouth, but paused before swallowing.
“You’re not just giving me these so that I’ll be out of your way during the surgery, are you James Darling?” she asked.
“No of course not ‘just’. I’m still going to have my way with you later,” he promised.
“Okay, good. I was worried there for a second,” she sighed in relief before chasing down her pills with what was left of her martini. “Mmmm. Everyone out there in the audience, a moment if I may! I may not be a real nurse, but I have a lot of first-hand experience with prescription drugs. As any reputable pharmaceutical representative will tell you, an addiction to prescription medication is a crucial component of a happy and fulfilling life. I can personally attest that amphetamines and benzos have justly earned their reputation as Mommy’s little helpers. I take Adderall when I need the mood and energy for housework, exercise, and lovemaking, Valium to help me unwind and to keep the shakes from waking me up through the night, and of course opioids whenever the booze isn’t quite enough to keep me in my happy place. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the silly little warnings on the labels telling you not to mix them with alcohol. They pair together marvellously, though I do think I ought to sit down before this hits me any harder. James Darling, I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“You just relax, Mary Darling. I’ve got this,” James nodded as Mary stumbled off out of my sight, the sound of her collapsing and failing to land in a wooden chair following soon after.
James reached for an electric bone saw from the surgical table, and held it up high to the light to examine it. Then, turning his head down to look at me, he addressed me directly for the first time.
“Hey there, buddy. How are you feeling?” he asked. “Listen, don’t feel bad about ending up on the slab here. Smarter people than you have fallen for my ploys, and I wasn’t even lying about the whiskey. I realize it’s customary to have some kind of painkiller during a procedure such as this, but as you just saw, the Missus cleaned me out. Happy wife, happy life, right? You understand, don’t you? Besides, my little girl’s up there, and nothing makes her happier than human suffering. You wouldn’t want to let her down, would you? The good news is that you’ve got plenty of paralytic pumping through your veins, and a complete lack of movement on your part is essential to reducing the risk of collateral damage. As much as this is going to hurt, you wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”
The rotary blade began spinning, singing its distinctive whirring hum. Placing his left hand on my chest and savouring the futility of my rapid pulse, James brought his saw down upon my forehead. I felt the ragged blade tear up my flesh and mutilate my nerve endings, every rotation of the blade feeling like a fresh cut. The only thing worse than the agony was the fear, the overwhelming compulsion to escape, to fight back, to do anything, all to no avail. I was completely helpless as I stared up with fully dilated pupils at my attacker, his mask unable to conceal the demented Joker’s smile underneath as he delighted in his mayhem.
My blood splattered up into his face, but this seemed only to delight him more. I could smell my flesh and bone searing from the friction of the saw, and my skull shook rapidly against its restraints from the continuous vibration. Throughout the ordeal, I was only able to hear two things over the sound of the saw against my skull; Crowley’s dry lecturing to his students, and Sara’s delighted laughter at her father’s atrocity.
When James had finally managed to cut through the entire circumference of my cranium, he turned the saw off and set it down on the tray beside him.
“There we are Crowley; not one bit of grey matter nicked,” he said proudly as he slowly lifted off the top half of my skull to reveal my exposed brain. “And he’s still conscious! I guess he didn’t lose as much blood as it looks like.”
“A successful craniectomy, and he was awake for every instant of it!” Sara exclaimed. “I could hear him screaming in my head the whole time. I’ve never felt terror that was so urgent and helpless at the same time. Thank you so much for letting me come tonight, Daddy Darling!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling! But we’re not done yet, are we Crowley?”
“Not remotely, no. Since the craniectomy went smoothly, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the procedure,” Crowley replied. “James, please insert the thaumic-electrodes in accordance with the diagram provided. Everyone, please take note that these electrodes are comprised of one hundred percent pure Seelie Silver, so their thaumaturgical conductivity is quite high. As you should all be aware, the Panpsychic force is the only direct link between the astral and physical planes, with consciousness being the only thing that exists across both realms. All preternatural phenomena are the result of focused and coherent Panpsychic force on either physical or astral reality. Now that James has all the electrodes implanted, you can see on the readout here that this brain’s thaumatological activity is nearly a flatline. Which is good, as I don’t much care for sharing my contraption here. Fortunately, these electrodes work both ways, and can channel psionic waves into as well as out of the brain. Please watch the readout carefully as James initiates electro-thaumic stimulation to the test subject.”
I hadn’t felt James insert the electrodes into my brain, since the brain doesn’t possess any pain receptors, but when I saw him flick a switch on whatever machine was behind me, I was suddenly aware of thirteen cold, metallic needles piercing deep into my brain tissue. It wasn’t pain, so much as they were announcing their presence and I understood what it meant. They had a quick, rhythmic pulse to them, but the pulse wasn’t in the physical matter of my brain but rather directly in my conscious mind. This was accompanied by a sensation I can only compare to static electricity accumulating inside my head.
“As anticipated, the subject is reacting to the electro-thaumic stimulation,” Crowley announced. “While a first-hand account of his experience would no doubt be illuminating, I’m highly skeptical he’d be cooperative if we reduced his paralytics. Nonetheless, we can still infer a great deal from what –”
“Can the machine go any higher?” Sara asked.
“It… it can,” Crowley replied hesitantly. “But that’s not relevant for tonight’s experiment. As I was saying, if we direct our attention back to the graph –”
“Daddy Darling, turn the machine as high as it will go,” Sara requested. “I want to see what it will do to him!”
“Absolutely out of the question!” Crowley objected. “That would jeopardize the entire –”
“I wasn’t asking you! I was asking Daddy!” Sara cut him off again. “Turn the machine as high as it will go!”
Crowley spun around in his jar to face James, who once again had a smile that no surgical mask could ever hide.
“James, if you turn that dial so much as one notch higher, you will be in breach of our agreement and will have forfeited the second half of your payment!” he warned him.
“Hmm… Mary Darling, are you following this?” he asked, turning towards where Mary collapsed some time ago. I heard her give an incoherent but affirmative-sounding response. “Crowley says he’s not going to pay up if I do as Sara Darling asks. Does this fall under my authority as a financial matter, or under yours as a family one?”
“Well… I suppose I did nearly ruin our family outing with my unprovoked death threat, so we should probably do something nice to make it up to her,” she replied. “If you don’t think the money’s worth fretting over, go right ahead.”
“I was never here for the money anyway,” James shrugged. “And what kind of monster would I be if I cared more about a little bit of money than my daughter’s happiness?”
“James, don’t you dare – ”
Before Crowley could even finish his sentence, James spun the dial as far as it would go.
The static electricity I had felt inside my head exploded into a thunderstorm, and I felt my bones break as I spasmed uncontrollably against my restraints. Bolts and waves of the strange sensation effortlessly escaped my body and began ravaging the environment around me. Some part of me that managed to remain lucid amongst the alien agony tried to direct these forces against my captors, but I found I was utterly unable to control it in any meaningful way.
The audience had broken out into panicked screams as they desperately tried to flee the operating theatre, except of course for Sara, who I heard laughing and applauding gleefully.
Crowley fired an electric arc from his tesla coil at James as he wheeled himself towards the machine behind me, but Mary had evidently been roused from her drugged stupor and attacked him from behind, stabbing a butcher’s knife through his bellows over and over until he lost all momentum and screeched to a stop. The bubbles in his jar all fell still, and he had seemingly lost the ability to speak through his horn as well, but the brain itself remained glowing and active, slamming itself against the glass in impotent rage.
“What do you think will give out first, Mary Darling? The man or the machine?” James asked, acrid smoke from the overloaded machine stinging my eyes as the violent spasms threatened to tear my body apart. Before Mary could answer, the machine sparked and sputtered out, its ungodly racket dying down to a raspy whimper as the psionic assault on my mind finally came to an end.
“Yay!” Sara cheered and applauded before running down to join her parents. She was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her throw herself into her father’s arms. “Thank you, Daddy Darling! That was so much more fun than just keeping it on one. He’s never felt pain like that before, and he still didn’t die! It was marvellous!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling,” James cooed. “Though, our subject’s surprising resilience does present us with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it? Mary Darling, do you think we should finish him off?”
“There’s no fun in killing someone who can’t put up a fight. He’ll probably be pretty onery once the paralytics wear off, but I don’t really want to wait around for that, especially not with Crowley’s associates likely on their way,” Mary replied. “Plus, that adrenaline surge I just got is already fading and the fentanyl is kicking right back in. We ought to head home. What do you say, Sara Darling? Have you had enough fun for tonight?”
“I have. Thank you for taking me with you, Mommy Darling,” she said sweetly. “And I forgive you for threatening to kill me. I know it was only because you love Daddy so much. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. I’m sorry about the damage to your theatre, but it made me very happy and I learned a lot, so it was worth it.”
“In addition to the other half of my payment, you can keep the test subject as well,” James offered. “That should set as even, Crowley, don’t you think?”
Crowley responded by angrily bashing himself into the glass of his jar.
“Well, that’s a pity then. Let’s head out then, girls, before crotchety old Crowley gets the wind back in his bellows,” James said.
“Just a minute, Daddy Darling,” Sara said, and I felt someone pulling out the electrodes from my brain and then setting my severed cranium back in place. “Thank you too, mister. I really did enjoy watching you suffer like that, and because you made me so happy, I’m going to let you walk away from this.”
Looking up, I could see her bending down to kiss my forehead. She had a flawless porcelain face framed by long dark locks; a perfect, darling daughter that any parent would be proud of, except for her eyes. From any casual viewing distance, they could pass for being very dark brown, but when she was face to face with me, I could tell that her irises were actually filled with some sort of animate black fluid, swirling like hurricanes of obsidian storm clouds.
When she kissed me, every broken bone and my body snapped back into place and began slowly, excruciatingly knitting themselves back together. If I could have screamed, I would have cursed the demonic little girl out for her perverse sense of mercy.
Pulling back, she gave me a smug smile, undoubtedly aware of how much pain she was causing me and exactly what I thought of her.
“You're going to want to get out of here as soon as you can stand, before Crowley's cronies show up,” she said as she undid my restraints one by one. "Feel better, mister!"
Singing happily, she turned around and skipped off with her parents, the sound of their footsteps slowly receding until eventually fading altogether, leaving me and Crowley both helpless prisoners in our own bodies as we lay impotent and defeated in the now silent and forsaken operating theatre.
________________________________________
By The Vesper's Bell

Content Warning: This story contains depictions/mentions of abduction, torture, incest, cannibalism, normalized drug and sexual abuse, and verbal child abuse.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the bright glare of an overhead lamp. After a few seconds of dull confusion, panic set in when I realized I couldn’t possibly be in my own bed. I tried to jolt upwards, but found that my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak or scream or even voluntarily control my own breathing.
The only things I could move were my eyes. As they adjusted to the bright light above me, I was just able to make out enough detail to realize that I was in an operating theatre of some kind. Had I been in an accident? I strained my simultaneously drowsy yet adrenaline-shocked brain to remember how I could have ended up here.
I was just barely able to recall a slim young man with slicked black hair and blue eyes. I had been on a trip and ran into him at the hotel bar. During our conversation, he mentioned that he distilled his own whiskey with home-grown corn. It sounded intriguing, and he told me that he had a small bottle of it back in his hotel room. He said that I was free to try a glass, and if it pleased me, he could arrange for me to purchase some.
He had been charming and affable, and with his slight frame I didn’t deem him much of a threat to me personally, so I followed him back to his room.
Then I felt a syringe being plunged into my back, and everything went dark before I could so much as utter a whimper in protest.
Someone repositioned the swivel light so that it wasn’t pointed directly at me, and I could see that the operating theatre was ancient, likely dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Instead of the sterile white that would be expected in any modern medical facility, everything here was browned and yellowed and stained with time. There was wood where there should have been ceramic tiles, and cast iron where there should have been stainless steel. It was decrepit, but not quite derelict. Someone had kept the place functional, and given my present circumstances, their motives couldn’t possibly be innocent.
The tiered rows of seats that encircled me were all dimly lit, but I could tell there were figures sitting in them. I could discern no details, so they were all merely humanoid silhouettes to me. They moved only slightly, and I thought that here and there I could catch the light reflecting in their eyes, but they were a deathly quiet lot. There was no whispering, no coughing, and I couldn’t even be sure they were breathing.
Squeaking wheels and the bellows of a respirator began to creep towards me, and from the periphery of my vision, I witnessed a brain in a bubbling jar slide up beside me. It was mounted on some kind of antique pedestal, with a gramophone horn, tesla coil, and all matter of steampunk-looking contraptions built into it. The oddest thing about it was that there was a bowler hat placed on top of the jar.
At least, that was the oddest thing until it spoke.
“Welcome, welcome, scholars and students of forbidden gnosis and the damned sciences. Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” a voice boomed from the gramophone horn as the brain bobbed and flickered in a strange blue light with every syllable.
“Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” the audience murmured in unison.
“Thank you all for coming. For those that don’t know me, I am High Adderman Professor Whitaker C. Crowley of the Harrowick Chapterhouse; Preternaturalist, Parapsychologist, Crypto-anatomist, Alchemical Consultant, and – when the occasion calls for it – enthusiastic vivisectionist! For your education and entertainment, tonight I will be demonstrating the neuro-ethereal functions of the human brain with this fully paralyzed, yet fully conscious, test subject. Though he cannot move an inch to save his life, he can see, hear, and most especially feel everything that happens here tonight. Whether or not he’ll survive or be in any mental state to remember any of this when it’s over is… uncertain at best.
“Of course, due to my physical limitations, I will not be performing this vivisection alone. Assisting me tonight will be Master Addermen James and Mary Darling.”
The audience began murmuring amongst themselves, the names evidently meaning more to them than they did to me. I heard footsteps crossing the wooden floor, and when they stopped, I saw the young man from earlier standing beside my bed. He wore a blood-stained leather apron over a dark Howie lab coat, his cloth mask drawing focus to his gleaming and gleeful blue eyes.
By his side stood a young woman so much like him that she could only be his sister. She had the same pitch-black hair, worn in bunches, and the same striking blue eyes that glittered with a manic psychosis. She was dressed in a red and white nurse’s uniform from a bygone era that I couldn’t quite place, and was likely just intended to look old-fashioned without actually belonging to any actual time period.
“Please, please, there’s no need for concern,” Crowley said, trying to assuage the misgivings his audience apparently had with the visiting surgeons. “It’s the Darlings we have to thank for bringing us this test subject in the first place. I’d like to remind you all that the Darling Twins are fellow members of the Ophion Occult Order, and you are all to treat them with the respect that they’re due. I’m aware that they don’t technically possess any formal medical training, but their extensive self-taught knowledge of human anatomy should prove quite useful.”
“I’ve always found that the difference between a butcher and a back alley surgeon was one of entrepreneurship,” James added.
“That’s exactly the sort of amoral heterodoxy I like to see in my colleagues!” Crowley heartily agreed. “I do however feel the need to point out that your personal protective equipment is simultaneously inadequate and, given the circumstances, not strictly necessary.”
“It’s mainly for show. I like to get into the part,” James said, holding up a pair of hands clad in old leather gloves that were surely far more unsanitary than any bare hands could ever be.
“And so do I, just not as much as I like to drink and smoke,” Mary said, and I saw her raise a martini glass to her unmasked face and take a sip. “Oh, that reminds me. Professor Crowley, I’d like to apologize for you having the misfortune of witnessing me during one of my rare lapses into sobriety at our last encounter. I want to assure you that that dreadful experience was enough to knock me back off that horrible wagon and I’m proud to say that I have not been sober since.”
“That’s… good information to have, I suppose,” Crowley said. “To be blunt, your cannibalistic tendencies are a far greater concern to me than your proclivity for inebriation. I trust you’re able to refrain from entering your ‘Wendigo psychosis’ when the situation calls for it?”
“Wendigo psychosis? We’re not Wendigos,” Mary corrected him. “Wendigos are cursed with an insatiable hunger as a punishment for resorting to survival cannibalism, which seems a little judgmental if you ask me. The spirit cursing you couldn’t be bothered to intervene when you were starving, but once you solve your own problem it suddenly gets off its high horse just to condemn you for it? Regardless, James and I are not Wendigos. We are Randian, Nietzschean Übermenschen. We recognize our intrinsic superiority and reject morality as a means for the weak to oppress the strong. We do as we damn well please, and we find living off the flesh of our victims incredibly pleasing. If no one can stop us, then why should we stop? Also, Wendigos have antlers.”
“No, they don’t,” Crowley objected.
“Ah, White Wendigos do. I’m pretty sure those accounts take precedence,” Mary said.
“Right. Well, random racism and self-serving philosophical butchery aside, I was referring to your propensity to strip down and wallow in your victim’s viscera as you gorge yourself on their raw flesh,” Crowley clarified. “Whatever it is you call that.”
“I call it a good time,” Mary said, raising her glass in a toast before taking another tip.
“You will refrain from resorting to any such debauchery tonight,” Crowley insisted. “Tonight, you’re here to work. Is that understood?”
“Work? Me? Absolutely out of the question. James promised me I’d never have to work a day in my life. Isn’t that right, James Darling?”
“Technically, I forbid you from working. But, you being you, took that as a very loving gesture,” James corrected her.
“Hmmm. If you say so, James Darling. It’s a moot point, regardless. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; that a pretty girl like me would ever need to work or that a drunk like me could ever hold a job.”
“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Mary Darling. You’ve always managed to be a spectacular homemaker in spite of, perhaps even because of, your drunkenness,” James complimented her.
“Now don’t go getting all women’s lib on me, James Darling. If being a homemaker was a job, then the invisible hand of the free market would give it a salary,” she disputed. “As rational, Randian Übermenschen, we do not question the existence or wisdom of invisible hands.”
“Well, you’ve got me there, Mary Darling,” James conceded.
“But if you’re not here to work, then why – I mean, if you don’t mind my asking – why come at all?” Crowley demanded.
“We couldn’t find a sitter, and we thought this would make a nice family outing,” Mary replied.
“You… what?” Crowley asked.
It was then that I saw James smile with his eyes in the worst way possible.
“Sara’s here,” he explained, waving up at the tiered seats. “Hello, Sara Darling!”
“Hello, Daddy Darling! Hello, Mommy Darling!” the cheery voice of a preteen girl called out from somewhere outside my field of vision. I heard the audience react in dismay at the revelation of her presence, which was very confusing as I couldn’t fathom how a young girl’s presence could have gone unnoticed in such a setting, or why it would be a cause of such trepidation.
“You brought your forsaken child into my operating theatre!” Crowley demanded, a violent outrage somehow surging through his mechanical voice.
“Forsaken? How dare you! We may not be helicopter parents who oversee our daughter’s every waking moment, but we gave her everything she needed to grow into the truly magnificent abomination she’s become,” Mary said.
“It’s true we don’t often take her out hunting with us, as she often prefers much more elaborate means of tormenting her prey than we do, but this isn’t a hunt,” James added. “This sort of thing is much more her style, and we thought it would be a genuinely educational experience for her.”
“Educating bright young minds full of potential and advancing intellectual progress is always a valid reason for vivisecting a low-utility plodder like this,” the girl asserted.
“You see how conscientious she is? Always thinking about the ethics of things,” Mary dotted. “I honestly have no idea where she gets it from, but if she says it’s morally obligatory for superior beings like us to do as we please in order to maximize overall happiness, I’m not going to argue with her.”
“Is everything all right, Crowley? You’re looking more wrinkly and pickled than usual,” James said with a menacing grin that stretched out his mask. “Our Darling daughter is welcomed here, isn’t she?”
“I promise I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Crowley,” the girl said sweetly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse who’s terrified of what the priest will do to him if he tells his secret.”
The brain pivoted in his jar, turning back and forth between the Darling Twins and their unseen child in the audience as if he could somehow see despite his lack of eyes.
“Yes. Of course, she’s welcome here. My apologies. I’m just not accustomed to having children around, but of course, your daughter is the exception,” Crowley muttered a forced and flustered apology.
“She’s more than exceptional, Crowley. She’s a Darling,” James boasted proudly. “When you’re as perfect as we are, inbreeding only makes the bloodline stronger.”
“I’ll defer to your considerable expertise on the matter of incest. However, I feel we’ve kept our spectators waiting long enough,” Crowley said. “Whenever you’re ready, we can begin the procedure.”
“Of course, Ducky. You might have to bear with me a bit though. Usually, when James and I play doctor, I’m the patient, not the nurse,” Mary explained. “I get drugged up, stripped down, and felt up. Always a good time.”
“That’s not how Daddy and I play doctor,” Sara chirped out.
“Oh, Sara Darling. That’s because Daddy loves you and knows that if I ever saw you as a sexual threat, I’d kill you,” Mary replied, casually taking another sip from her martini.
For a moment there was dead silence, not a single person daring to risk interceding in this bizarre and disgusting threat between mother and child.
“…You mean you’d try to kill me,” Sara said at last, her tone flat and cold, the juvenile joy and innocence I’d heard before now utterly absent.
I may have spotted a transitory glint of fear in Mary’s eyes before she burst out laughing.
“Atta girl, Sara Darling. Sometimes I forget how much we’re alike,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Mommy’s just a jealous old drunk. So long as you don’t get any older, you can be Mommy’s little monster forever.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy Darling. I won’t,” the girl promised. “Puberty doesn’t sound like it’d be any fun anyway.”
“That’s because you don’t have a brother to play with,” Mary chortled. “Which I suppose I should get back to. James Darling, what should I do first?”
“Well Mary Darling, even though you’re not playing the patient today, I would never dare deprive you of your beloved drugs, and I think it would best if I gave them to you now before I get too occupied with the surgery,” James said.
“Goodfellas?” she asked hopefully.
James nodded, and Mary eagerly outstretched her hand and allowed him to tap a few pills into her palm. She raised the pills to her mouth, but paused before swallowing.
“You’re not just giving me these so that I’ll be out of your way during the surgery, are you James Darling?” she asked.
“No of course not ‘just’. I’m still going to have my way with you later,” he promised.
“Okay, good. I was worried there for a second,” she sighed in relief before chasing down her pills with what was left of her martini. “Mmmm. Everyone out there in the audience, a moment if I may! I may not be a real nurse, but I have a lot of first-hand experience with prescription drugs. As any reputable pharmaceutical representative will tell you, an addiction to prescription medication is a crucial component of a happy and fulfilling life. I can personally attest that amphetamines and benzos have justly earned their reputation as Mommy’s little helpers. I take Adderall when I need the mood and energy for housework, exercise, and lovemaking, Valium to help me unwind and to keep the shakes from waking me up through the night, and of course opioids whenever the booze isn’t quite enough to keep me in my happy place. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the silly little warnings on the labels telling you not to mix them with alcohol. They pair together marvellously, though I do think I ought to sit down before this hits me any harder. James Darling, I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“You just relax, Mary Darling. I’ve got this,” James nodded as Mary stumbled off out of my sight, the sound of her collapsing and failing to land in a wooden chair following soon after.
James reached for an electric bone saw from the surgical table, and held it up high to the light to examine it. Then, turning his head down to look at me, he addressed me directly for the first time.
“Hey there, buddy. How are you feeling?” he asked. “Listen, don’t feel bad about ending up on the slab here. Smarter people than you have fallen for my ploys, and I wasn’t even lying about the whiskey. I realize it’s customary to have some kind of painkiller during a procedure such as this, but as you just saw, the Missus cleaned me out. Happy wife, happy life, right? You understand, don’t you? Besides, my little girl’s up there, and nothing makes her happier than human suffering. You wouldn’t want to let her down, would you? The good news is that you’ve got plenty of paralytic pumping through your veins, and a complete lack of movement on your part is essential to reducing the risk of collateral damage. As much as this is going to hurt, you wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”
The rotary blade began spinning, singing its distinctive whirring hum. Placing his left hand on my chest and savouring the futility of my rapid pulse, James brought his saw down upon my forehead. I felt the ragged blade tear up my flesh and mutilate my nerve endings, every rotation of the blade feeling like a fresh cut. The only thing worse than the agony was the fear, the overwhelming compulsion to escape, to fight back, to do anything, all to no avail. I was completely helpless as I stared up with fully dilated pupils at my attacker, his mask unable to conceal the demented Joker’s smile underneath as he delighted in his mayhem.
My blood splattered up into his face, but this seemed only to delight him more. I could smell my flesh and bone searing from the friction of the saw, and my skull shook rapidly against its restraints from the continuous vibration. Throughout the ordeal, I was only able to hear two things over the sound of the saw against my skull; Crowley’s dry lecturing to his students, and Sara’s delighted laughter at her father’s atrocity.
When James had finally managed to cut through the entire circumference of my cranium, he turned the saw off and set it down on the tray beside him.
“There we are Crowley; not one bit of grey matter nicked,” he said proudly as he slowly lifted off the top half of my skull to reveal my exposed brain. “And he’s still conscious! I guess he didn’t lose as much blood as it looks like.”
“A successful craniectomy, and he was awake for every instant of it!” Sara exclaimed. “I could hear him screaming in my head the whole time. I’ve never felt terror that was so urgent and helpless at the same time. Thank you so much for letting me come tonight, Daddy Darling!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling! But we’re not done yet, are we Crowley?”
“Not remotely, no. Since the craniectomy went smoothly, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the procedure,” Crowley replied. “James, please insert the thaumic-electrodes in accordance with the diagram provided. Everyone, please take note that these electrodes are comprised of one hundred percent pure Seelie Silver, so their thaumaturgical conductivity is quite high. As you should all be aware, the Panpsychic force is the only direct link between the astral and physical planes, with consciousness being the only thing that exists across both realms. All preternatural phenomena are the result of focused and coherent Panpsychic force on either physical or astral reality. Now that James has all the electrodes implanted, you can see on the readout here that this brain’s thaumatological activity is nearly a flatline. Which is good, as I don’t much care for sharing my contraption here. Fortunately, these electrodes work both ways, and can channel psionic waves into as well as out of the brain. Please watch the readout carefully as James initiates electro-thaumic stimulation to the test subject.”
I hadn’t felt James insert the electrodes into my brain, since the brain doesn’t possess any pain receptors, but when I saw him flick a switch on whatever machine was behind me, I was suddenly aware of thirteen cold, metallic needles piercing deep into my brain tissue. It wasn’t pain, so much as they were announcing their presence and I understood what it meant. They had a quick, rhythmic pulse to them, but the pulse wasn’t in the physical matter of my brain but rather directly in my conscious mind. This was accompanied by a sensation I can only compare to static electricity accumulating inside my head.
“As anticipated, the subject is reacting to the electro-thaumic stimulation,” Crowley announced. “While a first-hand account of his experience would no doubt be illuminating, I’m highly skeptical he’d be cooperative if we reduced his paralytics. Nonetheless, we can still infer a great deal from what –”
“Can the machine go any higher?” Sara asked.
“It… it can,” Crowley replied hesitantly. “But that’s not relevant for tonight’s experiment. As I was saying, if we direct our attention back to the graph –”
“Daddy Darling, turn the machine as high as it will go,” Sara requested. “I want to see what it will do to him!”
“Absolutely out of the question!” Crowley objected. “That would jeopardize the entire –”
“I wasn’t asking you! I was asking Daddy!” Sara cut him off again. “Turn the machine as high as it will go!”
Crowley spun around in his jar to face James, who once again had a smile that no surgical mask could ever hide.
“James, if you turn that dial so much as one notch higher, you will be in breach of our agreement and will have forfeited the second half of your payment!” he warned him.
“Hmm… Mary Darling, are you following this?” he asked, turning towards where Mary collapsed some time ago. I heard her give an incoherent but affirmative-sounding response. “Crowley says he’s not going to pay up if I do as Sara Darling asks. Does this fall under my authority as a financial matter, or under yours as a family one?”
“Well… I suppose I did nearly ruin our family outing with my unprovoked death threat, so we should probably do something nice to make it up to her,” she replied. “If you don’t think the money’s worth fretting over, go right ahead.”
“I was never here for the money anyway,” James shrugged. “And what kind of monster would I be if I cared more about a little bit of money than my daughter’s happiness?”
“James, don’t you dare – ”
Before Crowley could even finish his sentence, James spun the dial as far as it would go.
The static electricity I had felt inside my head exploded into a thunderstorm, and I felt my bones break as I spasmed uncontrollably against my restraints. Bolts and waves of the strange sensation effortlessly escaped my body and began ravaging the environment around me. Some part of me that managed to remain lucid amongst the alien agony tried to direct these forces against my captors, but I found I was utterly unable to control it in any meaningful way.
The audience had broken out into panicked screams as they desperately tried to flee the operating theatre, except of course for Sara, who I heard laughing and applauding gleefully.
Crowley fired an electric arc from his tesla coil at James as he wheeled himself towards the machine behind me, but Mary had evidently been roused from her drugged stupor and attacked him from behind, stabbing a butcher’s knife through his bellows over and over until he lost all momentum and screeched to a stop. The bubbles in his jar all fell still, and he had seemingly lost the ability to speak through his horn as well, but the brain itself remained glowing and active, slamming itself against the glass in impotent rage.
“What do you think will give out first, Mary Darling? The man or the machine?” James asked, acrid smoke from the overloaded machine stinging my eyes as the violent spasms threatened to tear my body apart. Before Mary could answer, the machine sparked and sputtered out, its ungodly racket dying down to a raspy whimper as the psionic assault on my mind finally came to an end.
“Yay!” Sara cheered and applauded before running down to join her parents. She was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her throw herself into her father’s arms. “Thank you, Daddy Darling! That was so much more fun than just keeping it on one. He’s never felt pain like that before, and he still didn’t die! It was marvellous!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling,” James cooed. “Though, our subject’s surprising resilience does present us with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it? Mary Darling, do you think we should finish him off?”
“There’s no fun in killing someone who can’t put up a fight. He’ll probably be pretty onery once the paralytics wear off, but I don’t really want to wait around for that, especially not with Crowley’s associates likely on their way,” Mary replied. “Plus, that adrenaline surge I just got is already fading and the fentanyl is kicking right back in. We ought to head home. What do you say, Sara Darling? Have you had enough fun for tonight?”
“I have. Thank you for taking me with you, Mommy Darling,” she said sweetly. “And I forgive you for threatening to kill me. I know it was only because you love Daddy so much. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. I’m sorry about the damage to your theatre, but it made me very happy and I learned a lot, so it was worth it.”
“In addition to the other half of my payment, you can keep the test subject as well,” James offered. “That should set as even, Crowley, don’t you think?”
Crowley responded by angrily bashing himself into the glass of his jar.
“Well, that’s a pity then. Let’s head out then, girls, before crotchety old Crowley gets the wind back in his bellows,” James said.
“Just a minute, Daddy Darling,” Sara said, and I felt someone pulling out the electrodes from my brain and then setting my severed cranium back in place. “Thank you too, mister. I really did enjoy watching you suffer like that, and because you made me so happy, I’m going to let you walk away from this.”
Looking up, I could see her bending down to kiss my forehead. She had a flawless porcelain face framed by long dark locks; a perfect, darling daughter that any parent would be proud of, except for her eyes. From any casual viewing distance, they could pass for being very dark brown, but when she was face to face with me, I could tell that her irises were actually filled with some sort of animate black fluid, swirling like hurricanes of obsidian storm clouds.
When she kissed me, every broken bone and my body snapped back into place and began slowly, excruciatingly knitting themselves back together. If I could have screamed, I would have cursed the demonic little girl out for her perverse sense of mercy.
Pulling back, she gave me a smug smile, undoubtedly aware of how much pain she was causing me and exactly what I thought of her.
“You're going to want to get out of here as soon as you can stand, before Crowley's cronies show up,” she said as she undid my restraints one by one. "Feel better, mister!"
Singing happily, she turned around and skipped off with her parents, the sound of their footsteps slowly receding until eventually fading altogether, leaving me and Crowley both helpless prisoners in our own bodies as we lay impotent and defeated in the now silent and forsaken operating theatre.

Content Warning: This story contains depictions/mentions of abduction, torture, incest, cannibalism, normalized drug and sexual abuse, and verbal child abuse.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the bright glare of an overhead lamp. After a few seconds of dull confusion, panic set in when I realized I couldn’t possibly be in my own bed. I tried to jolt upwards, but found that my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak or scream or even voluntarily control my own breathing.
The only things I could move were my eyes. As they adjusted to the bright light above me, I was just able to make out enough detail to realize that I was in an operating theatre of some kind. Had I been in an accident? I strained my simultaneously drowsy yet adrenaline-shocked brain to remember how I could have ended up here.
I was just barely able to recall a slim young man with slicked black hair and blue eyes. I had been on a trip and ran into him at the hotel bar. During our conversation, he mentioned that he distilled his own whiskey with home-grown corn. It sounded intriguing, and he told me that he had a small bottle of it back in his hotel room. He said that I was free to try a glass, and if it pleased me, he could arrange for me to purchase some.
He had been charming and affable, and with his slight frame I didn’t deem him much of a threat to me personally, so I followed him back to his room.
Then I felt a syringe being plunged into my back, and everything went dark before I could so much as utter a whimper in protest.
Someone repositioned the swivel light so that it wasn’t pointed directly at me, and I could see that the operating theatre was ancient, likely dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Instead of the sterile white that would be expected in any modern medical facility, everything here was browned and yellowed and stained with time. There was wood where there should have been ceramic tiles, and cast iron where there should have been stainless steel. It was decrepit, but not quite derelict. Someone had kept the place functional, and given my present circumstances, their motives couldn’t possibly be innocent.
The tiered rows of seats that encircled me were all dimly lit, but I could tell there were figures sitting in them. I could discern no details, so they were all merely humanoid silhouettes to me. They moved only slightly, and I thought that here and there I could catch the light reflecting in their eyes, but they were a deathly quiet lot. There was no whispering, no coughing, and I couldn’t even be sure they were breathing.
Squeaking wheels and the bellows of a respirator began to creep towards me, and from the periphery of my vision, I witnessed a brain in a bubbling jar slide up beside me. It was mounted on some kind of antique pedestal, with a gramophone horn, tesla coil, and all matter of steampunk-looking contraptions built into it. The oddest thing about it was that there was a bowler hat placed on top of the jar.
At least, that was the oddest thing until it spoke.
“Welcome, welcome, scholars and students of forbidden gnosis and the damned sciences. Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” a voice boomed from the gramophone horn as the brain bobbed and flickered in a strange blue light with every syllable.
“Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” the audience murmured in unison.
“Thank you all for coming. For those that don’t know me, I am High Adderman Professor Whitaker C. Crowley of the Harrowick Chapterhouse; Preternaturalist, Parapsychologist, Crypto-anatomist, Alchemical Consultant, and – when the occasion calls for it – enthusiastic vivisectionist! For your education and entertainment, tonight I will be demonstrating the neuro-ethereal functions of the human brain with this fully paralyzed, yet fully conscious, test subject. Though he cannot move an inch to save his life, he can see, hear, and most especially feel everything that happens here tonight. Whether or not he’ll survive or be in any mental state to remember any of this when it’s over is… uncertain at best.
“Of course, due to my physical limitations, I will not be performing this vivisection alone. Assisting me tonight will be Master Addermen James and Mary Darling.”
The audience began murmuring amongst themselves, the names evidently meaning more to them than they did to me. I heard footsteps crossing the wooden floor, and when they stopped, I saw the young man from earlier standing beside my bed. He wore a blood-stained leather apron over a dark Howie lab coat, his cloth mask drawing focus to his gleaming and gleeful blue eyes.
By his side stood a young woman so much like him that she could only be his sister. She had the same pitch-black hair, worn in bunches, and the same striking blue eyes that glittered with a manic psychosis. She was dressed in a red and white nurse’s uniform from a bygone era that I couldn’t quite place, and was likely just intended to look old-fashioned without actually belonging to any actual time period.
“Please, please, there’s no need for concern,” Crowley said, trying to assuage the misgivings his audience apparently had with the visiting surgeons. “It’s the Darlings we have to thank for bringing us this test subject in the first place. I’d like to remind you all that the Darling Twins are fellow members of the Ophion Occult Order, and you are all to treat them with the respect that they’re due. I’m aware that they don’t technically possess any formal medical training, but their extensive self-taught knowledge of human anatomy should prove quite useful.”
“I’ve always found that the difference between a butcher and a back alley surgeon was one of entrepreneurship,” James added.
“That’s exactly the sort of amoral heterodoxy I like to see in my colleagues!” Crowley heartily agreed. “I do however feel the need to point out that your personal protective equipment is simultaneously inadequate and, given the circumstances, not strictly necessary.”
“It’s mainly for show. I like to get into the part,” James said, holding up a pair of hands clad in old leather gloves that were surely far more unsanitary than any bare hands could ever be.
“And so do I, just not as much as I like to drink and smoke,” Mary said, and I saw her raise a martini glass to her unmasked face and take a sip. “Oh, that reminds me. Professor Crowley, I’d like to apologize for you having the misfortune of witnessing me during one of my rare lapses into sobriety at our last encounter. I want to assure you that that dreadful experience was enough to knock me back off that horrible wagon and I’m proud to say that I have not been sober since.”
“That’s… good information to have, I suppose,” Crowley said. “To be blunt, your cannibalistic tendencies are a far greater concern to me than your proclivity for inebriation. I trust you’re able to refrain from entering your ‘Wendigo psychosis’ when the situation calls for it?”
“Wendigo psychosis? We’re not Wendigos,” Mary corrected him. “Wendigos are cursed with an insatiable hunger as a punishment for resorting to survival cannibalism, which seems a little judgmental if you ask me. The spirit cursing you couldn’t be bothered to intervene when you were starving, but once you solve your own problem it suddenly gets off its high horse just to condemn you for it? Regardless, James and I are not Wendigos. We are Randian, Nietzschean Übermenschen. We recognize our intrinsic superiority and reject morality as a means for the weak to oppress the strong. We do as we damn well please, and we find living off the flesh of our victims incredibly pleasing. If no one can stop us, then why should we stop? Also, Wendigos have antlers.”
“No, they don’t,” Crowley objected.
“Ah, White Wendigos do. I’m pretty sure those accounts take precedence,” Mary said.
“Right. Well, random racism and self-serving philosophical butchery aside, I was referring to your propensity to strip down and wallow in your victim’s viscera as you gorge yourself on their raw flesh,” Crowley clarified. “Whatever it is you call that.”
“I call it a good time,” Mary said, raising her glass in a toast before taking another tip.
“You will refrain from resorting to any such debauchery tonight,” Crowley insisted. “Tonight, you’re here to work. Is that understood?”
“Work? Me? Absolutely out of the question. James promised me I’d never have to work a day in my life. Isn’t that right, James Darling?”
“Technically, I forbid you from working. But, you being you, took that as a very loving gesture,” James corrected her.
“Hmmm. If you say so, James Darling. It’s a moot point, regardless. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; that a pretty girl like me would ever need to work or that a drunk like me could ever hold a job.”
“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Mary Darling. You’ve always managed to be a spectacular homemaker in spite of, perhaps even because of, your drunkenness,” James complimented her.
“Now don’t go getting all women’s lib on me, James Darling. If being a homemaker was a job, then the invisible hand of the free market would give it a salary,” she disputed. “As rational, Randian Übermenschen, we do not question the existence or wisdom of invisible hands.”
“Well, you’ve got me there, Mary Darling,” James conceded.
“But if you’re not here to work, then why – I mean, if you don’t mind my asking – why come at all?” Crowley demanded.
“We couldn’t find a sitter, and we thought this would make a nice family outing,” Mary replied.
“You… what?” Crowley asked.
It was then that I saw James smile with his eyes in the worst way possible.
“Sara’s here,” he explained, waving up at the tiered seats. “Hello, Sara Darling!”
“Hello, Daddy Darling! Hello, Mommy Darling!” the cheery voice of a preteen girl called out from somewhere outside my field of vision. I heard the audience react in dismay at the revelation of her presence, which was very confusing as I couldn’t fathom how a young girl’s presence could have gone unnoticed in such a setting, or why it would be a cause of such trepidation.
“You brought your forsaken child into my operating theatre!” Crowley demanded, a violent outrage somehow surging through his mechanical voice.
“Forsaken? How dare you! We may not be helicopter parents who oversee our daughter’s every waking moment, but we gave her everything she needed to grow into the truly magnificent abomination she’s become,” Mary said.
“It’s true we don’t often take her out hunting with us, as she often prefers much more elaborate means of tormenting her prey than we do, but this isn’t a hunt,” James added. “This sort of thing is much more her style, and we thought it would be a genuinely educational experience for her.”
“Educating bright young minds full of potential and advancing intellectual progress is always a valid reason for vivisecting a low-utility plodder like this,” the girl asserted.
“You see how conscientious she is? Always thinking about the ethics of things,” Mary dotted. “I honestly have no idea where she gets it from, but if she says it’s morally obligatory for superior beings like us to do as we please in order to maximize overall happiness, I’m not going to argue with her.”
“Is everything all right, Crowley? You’re looking more wrinkly and pickled than usual,” James said with a menacing grin that stretched out his mask. “Our Darling daughter is welcomed here, isn’t she?”
“I promise I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Crowley,” the girl said sweetly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse who’s terrified of what the priest will do to him if he tells his secret.”
The brain pivoted in his jar, turning back and forth between the Darling Twins and their unseen child in the audience as if he could somehow see despite his lack of eyes.
“Yes. Of course, she’s welcome here. My apologies. I’m just not accustomed to having children around, but of course, your daughter is the exception,” Crowley muttered a forced and flustered apology.
“She’s more than exceptional, Crowley. She’s a Darling,” James boasted proudly. “When you’re as perfect as we are, inbreeding only makes the bloodline stronger.”
“I’ll defer to your considerable expertise on the matter of incest. However, I feel we’ve kept our spectators waiting long enough,” Crowley said. “Whenever you’re ready, we can begin the procedure.”
“Of course, Ducky. You might have to bear with me a bit though. Usually, when James and I play doctor, I’m the patient, not the nurse,” Mary explained. “I get drugged up, stripped down, and felt up. Always a good time.”
“That’s not how Daddy and I play doctor,” Sara chirped out.
“Oh, Sara Darling. That’s because Daddy loves you and knows that if I ever saw you as a sexual threat, I’d kill you,” Mary replied, casually taking another sip from her martini.
For a moment there was dead silence, not a single person daring to risk interceding in this bizarre and disgusting threat between mother and child.
“…You mean you’d try to kill me,” Sara said at last, her tone flat and cold, the juvenile joy and innocence I’d heard before now utterly absent.
I may have spotted a transitory glint of fear in Mary’s eyes before she burst out laughing.
“Atta girl, Sara Darling. Sometimes I forget how much we’re alike,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Mommy’s just a jealous old drunk. So long as you don’t get any older, you can be Mommy’s little monster forever.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy Darling. I won’t,” the girl promised. “Puberty doesn’t sound like it’d be any fun anyway.”
“That’s because you don’t have a brother to play with,” Mary chortled. “Which I suppose I should get back to. James Darling, what should I do first?”
“Well Mary Darling, even though you’re not playing the patient today, I would never dare deprive you of your beloved drugs, and I think it would best if I gave them to you now before I get too occupied with the surgery,” James said.
“Goodfellas?” she asked hopefully.
James nodded, and Mary eagerly outstretched her hand and allowed him to tap a few pills into her palm. She raised the pills to her mouth, but paused before swallowing.
“You’re not just giving me these so that I’ll be out of your way during the surgery, are you James Darling?” she asked.
“No of course not ‘just’. I’m still going to have my way with you later,” he promised.
“Okay, good. I was worried there for a second,” she sighed in relief before chasing down her pills with what was left of her martini. “Mmmm. Everyone out there in the audience, a moment if I may! I may not be a real nurse, but I have a lot of first-hand experience with prescription drugs. As any reputable pharmaceutical representative will tell you, an addiction to prescription medication is a crucial component of a happy and fulfilling life. I can personally attest that amphetamines and benzos have justly earned their reputation as Mommy’s little helpers. I take Adderall when I need the mood and energy for housework, exercise, and lovemaking, Valium to help me unwind and to keep the shakes from waking me up through the night, and of course opioids whenever the booze isn’t quite enough to keep me in my happy place. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the silly little warnings on the labels telling you not to mix them with alcohol. They pair together marvellously, though I do think I ought to sit down before this hits me any harder. James Darling, I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“You just relax, Mary Darling. I’ve got this,” James nodded as Mary stumbled off out of my sight, the sound of her collapsing and failing to land in a wooden chair following soon after.
James reached for an electric bone saw from the surgical table, and held it up high to the light to examine it. Then, turning his head down to look at me, he addressed me directly for the first time.
“Hey there, buddy. How are you feeling?” he asked. “Listen, don’t feel bad about ending up on the slab here. Smarter people than you have fallen for my ploys, and I wasn’t even lying about the whiskey. I realize it’s customary to have some kind of painkiller during a procedure such as this, but as you just saw, the Missus cleaned me out. Happy wife, happy life, right? You understand, don’t you? Besides, my little girl’s up there, and nothing makes her happier than human suffering. You wouldn’t want to let her down, would you? The good news is that you’ve got plenty of paralytic pumping through your veins, and a complete lack of movement on your part is essential to reducing the risk of collateral damage. As much as this is going to hurt, you wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”
The rotary blade began spinning, singing its distinctive whirring hum. Placing his left hand on my chest and savouring the futility of my rapid pulse, James brought his saw down upon my forehead. I felt the ragged blade tear up my flesh and mutilate my nerve endings, every rotation of the blade feeling like a fresh cut. The only thing worse than the agony was the fear, the overwhelming compulsion to escape, to fight back, to do anything, all to no avail. I was completely helpless as I stared up with fully dilated pupils at my attacker, his mask unable to conceal the demented Joker’s smile underneath as he delighted in his mayhem.
My blood splattered up into his face, but this seemed only to delight him more. I could smell my flesh and bone searing from the friction of the saw, and my skull shook rapidly against its restraints from the continuous vibration. Throughout the ordeal, I was only able to hear two things over the sound of the saw against my skull; Crowley’s dry lecturing to his students, and Sara’s delighted laughter at her father’s atrocity.
When James had finally managed to cut through the entire circumference of my cranium, he turned the saw off and set it down on the tray beside him.
“There we are Crowley; not one bit of grey matter nicked,” he said proudly as he slowly lifted off the top half of my skull to reveal my exposed brain. “And he’s still conscious! I guess he didn’t lose as much blood as it looks like.”
“A successful craniectomy, and he was awake for every instant of it!” Sara exclaimed. “I could hear him screaming in my head the whole time. I’ve never felt terror that was so urgent and helpless at the same time. Thank you so much for letting me come tonight, Daddy Darling!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling! But we’re not done yet, are we Crowley?”
“Not remotely, no. Since the craniectomy went smoothly, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the procedure,” Crowley replied. “James, please insert the thaumic-electrodes in accordance with the diagram provided. Everyone, please take note that these electrodes are comprised of one hundred percent pure Seelie Silver, so their thaumaturgical conductivity is quite high. As you should all be aware, the Panpsychic force is the only direct link between the astral and physical planes, with consciousness being the only thing that exists across both realms. All preternatural phenomena are the result of focused and coherent Panpsychic force on either physical or astral reality. Now that James has all the electrodes implanted, you can see on the readout here that this brain’s thaumatological activity is nearly a flatline. Which is good, as I don’t much care for sharing my contraption here. Fortunately, these electrodes work both ways, and can channel psionic waves into as well as out of the brain. Please watch the readout carefully as James initiates electro-thaumic stimulation to the test subject.”
I hadn’t felt James insert the electrodes into my brain, since the brain doesn’t possess any pain receptors, but when I saw him flick a switch on whatever machine was behind me, I was suddenly aware of thirteen cold, metallic needles piercing deep into my brain tissue. It wasn’t pain, so much as they were announcing their presence and I understood what it meant. They had a quick, rhythmic pulse to them, but the pulse wasn’t in the physical matter of my brain but rather directly in my conscious mind. This was accompanied by a sensation I can only compare to static electricity accumulating inside my head.
“As anticipated, the subject is reacting to the electro-thaumic stimulation,” Crowley announced. “While a first-hand account of his experience would no doubt be illuminating, I’m highly skeptical he’d be cooperative if we reduced his paralytics. Nonetheless, we can still infer a great deal from what –”
“Can the machine go any higher?” Sara asked.
“It… it can,” Crowley replied hesitantly. “But that’s not relevant for tonight’s experiment. As I was saying, if we direct our attention back to the graph –”
“Daddy Darling, turn the machine as high as it will go,” Sara requested. “I want to see what it will do to him!”
“Absolutely out of the question!” Crowley objected. “That would jeopardize the entire –”
“I wasn’t asking you! I was asking Daddy!” Sara cut him off again. “Turn the machine as high as it will go!”
Crowley spun around in his jar to face James, who once again had a smile that no surgical mask could ever hide.
“James, if you turn that dial so much as one notch higher, you will be in breach of our agreement and will have forfeited the second half of your payment!” he warned him.
“Hmm… Mary Darling, are you following this?” he asked, turning towards where Mary collapsed some time ago. I heard her give an incoherent but affirmative-sounding response. “Crowley says he’s not going to pay up if I do as Sara Darling asks. Does this fall under my authority as a financial matter, or under yours as a family one?”
“Well… I suppose I did nearly ruin our family outing with my unprovoked death threat, so we should probably do something nice to make it up to her,” she replied. “If you don’t think the money’s worth fretting over, go right ahead.”
“I was never here for the money anyway,” James shrugged. “And what kind of monster would I be if I cared more about a little bit of money than my daughter’s happiness?”
“James, don’t you dare – ”
Before Crowley could even finish his sentence, James spun the dial as far as it would go.
The static electricity I had felt inside my head exploded into a thunderstorm, and I felt my bones break as I spasmed uncontrollably against my restraints. Bolts and waves of the strange sensation effortlessly escaped my body and began ravaging the environment around me. Some part of me that managed to remain lucid amongst the alien agony tried to direct these forces against my captors, but I found I was utterly unable to control it in any meaningful way.
The audience had broken out into panicked screams as they desperately tried to flee the operating theatre, except of course for Sara, who I heard laughing and applauding gleefully.
Crowley fired an electric arc from his tesla coil at James as he wheeled himself towards the machine behind me, but Mary had evidently been roused from her drugged stupor and attacked him from behind, stabbing a butcher’s knife through his bellows over and over until he lost all momentum and screeched to a stop. The bubbles in his jar all fell still, and he had seemingly lost the ability to speak through his horn as well, but the brain itself remained glowing and active, slamming itself against the glass in impotent rage.
“What do you think will give out first, Mary Darling? The man or the machine?” James asked, acrid smoke from the overloaded machine stinging my eyes as the violent spasms threatened to tear my body apart. Before Mary could answer, the machine sparked and sputtered out, its ungodly racket dying down to a raspy whimper as the psionic assault on my mind finally came to an end.
“Yay!” Sara cheered and applauded before running down to join her parents. She was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her throw herself into her father’s arms. “Thank you, Daddy Darling! That was so much more fun than just keeping it on one. He’s never felt pain like that before, and he still didn’t die! It was marvellous!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling,” James cooed. “Though, our subject’s surprising resilience does present us with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it? Mary Darling, do you think we should finish him off?”
“There’s no fun in killing someone who can’t put up a fight. He’ll probably be pretty onery once the paralytics wear off, but I don’t really want to wait around for that, especially not with Crowley’s associates likely on their way,” Mary replied. “Plus, that adrenaline surge I just got is already fading and the fentanyl is kicking right back in. We ought to head home. What do you say, Sara Darling? Have you had enough fun for tonight?”
“I have. Thank you for taking me with you, Mommy Darling,” she said sweetly. “And I forgive you for threatening to kill me. I know it was only because you love Daddy so much. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. I’m sorry about the damage to your theatre, but it made me very happy and I learned a lot, so it was worth it.”
“In addition to the other half of my payment, you can keep the test subject as well,” James offered. “That should set as even, Crowley, don’t you think?”
Crowley responded by angrily bashing himself into the glass of his jar.
“Well, that’s a pity then. Let’s head out then, girls, before crotchety old Crowley gets the wind back in his bellows,” James said.
“Just a minute, Daddy Darling,” Sara said, and I felt someone pulling out the electrodes from my brain and then setting my severed cranium back in place. “Thank you too, mister. I really did enjoy watching you suffer like that, and because you made me so happy, I’m going to let you walk away from this.”
Looking up, I could see her bending down to kiss my forehead. She had a flawless porcelain face framed by long dark locks; a perfect, darling daughter that any parent would be proud of, except for her eyes. From any casual viewing distance, they could pass for being very dark brown, but when she was face to face with me, I could tell that her irises were actually filled with some sort of animate black fluid, swirling like hurricanes of obsidian storm clouds.
When she kissed me, every broken bone and my body snapped back into place and began slowly, excruciatingly knitting themselves back together. If I could have screamed, I would have cursed the demonic little girl out for her perverse sense of mercy.
Pulling back, she gave me a smug smile, undoubtedly aware of how much pain she was causing me and exactly what I thought of her.
“You're going to want to get out of here as soon as you can stand, before Crowley's cronies show up,” she said as she undid my restraints one by one. "Feel better, mister!"
Singing happily, she turned around and skipped off with her parents, the sound of their footsteps slowly receding until eventually fading altogether, leaving me and Crowley both helpless prisoners in our own bodies as we lay impotent and defeated in the now silent and forsaken operating theatre.

Content Warning: This story contains depictions/mentions of abduction, torture, incest, cannibalism, normalized drug and sexual abuse, and verbal child abuse.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the bright glare of an overhead lamp. After a few seconds of dull confusion, panic set in when I realized I couldn’t possibly be in my own bed. I tried to jolt upwards, but found that my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak or scream or even voluntarily control my own breathing.
The only things I could move were my eyes. As they adjusted to the bright light above me, I was just able to make out enough detail to realize that I was in an operating theatre of some kind. Had I been in an accident? I strained my simultaneously drowsy yet adrenaline-shocked brain to remember how I could have ended up here.
I was just barely able to recall a slim young man with slicked black hair and blue eyes. I had been on a trip and ran into him at the hotel bar. During our conversation, he mentioned that he distilled his own whiskey with home-grown corn. It sounded intriguing, and he told me that he had a small bottle of it back in his hotel room. He said that I was free to try a glass, and if it pleased me, he could arrange for me to purchase some.
He had been charming and affable, and with his slight frame I didn’t deem him much of a threat to me personally, so I followed him back to his room.
Then I felt a syringe being plunged into my back, and everything went dark before I could so much as utter a whimper in protest.
Someone repositioned the swivel light so that it wasn’t pointed directly at me, and I could see that the operating theatre was ancient, likely dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Instead of the sterile white that would be expected in any modern medical facility, everything here was browned and yellowed and stained with time. There was wood where there should have been ceramic tiles, and cast iron where there should have been stainless steel. It was decrepit, but not quite derelict. Someone had kept the place functional, and given my present circumstances, their motives couldn’t possibly be innocent.
The tiered rows of seats that encircled me were all dimly lit, but I could tell there were figures sitting in them. I could discern no details, so they were all merely humanoid silhouettes to me. They moved only slightly, and I thought that here and there I could catch the light reflecting in their eyes, but they were a deathly quiet lot. There was no whispering, no coughing, and I couldn’t even be sure they were breathing.
Squeaking wheels and the bellows of a respirator began to creep towards me, and from the periphery of my vision, I witnessed a brain in a bubbling jar slide up beside me. It was mounted on some kind of antique pedestal, with a gramophone horn, tesla coil, and all matter of steampunk-looking contraptions built into it. The oddest thing about it was that there was a bowler hat placed on top of the jar.
At least, that was the oddest thing until it spoke.
“Welcome, welcome, scholars and students of forbidden gnosis and the damned sciences. Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” a voice boomed from the gramophone horn as the brain bobbed and flickered in a strange blue light with every syllable.
“Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” the audience murmured in unison.
“Thank you all for coming. For those that don’t know me, I am High Adderman Professor Whitaker C. Crowley of the Harrowick Chapterhouse; Preternaturalist, Parapsychologist, Crypto-anatomist, Alchemical Consultant, and – when the occasion calls for it – enthusiastic vivisectionist! For your education and entertainment, tonight I will be demonstrating the neuro-ethereal functions of the human brain with this fully paralyzed, yet fully conscious, test subject. Though he cannot move an inch to save his life, he can see, hear, and most especially feel everything that happens here tonight. Whether or not he’ll survive or be in any mental state to remember any of this when it’s over is… uncertain at best.
“Of course, due to my physical limitations, I will not be performing this vivisection alone. Assisting me tonight will be Master Addermen James and Mary Darling.”
The audience began murmuring amongst themselves, the names evidently meaning more to them than they did to me. I heard footsteps crossing the wooden floor, and when they stopped, I saw the young man from earlier standing beside my bed. He wore a blood-stained leather apron over a dark Howie lab coat, his cloth mask drawing focus to his gleaming and gleeful blue eyes.
By his side stood a young woman so much like him that she could only be his sister. She had the same pitch-black hair, worn in bunches, and the same striking blue eyes that glittered with a manic psychosis. She was dressed in a red and white nurse’s uniform from a bygone era that I couldn’t quite place, and was likely just intended to look old-fashioned without actually belonging to any actual time period.
“Please, please, there’s no need for concern,” Crowley said, trying to assuage the misgivings his audience apparently had with the visiting surgeons. “It’s the Darlings we have to thank for bringing us this test subject in the first place. I’d like to remind you all that the Darling Twins are fellow members of the Ophion Occult Order, and you are all to treat them with the respect that they’re due. I’m aware that they don’t technically possess any formal medical training, but their extensive self-taught knowledge of human anatomy should prove quite useful.”
“I’ve always found that the difference between a butcher and a back alley surgeon was one of entrepreneurship,” James added.
“That’s exactly the sort of amoral heterodoxy I like to see in my colleagues!” Crowley heartily agreed. “I do however feel the need to point out that your personal protective equipment is simultaneously inadequate and, given the circumstances, not strictly necessary.”
“It’s mainly for show. I like to get into the part,” James said, holding up a pair of hands clad in old leather gloves that were surely far more unsanitary than any bare hands could ever be.
“And so do I, just not as much as I like to drink and smoke,” Mary said, and I saw her raise a martini glass to her unmasked face and take a sip. “Oh, that reminds me. Professor Crowley, I’d like to apologize for you having the misfortune of witnessing me during one of my rare lapses into sobriety at our last encounter. I want to assure you that that dreadful experience was enough to knock me back off that horrible wagon and I’m proud to say that I have not been sober since.”
“That’s… good information to have, I suppose,” Crowley said. “To be blunt, your cannibalistic tendencies are a far greater concern to me than your proclivity for inebriation. I trust you’re able to refrain from entering your ‘Wendigo psychosis’ when the situation calls for it?”
“Wendigo psychosis? We’re not Wendigos,” Mary corrected him. “Wendigos are cursed with an insatiable hunger as a punishment for resorting to survival cannibalism, which seems a little judgmental if you ask me. The spirit cursing you couldn’t be bothered to intervene when you were starving, but once you solve your own problem it suddenly gets off its high horse just to condemn you for it? Regardless, James and I are not Wendigos. We are Randian, Nietzschean Übermenschen. We recognize our intrinsic superiority and reject morality as a means for the weak to oppress the strong. We do as we damn well please, and we find living off the flesh of our victims incredibly pleasing. If no one can stop us, then why should we stop? Also, Wendigos have antlers.”
“No, they don’t,” Crowley objected.
“Ah, White Wendigos do. I’m pretty sure those accounts take precedence,” Mary said.
“Right. Well, random racism and self-serving philosophical butchery aside, I was referring to your propensity to strip down and wallow in your victim’s viscera as you gorge yourself on their raw flesh,” Crowley clarified. “Whatever it is you call that.”
“I call it a good time,” Mary said, raising her glass in a toast before taking another tip.
“You will refrain from resorting to any such debauchery tonight,” Crowley insisted. “Tonight, you’re here to work. Is that understood?”
“Work? Me? Absolutely out of the question. James promised me I’d never have to work a day in my life. Isn’t that right, James Darling?”
“Technically, I forbid you from working. But, you being you, took that as a very loving gesture,” James corrected her.
“Hmmm. If you say so, James Darling. It’s a moot point, regardless. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; that a pretty girl like me would ever need to work or that a drunk like me could ever hold a job.”
“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Mary Darling. You’ve always managed to be a spectacular homemaker in spite of, perhaps even because of, your drunkenness,” James complimented her.
“Now don’t go getting all women’s lib on me, James Darling. If being a homemaker was a job, then the invisible hand of the free market would give it a salary,” she disputed. “As rational, Randian Übermenschen, we do not question the existence or wisdom of invisible hands.”
“Well, you’ve got me there, Mary Darling,” James conceded.
“But if you’re not here to work, then why – I mean, if you don’t mind my asking – why come at all?” Crowley demanded.
“We couldn’t find a sitter, and we thought this would make a nice family outing,” Mary replied.
“You… what?” Crowley asked.
It was then that I saw James smile with his eyes in the worst way possible.
“Sara’s here,” he explained, waving up at the tiered seats. “Hello, Sara Darling!”
“Hello, Daddy Darling! Hello, Mommy Darling!” the cheery voice of a preteen girl called out from somewhere outside my field of vision. I heard the audience react in dismay at the revelation of her presence, which was very confusing as I couldn’t fathom how a young girl’s presence could have gone unnoticed in such a setting, or why it would be a cause of such trepidation.
“You brought your forsaken child into my operating theatre!” Crowley demanded, a violent outrage somehow surging through his mechanical voice.
“Forsaken? How dare you! We may not be helicopter parents who oversee our daughter’s every waking moment, but we gave her everything she needed to grow into the truly magnificent abomination she’s become,” Mary said.
“It’s true we don’t often take her out hunting with us, as she often prefers much more elaborate means of tormenting her prey than we do, but this isn’t a hunt,” James added. “This sort of thing is much more her style, and we thought it would be a genuinely educational experience for her.”
“Educating bright young minds full of potential and advancing intellectual progress is always a valid reason for vivisecting a low-utility plodder like this,” the girl asserted.
“You see how conscientious she is? Always thinking about the ethics of things,” Mary dotted. “I honestly have no idea where she gets it from, but if she says it’s morally obligatory for superior beings like us to do as we please in order to maximize overall happiness, I’m not going to argue with her.”
“Is everything all right, Crowley? You’re looking more wrinkly and pickled than usual,” James said with a menacing grin that stretched out his mask. “Our Darling daughter is welcomed here, isn’t she?”
“I promise I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Crowley,” the girl said sweetly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse who’s terrified of what the priest will do to him if he tells his secret.”
The brain pivoted in his jar, turning back and forth between the Darling Twins and their unseen child in the audience as if he could somehow see despite his lack of eyes.
“Yes. Of course, she’s welcome here. My apologies. I’m just not accustomed to having children around, but of course, your daughter is the exception,” Crowley muttered a forced and flustered apology.
“She’s more than exceptional, Crowley. She’s a Darling,” James boasted proudly. “When you’re as perfect as we are, inbreeding only makes the bloodline stronger.”
“I’ll defer to your considerable expertise on the matter of incest. However, I feel we’ve kept our spectators waiting long enough,” Crowley said. “Whenever you’re ready, we can begin the procedure.”
“Of course, Ducky. You might have to bear with me a bit though. Usually, when James and I play doctor, I’m the patient, not the nurse,” Mary explained. “I get drugged up, stripped down, and felt up. Always a good time.”
“That’s not how Daddy and I play doctor,” Sara chirped out.
“Oh, Sara Darling. That’s because Daddy loves you and knows that if I ever saw you as a sexual threat, I’d kill you,” Mary replied, casually taking another sip from her martini.
For a moment there was dead silence, not a single person daring to risk interceding in this bizarre and disgusting threat between mother and child.
“…You mean you’d try to kill me,” Sara said at last, her tone flat and cold, the juvenile joy and innocence I’d heard before now utterly absent.
I may have spotted a transitory glint of fear in Mary’s eyes before she burst out laughing.
“Atta girl, Sara Darling. Sometimes I forget how much we’re alike,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Mommy’s just a jealous old drunk. So long as you don’t get any older, you can be Mommy’s little monster forever.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy Darling. I won’t,” the girl promised. “Puberty doesn’t sound like it’d be any fun anyway.”
“That’s because you don’t have a brother to play with,” Mary chortled. “Which I suppose I should get back to. James Darling, what should I do first?”
“Well Mary Darling, even though you’re not playing the patient today, I would never dare deprive you of your beloved drugs, and I think it would best if I gave them to you now before I get too occupied with the surgery,” James said.
“Goodfellas?” she asked hopefully.
James nodded, and Mary eagerly outstretched her hand and allowed him to tap a few pills into her palm. She raised the pills to her mouth, but paused before swallowing.
“You’re not just giving me these so that I’ll be out of your way during the surgery, are you James Darling?” she asked.
“No of course not ‘just’. I’m still going to have my way with you later,” he promised.
“Okay, good. I was worried there for a second,” she sighed in relief before chasing down her pills with what was left of her martini. “Mmmm. Everyone out there in the audience, a moment if I may! I may not be a real nurse, but I have a lot of first-hand experience with prescription drugs. As any reputable pharmaceutical representative will tell you, an addiction to prescription medication is a crucial component of a happy and fulfilling life. I can personally attest that amphetamines and benzos have justly earned their reputation as Mommy’s little helpers. I take Adderall when I need the mood and energy for housework, exercise, and lovemaking, Valium to help me unwind and to keep the shakes from waking me up through the night, and of course opioids whenever the booze isn’t quite enough to keep me in my happy place. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the silly little warnings on the labels telling you not to mix them with alcohol. They pair together marvellously, though I do think I ought to sit down before this hits me any harder. James Darling, I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“You just relax, Mary Darling. I’ve got this,” James nodded as Mary stumbled off out of my sight, the sound of her collapsing and failing to land in a wooden chair following soon after.
James reached for an electric bone saw from the surgical table, and held it up high to the light to examine it. Then, turning his head down to look at me, he addressed me directly for the first time.
“Hey there, buddy. How are you feeling?” he asked. “Listen, don’t feel bad about ending up on the slab here. Smarter people than you have fallen for my ploys, and I wasn’t even lying about the whiskey. I realize it’s customary to have some kind of painkiller during a procedure such as this, but as you just saw, the Missus cleaned me out. Happy wife, happy life, right? You understand, don’t you? Besides, my little girl’s up there, and nothing makes her happier than human suffering. You wouldn’t want to let her down, would you? The good news is that you’ve got plenty of paralytic pumping through your veins, and a complete lack of movement on your part is essential to reducing the risk of collateral damage. As much as this is going to hurt, you wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”
The rotary blade began spinning, singing its distinctive whirring hum. Placing his left hand on my chest and savouring the futility of my rapid pulse, James brought his saw down upon my forehead. I felt the ragged blade tear up my flesh and mutilate my nerve endings, every rotation of the blade feeling like a fresh cut. The only thing worse than the agony was the fear, the overwhelming compulsion to escape, to fight back, to do anything, all to no avail. I was completely helpless as I stared up with fully dilated pupils at my attacker, his mask unable to conceal the demented Joker’s smile underneath as he delighted in his mayhem.
My blood splattered up into his face, but this seemed only to delight him more. I could smell my flesh and bone searing from the friction of the saw, and my skull shook rapidly against its restraints from the continuous vibration. Throughout the ordeal, I was only able to hear two things over the sound of the saw against my skull; Crowley’s dry lecturing to his students, and Sara’s delighted laughter at her father’s atrocity.
When James had finally managed to cut through the entire circumference of my cranium, he turned the saw off and set it down on the tray beside him.
“There we are Crowley; not one bit of grey matter nicked,” he said proudly as he slowly lifted off the top half of my skull to reveal my exposed brain. “And he’s still conscious! I guess he didn’t lose as much blood as it looks like.”
“A successful craniectomy, and he was awake for every instant of it!” Sara exclaimed. “I could hear him screaming in my head the whole time. I’ve never felt terror that was so urgent and helpless at the same time. Thank you so much for letting me come tonight, Daddy Darling!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling! But we’re not done yet, are we Crowley?”
“Not remotely, no. Since the craniectomy went smoothly, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the procedure,” Crowley replied. “James, please insert the thaumic-electrodes in accordance with the diagram provided. Everyone, please take note that these electrodes are comprised of one hundred percent pure Seelie Silver, so their thaumaturgical conductivity is quite high. As you should all be aware, the Panpsychic force is the only direct link between the astral and physical planes, with consciousness being the only thing that exists across both realms. All preternatural phenomena are the result of focused and coherent Panpsychic force on either physical or astral reality. Now that James has all the electrodes implanted, you can see on the readout here that this brain’s thaumatological activity is nearly a flatline. Which is good, as I don’t much care for sharing my contraption here. Fortunately, these electrodes work both ways, and can channel psionic waves into as well as out of the brain. Please watch the readout carefully as James initiates electro-thaumic stimulation to the test subject.”
I hadn’t felt James insert the electrodes into my brain, since the brain doesn’t possess any pain receptors, but when I saw him flick a switch on whatever machine was behind me, I was suddenly aware of thirteen cold, metallic needles piercing deep into my brain tissue. It wasn’t pain, so much as they were announcing their presence and I understood what it meant. They had a quick, rhythmic pulse to them, but the pulse wasn’t in the physical matter of my brain but rather directly in my conscious mind. This was accompanied by a sensation I can only compare to static electricity accumulating inside my head.
“As anticipated, the subject is reacting to the electro-thaumic stimulation,” Crowley announced. “While a first-hand account of his experience would no doubt be illuminating, I’m highly skeptical he’d be cooperative if we reduced his paralytics. Nonetheless, we can still infer a great deal from what –”
“Can the machine go any higher?” Sara asked.
“It… it can,” Crowley replied hesitantly. “But that’s not relevant for tonight’s experiment. As I was saying, if we direct our attention back to the graph –”
“Daddy Darling, turn the machine as high as it will go,” Sara requested. “I want to see what it will do to him!”
“Absolutely out of the question!” Crowley objected. “That would jeopardize the entire –”
“I wasn’t asking you! I was asking Daddy!” Sara cut him off again. “Turn the machine as high as it will go!”
Crowley spun around in his jar to face James, who once again had a smile that no surgical mask could ever hide.
“James, if you turn that dial so much as one notch higher, you will be in breach of our agreement and will have forfeited the second half of your payment!” he warned him.
“Hmm… Mary Darling, are you following this?” he asked, turning towards where Mary collapsed some time ago. I heard her give an incoherent but affirmative-sounding response. “Crowley says he’s not going to pay up if I do as Sara Darling asks. Does this fall under my authority as a financial matter, or under yours as a family one?”
“Well… I suppose I did nearly ruin our family outing with my unprovoked death threat, so we should probably do something nice to make it up to her,” she replied. “If you don’t think the money’s worth fretting over, go right ahead.”
“I was never here for the money anyway,” James shrugged. “And what kind of monster would I be if I cared more about a little bit of money than my daughter’s happiness?”
“James, don’t you dare – ”
Before Crowley could even finish his sentence, James spun the dial as far as it would go.
The static electricity I had felt inside my head exploded into a thunderstorm, and I felt my bones break as I spasmed uncontrollably against my restraints. Bolts and waves of the strange sensation effortlessly escaped my body and began ravaging the environment around me. Some part of me that managed to remain lucid amongst the alien agony tried to direct these forces against my captors, but I found I was utterly unable to control it in any meaningful way.
The audience had broken out into panicked screams as they desperately tried to flee the operating theatre, except of course for Sara, who I heard laughing and applauding gleefully.
Crowley fired an electric arc from his tesla coil at James as he wheeled himself towards the machine behind me, but Mary had evidently been roused from her drugged stupor and attacked him from behind, stabbing a butcher’s knife through his bellows over and over until he lost all momentum and screeched to a stop. The bubbles in his jar all fell still, and he had seemingly lost the ability to speak through his horn as well, but the brain itself remained glowing and active, slamming itself against the glass in impotent rage.
“What do you think will give out first, Mary Darling? The man or the machine?” James asked, acrid smoke from the overloaded machine stinging my eyes as the violent spasms threatened to tear my body apart. Before Mary could answer, the machine sparked and sputtered out, its ungodly racket dying down to a raspy whimper as the psionic assault on my mind finally came to an end.
“Yay!” Sara cheered and applauded before running down to join her parents. She was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her throw herself into her father’s arms. “Thank you, Daddy Darling! That was so much more fun than just keeping it on one. He’s never felt pain like that before, and he still didn’t die! It was marvellous!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling,” James cooed. “Though, our subject’s surprising resilience does present us with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it? Mary Darling, do you think we should finish him off?”
“There’s no fun in killing someone who can’t put up a fight. He’ll probably be pretty onery once the paralytics wear off, but I don’t really want to wait around for that, especially not with Crowley’s associates likely on their way,” Mary replied. “Plus, that adrenaline surge I just got is already fading and the fentanyl is kicking right back in. We ought to head home. What do you say, Sara Darling? Have you had enough fun for tonight?”
“I have. Thank you for taking me with you, Mommy Darling,” she said sweetly. “And I forgive you for threatening to kill me. I know it was only because you love Daddy so much. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. I’m sorry about the damage to your theatre, but it made me very happy and I learned a lot, so it was worth it.”
“In addition to the other half of my payment, you can keep the test subject as well,” James offered. “That should set as even, Crowley, don’t you think?”
Crowley responded by angrily bashing himself into the glass of his jar.
“Well, that’s a pity then. Let’s head out then, girls, before crotchety old Crowley gets the wind back in his bellows,” James said.
“Just a minute, Daddy Darling,” Sara said, and I felt someone pulling out the electrodes from my brain and then setting my severed cranium back in place. “Thank you too, mister. I really did enjoy watching you suffer like that, and because you made me so happy, I’m going to let you walk away from this.”
Looking up, I could see her bending down to kiss my forehead. She had a flawless porcelain face framed by long dark locks; a perfect, darling daughter that any parent would be proud of, except for her eyes. From any casual viewing distance, they could pass for being very dark brown, but when she was face to face with me, I could tell that her irises were actually filled with some sort of animate black fluid, swirling like hurricanes of obsidian storm clouds.
When she kissed me, every broken bone and my body snapped back into place and began slowly, excruciatingly knitting themselves back together. If I could have screamed, I would have cursed the demonic little girl out for her perverse sense of mercy.
Pulling back, she gave me a smug smile, undoubtedly aware of how much pain she was causing me and exactly what I thought of her.
“You're going to want to get out of here as soon as you can stand, before Crowley's cronies show up,” she said as she undid my restraints one by one. "Feel better, mister!"
Singing happily, she turned around and skipped off with her parents, the sound of their footsteps slowly receding until eventually fading altogether, leaving me and Crowley both helpless prisoners in our own bodies as we lay impotent and defeated in the now silent and forsaken operating theatre.

Content Warning: This story contains depictions/mentions of abduction, torture, incest, cannibalism, normalized drug and sexual abuse, and verbal child abuse.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the bright glare of an overhead lamp. After a few seconds of dull confusion, panic set in when I realized I couldn’t possibly be in my own bed. I tried to jolt upwards, but found that my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak or scream or even voluntarily control my own breathing.
The only things I could move were my eyes. As they adjusted to the bright light above me, I was just able to make out enough detail to realize that I was in an operating theatre of some kind. Had I been in an accident? I strained my simultaneously drowsy yet adrenaline-shocked brain to remember how I could have ended up here.
I was just barely able to recall a slim young man with slicked black hair and blue eyes. I had been on a trip and ran into him at the hotel bar. During our conversation, he mentioned that he distilled his own whiskey with home-grown corn. It sounded intriguing, and he told me that he had a small bottle of it back in his hotel room. He said that I was free to try a glass, and if it pleased me, he could arrange for me to purchase some.
He had been charming and affable, and with his slight frame I didn’t deem him much of a threat to me personally, so I followed him back to his room.
Then I felt a syringe being plunged into my back, and everything went dark before I could so much as utter a whimper in protest.
Someone repositioned the swivel light so that it wasn’t pointed directly at me, and I could see that the operating theatre was ancient, likely dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Instead of the sterile white that would be expected in any modern medical facility, everything here was browned and yellowed and stained with time. There was wood where there should have been ceramic tiles, and cast iron where there should have been stainless steel. It was decrepit, but not quite derelict. Someone had kept the place functional, and given my present circumstances, their motives couldn’t possibly be innocent.
The tiered rows of seats that encircled me were all dimly lit, but I could tell there were figures sitting in them. I could discern no details, so they were all merely humanoid silhouettes to me. They moved only slightly, and I thought that here and there I could catch the light reflecting in their eyes, but they were a deathly quiet lot. There was no whispering, no coughing, and I couldn’t even be sure they were breathing.
Squeaking wheels and the bellows of a respirator began to creep towards me, and from the periphery of my vision, I witnessed a brain in a bubbling jar slide up beside me. It was mounted on some kind of antique pedestal, with a gramophone horn, tesla coil, and all matter of steampunk-looking contraptions built into it. The oddest thing about it was that there was a bowler hat placed on top of the jar.
At least, that was the oddest thing until it spoke.
“Welcome, welcome, scholars and students of forbidden gnosis and the damned sciences. Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” a voice boomed from the gramophone horn as the brain bobbed and flickered in a strange blue light with every syllable.
“Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” the audience murmured in unison.
“Thank you all for coming. For those that don’t know me, I am High Adderman Professor Whitaker C. Crowley of the Harrowick Chapterhouse; Preternaturalist, Parapsychologist, Crypto-anatomist, Alchemical Consultant, and – when the occasion calls for it – enthusiastic vivisectionist! For your education and entertainment, tonight I will be demonstrating the neuro-ethereal functions of the human brain with this fully paralyzed, yet fully conscious, test subject. Though he cannot move an inch to save his life, he can see, hear, and most especially feel everything that happens here tonight. Whether or not he’ll survive or be in any mental state to remember any of this when it’s over is… uncertain at best.
“Of course, due to my physical limitations, I will not be performing this vivisection alone. Assisting me tonight will be Master Addermen James and Mary Darling.”
The audience began murmuring amongst themselves, the names evidently meaning more to them than they did to me. I heard footsteps crossing the wooden floor, and when they stopped, I saw the young man from earlier standing beside my bed. He wore a blood-stained leather apron over a dark Howie lab coat, his cloth mask drawing focus to his gleaming and gleeful blue eyes.
By his side stood a young woman so much like him that she could only be his sister. She had the same pitch-black hair, worn in bunches, and the same striking blue eyes that glittered with a manic psychosis. She was dressed in a red and white nurse’s uniform from a bygone era that I couldn’t quite place, and was likely just intended to look old-fashioned without actually belonging to any actual time period.
“Please, please, there’s no need for concern,” Crowley said, trying to assuage the misgivings his audience apparently had with the visiting surgeons. “It’s the Darlings we have to thank for bringing us this test subject in the first place. I’d like to remind you all that the Darling Twins are fellow members of the Ophion Occult Order, and you are all to treat them with the respect that they’re due. I’m aware that they don’t technically possess any formal medical training, but their extensive self-taught knowledge of human anatomy should prove quite useful.”
“I’ve always found that the difference between a butcher and a back alley surgeon was one of entrepreneurship,” James added.
“That’s exactly the sort of amoral heterodoxy I like to see in my colleagues!” Crowley heartily agreed. “I do however feel the need to point out that your personal protective equipment is simultaneously inadequate and, given the circumstances, not strictly necessary.”
“It’s mainly for show. I like to get into the part,” James said, holding up a pair of hands clad in old leather gloves that were surely far more unsanitary than any bare hands could ever be.
“And so do I, just not as much as I like to drink and smoke,” Mary said, and I saw her raise a martini glass to her unmasked face and take a sip. “Oh, that reminds me. Professor Crowley, I’d like to apologize for you having the misfortune of witnessing me during one of my rare lapses into sobriety at our last encounter. I want to assure you that that dreadful experience was enough to knock me back off that horrible wagon and I’m proud to say that I have not been sober since.”
“That’s… good information to have, I suppose,” Crowley said. “To be blunt, your cannibalistic tendencies are a far greater concern to me than your proclivity for inebriation. I trust you’re able to refrain from entering your ‘Wendigo psychosis’ when the situation calls for it?”
“Wendigo psychosis? We’re not Wendigos,” Mary corrected him. “Wendigos are cursed with an insatiable hunger as a punishment for resorting to survival cannibalism, which seems a little judgmental if you ask me. The spirit cursing you couldn’t be bothered to intervene when you were starving, but once you solve your own problem it suddenly gets off its high horse just to condemn you for it? Regardless, James and I are not Wendigos. We are Randian, Nietzschean Übermenschen. We recognize our intrinsic superiority and reject morality as a means for the weak to oppress the strong. We do as we damn well please, and we find living off the flesh of our victims incredibly pleasing. If no one can stop us, then why should we stop? Also, Wendigos have antlers.”
“No, they don’t,” Crowley objected.
“Ah, White Wendigos do. I’m pretty sure those accounts take precedence,” Mary said.
“Right. Well, random racism and self-serving philosophical butchery aside, I was referring to your propensity to strip down and wallow in your victim’s viscera as you gorge yourself on their raw flesh,” Crowley clarified. “Whatever it is you call that.”
“I call it a good time,” Mary said, raising her glass in a toast before taking another tip.
“You will refrain from resorting to any such debauchery tonight,” Crowley insisted. “Tonight, you’re here to work. Is that understood?”
“Work? Me? Absolutely out of the question. James promised me I’d never have to work a day in my life. Isn’t that right, James Darling?”
“Technically, I forbid you from working. But, you being you, took that as a very loving gesture,” James corrected her.
“Hmmm. If you say so, James Darling. It’s a moot point, regardless. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; that a pretty girl like me would ever need to work or that a drunk like me could ever hold a job.”
“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Mary Darling. You’ve always managed to be a spectacular homemaker in spite of, perhaps even because of, your drunkenness,” James complimented her.
“Now don’t go getting all women’s lib on me, James Darling. If being a homemaker was a job, then the invisible hand of the free market would give it a salary,” she disputed. “As rational, Randian Übermenschen, we do not question the existence or wisdom of invisible hands.”
“Well, you’ve got me there, Mary Darling,” James conceded.
“But if you’re not here to work, then why – I mean, if you don’t mind my asking – why come at all?” Crowley demanded.
“We couldn’t find a sitter, and we thought this would make a nice family outing,” Mary replied.
“You… what?” Crowley asked.
It was then that I saw James smile with his eyes in the worst way possible.
“Sara’s here,” he explained, waving up at the tiered seats. “Hello, Sara Darling!”
“Hello, Daddy Darling! Hello, Mommy Darling!” the cheery voice of a preteen girl called out from somewhere outside my field of vision. I heard the audience react in dismay at the revelation of her presence, which was very confusing as I couldn’t fathom how a young girl’s presence could have gone unnoticed in such a setting, or why it would be a cause of such trepidation.
“You brought your forsaken child into my operating theatre!” Crowley demanded, a violent outrage somehow surging through his mechanical voice.
“Forsaken? How dare you! We may not be helicopter parents who oversee our daughter’s every waking moment, but we gave her everything she needed to grow into the truly magnificent abomination she’s become,” Mary said.
“It’s true we don’t often take her out hunting with us, as she often prefers much more elaborate means of tormenting her prey than we do, but this isn’t a hunt,” James added. “This sort of thing is much more her style, and we thought it would be a genuinely educational experience for her.”
“Educating bright young minds full of potential and advancing intellectual progress is always a valid reason for vivisecting a low-utility plodder like this,” the girl asserted.
“You see how conscientious she is? Always thinking about the ethics of things,” Mary dotted. “I honestly have no idea where she gets it from, but if she says it’s morally obligatory for superior beings like us to do as we please in order to maximize overall happiness, I’m not going to argue with her.”
“Is everything all right, Crowley? You’re looking more wrinkly and pickled than usual,” James said with a menacing grin that stretched out his mask. “Our Darling daughter is welcomed here, isn’t she?”
“I promise I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Crowley,” the girl said sweetly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse who’s terrified of what the priest will do to him if he tells his secret.”
The brain pivoted in his jar, turning back and forth between the Darling Twins and their unseen child in the audience as if he could somehow see despite his lack of eyes.
“Yes. Of course, she’s welcome here. My apologies. I’m just not accustomed to having children around, but of course, your daughter is the exception,” Crowley muttered a forced and flustered apology.
“She’s more than exceptional, Crowley. She’s a Darling,” James boasted proudly. “When you’re as perfect as we are, inbreeding only makes the bloodline stronger.”
“I’ll defer to your considerable expertise on the matter of incest. However, I feel we’ve kept our spectators waiting long enough,” Crowley said. “Whenever you’re ready, we can begin the procedure.”
“Of course, Ducky. You might have to bear with me a bit though. Usually, when James and I play doctor, I’m the patient, not the nurse,” Mary explained. “I get drugged up, stripped down, and felt up. Always a good time.”
“That’s not how Daddy and I play doctor,” Sara chirped out.
“Oh, Sara Darling. That’s because Daddy loves you and knows that if I ever saw you as a sexual threat, I’d kill you,” Mary replied, casually taking another sip from her martini.
For a moment there was dead silence, not a single person daring to risk interceding in this bizarre and disgusting threat between mother and child.
“…You mean you’d try to kill me,” Sara said at last, her tone flat and cold, the juvenile joy and innocence I’d heard before now utterly absent.
I may have spotted a transitory glint of fear in Mary’s eyes before she burst out laughing.
“Atta girl, Sara Darling. Sometimes I forget how much we’re alike,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Mommy’s just a jealous old drunk. So long as you don’t get any older, you can be Mommy’s little monster forever.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy Darling. I won’t,” the girl promised. “Puberty doesn’t sound like it’d be any fun anyway.”
“That’s because you don’t have a brother to play with,” Mary chortled. “Which I suppose I should get back to. James Darling, what should I do first?”
“Well Mary Darling, even though you’re not playing the patient today, I would never dare deprive you of your beloved drugs, and I think it would best if I gave them to you now before I get too occupied with the surgery,” James said.
“Goodfellas?” she asked hopefully.
James nodded, and Mary eagerly outstretched her hand and allowed him to tap a few pills into her palm. She raised the pills to her mouth, but paused before swallowing.
“You’re not just giving me these so that I’ll be out of your way during the surgery, are you James Darling?” she asked.
“No of course not ‘just’. I’m still going to have my way with you later,” he promised.
“Okay, good. I was worried there for a second,” she sighed in relief before chasing down her pills with what was left of her martini. “Mmmm. Everyone out there in the audience, a moment if I may! I may not be a real nurse, but I have a lot of first-hand experience with prescription drugs. As any reputable pharmaceutical representative will tell you, an addiction to prescription medication is a crucial component of a happy and fulfilling life. I can personally attest that amphetamines and benzos have justly earned their reputation as Mommy’s little helpers. I take Adderall when I need the mood and energy for housework, exercise, and lovemaking, Valium to help me unwind and to keep the shakes from waking me up through the night, and of course opioids whenever the booze isn’t quite enough to keep me in my happy place. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the silly little warnings on the labels telling you not to mix them with alcohol. They pair together marvellously, though I do think I ought to sit down before this hits me any harder. James Darling, I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“You just relax, Mary Darling. I’ve got this,” James nodded as Mary stumbled off out of my sight, the sound of her collapsing and failing to land in a wooden chair following soon after.
James reached for an electric bone saw from the surgical table, and held it up high to the light to examine it. Then, turning his head down to look at me, he addressed me directly for the first time.
“Hey there, buddy. How are you feeling?” he asked. “Listen, don’t feel bad about ending up on the slab here. Smarter people than you have fallen for my ploys, and I wasn’t even lying about the whiskey. I realize it’s customary to have some kind of painkiller during a procedure such as this, but as you just saw, the Missus cleaned me out. Happy wife, happy life, right? You understand, don’t you? Besides, my little girl’s up there, and nothing makes her happier than human suffering. You wouldn’t want to let her down, would you? The good news is that you’ve got plenty of paralytic pumping through your veins, and a complete lack of movement on your part is essential to reducing the risk of collateral damage. As much as this is going to hurt, you wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”
The rotary blade began spinning, singing its distinctive whirring hum. Placing his left hand on my chest and savouring the futility of my rapid pulse, James brought his saw down upon my forehead. I felt the ragged blade tear up my flesh and mutilate my nerve endings, every rotation of the blade feeling like a fresh cut. The only thing worse than the agony was the fear, the overwhelming compulsion to escape, to fight back, to do anything, all to no avail. I was completely helpless as I stared up with fully dilated pupils at my attacker, his mask unable to conceal the demented Joker’s smile underneath as he delighted in his mayhem.
My blood splattered up into his face, but this seemed only to delight him more. I could smell my flesh and bone searing from the friction of the saw, and my skull shook rapidly against its restraints from the continuous vibration. Throughout the ordeal, I was only able to hear two things over the sound of the saw against my skull; Crowley’s dry lecturing to his students, and Sara’s delighted laughter at her father’s atrocity.
When James had finally managed to cut through the entire circumference of my cranium, he turned the saw off and set it down on the tray beside him.
“There we are Crowley; not one bit of grey matter nicked,” he said proudly as he slowly lifted off the top half of my skull to reveal my exposed brain. “And he’s still conscious! I guess he didn’t lose as much blood as it looks like.”
“A successful craniectomy, and he was awake for every instant of it!” Sara exclaimed. “I could hear him screaming in my head the whole time. I’ve never felt terror that was so urgent and helpless at the same time. Thank you so much for letting me come tonight, Daddy Darling!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling! But we’re not done yet, are we Crowley?”
“Not remotely, no. Since the craniectomy went smoothly, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the procedure,” Crowley replied. “James, please insert the thaumic-electrodes in accordance with the diagram provided. Everyone, please take note that these electrodes are comprised of one hundred percent pure Seelie Silver, so their thaumaturgical conductivity is quite high. As you should all be aware, the Panpsychic force is the only direct link between the astral and physical planes, with consciousness being the only thing that exists across both realms. All preternatural phenomena are the result of focused and coherent Panpsychic force on either physical or astral reality. Now that James has all the electrodes implanted, you can see on the readout here that this brain’s thaumatological activity is nearly a flatline. Which is good, as I don’t much care for sharing my contraption here. Fortunately, these electrodes work both ways, and can channel psionic waves into as well as out of the brain. Please watch the readout carefully as James initiates electro-thaumic stimulation to the test subject.”
I hadn’t felt James insert the electrodes into my brain, since the brain doesn’t possess any pain receptors, but when I saw him flick a switch on whatever machine was behind me, I was suddenly aware of thirteen cold, metallic needles piercing deep into my brain tissue. It wasn’t pain, so much as they were announcing their presence and I understood what it meant. They had a quick, rhythmic pulse to them, but the pulse wasn’t in the physical matter of my brain but rather directly in my conscious mind. This was accompanied by a sensation I can only compare to static electricity accumulating inside my head.
“As anticipated, the subject is reacting to the electro-thaumic stimulation,” Crowley announced. “While a first-hand account of his experience would no doubt be illuminating, I’m highly skeptical he’d be cooperative if we reduced his paralytics. Nonetheless, we can still infer a great deal from what –”
“Can the machine go any higher?” Sara asked.
“It… it can,” Crowley replied hesitantly. “But that’s not relevant for tonight’s experiment. As I was saying, if we direct our attention back to the graph –”
“Daddy Darling, turn the machine as high as it will go,” Sara requested. “I want to see what it will do to him!”
“Absolutely out of the question!” Crowley objected. “That would jeopardize the entire –”
“I wasn’t asking you! I was asking Daddy!” Sara cut him off again. “Turn the machine as high as it will go!”
Crowley spun around in his jar to face James, who once again had a smile that no surgical mask could ever hide.
“James, if you turn that dial so much as one notch higher, you will be in breach of our agreement and will have forfeited the second half of your payment!” he warned him.
“Hmm… Mary Darling, are you following this?” he asked, turning towards where Mary collapsed some time ago. I heard her give an incoherent but affirmative-sounding response. “Crowley says he’s not going to pay up if I do as Sara Darling asks. Does this fall under my authority as a financial matter, or under yours as a family one?”
“Well… I suppose I did nearly ruin our family outing with my unprovoked death threat, so we should probably do something nice to make it up to her,” she replied. “If you don’t think the money’s worth fretting over, go right ahead.”
“I was never here for the money anyway,” James shrugged. “And what kind of monster would I be if I cared more about a little bit of money than my daughter’s happiness?”
“James, don’t you dare – ”
Before Crowley could even finish his sentence, James spun the dial as far as it would go.
The static electricity I had felt inside my head exploded into a thunderstorm, and I felt my bones break as I spasmed uncontrollably against my restraints. Bolts and waves of the strange sensation effortlessly escaped my body and began ravaging the environment around me. Some part of me that managed to remain lucid amongst the alien agony tried to direct these forces against my captors, but I found I was utterly unable to control it in any meaningful way.
The audience had broken out into panicked screams as they desperately tried to flee the operating theatre, except of course for Sara, who I heard laughing and applauding gleefully.
Crowley fired an electric arc from his tesla coil at James as he wheeled himself towards the machine behind me, but Mary had evidently been roused from her drugged stupor and attacked him from behind, stabbing a butcher’s knife through his bellows over and over until he lost all momentum and screeched to a stop. The bubbles in his jar all fell still, and he had seemingly lost the ability to speak through his horn as well, but the brain itself remained glowing and active, slamming itself against the glass in impotent rage.
“What do you think will give out first, Mary Darling? The man or the machine?” James asked, acrid smoke from the overloaded machine stinging my eyes as the violent spasms threatened to tear my body apart. Before Mary could answer, the machine sparked and sputtered out, its ungodly racket dying down to a raspy whimper as the psionic assault on my mind finally came to an end.
“Yay!” Sara cheered and applauded before running down to join her parents. She was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her throw herself into her father’s arms. “Thank you, Daddy Darling! That was so much more fun than just keeping it on one. He’s never felt pain like that before, and he still didn’t die! It was marvellous!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling,” James cooed. “Though, our subject’s surprising resilience does present us with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it? Mary Darling, do you think we should finish him off?”
“There’s no fun in killing someone who can’t put up a fight. He’ll probably be pretty onery once the paralytics wear off, but I don’t really want to wait around for that, especially not with Crowley’s associates likely on their way,” Mary replied. “Plus, that adrenaline surge I just got is already fading and the fentanyl is kicking right back in. We ought to head home. What do you say, Sara Darling? Have you had enough fun for tonight?”
“I have. Thank you for taking me with you, Mommy Darling,” she said sweetly. “And I forgive you for threatening to kill me. I know it was only because you love Daddy so much. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. I’m sorry about the damage to your theatre, but it made me very happy and I learned a lot, so it was worth it.”
“In addition to the other half of my payment, you can keep the test subject as well,” James offered. “That should set as even, Crowley, don’t you think?”
Crowley responded by angrily bashing himself into the glass of his jar.
“Well, that’s a pity then. Let’s head out then, girls, before crotchety old Crowley gets the wind back in his bellows,” James said.
“Just a minute, Daddy Darling,” Sara said, and I felt someone pulling out the electrodes from my brain and then setting my severed cranium back in place. “Thank you too, mister. I really did enjoy watching you suffer like that, and because you made me so happy, I’m going to let you walk away from this.”
Looking up, I could see her bending down to kiss my forehead. She had a flawless porcelain face framed by long dark locks; a perfect, darling daughter that any parent would be proud of, except for her eyes. From any casual viewing distance, they could pass for being very dark brown, but when she was face to face with me, I could tell that her irises were actually filled with some sort of animate black fluid, swirling like hurricanes of obsidian storm clouds.
When she kissed me, every broken bone and my body snapped back into place and began slowly, excruciatingly knitting themselves back together. If I could have screamed, I would have cursed the demonic little girl out for her perverse sense of mercy.
Pulling back, she gave me a smug smile, undoubtedly aware of how much pain she was causing me and exactly what I thought of her.
“You're going to want to get out of here as soon as you can stand, before Crowley's cronies show up,” she said as she undid my restraints one by one. "Feel better, mister!"
Singing happily, she turned around and skipped off with her parents, the sound of their footsteps slowly receding until eventually fading altogether, leaving me and Crowley both helpless prisoners in our own bodies as we lay impotent and defeated in the now silent and forsaken operating theatre.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the bright glare of an overhead lamp. After a few seconds of dull confusion, panic set in when I realized I couldn’t possibly be in my own bed. I tried to jolt upwards, but found that my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak or scream or even voluntarily control my own breathing.
The only things I could move were my eyes. As they adjusted to the bright light above me, I was just able to make out enough detail to realize that I was in an operating theatre of some kind. Had I been in an accident? I strained my simultaneously drowsy yet adrenaline-shocked brain to remember how I could have ended up here.
I was just barely able to recall a slim young man with slicked black hair and blue eyes. I had been on a trip and ran into him at the hotel bar. During our conversation, he mentioned that he distilled his own whiskey with home-grown corn. It sounded intriguing, and he told me that he had a small bottle of it back in his hotel room. He said that I was free to try a glass, and if it pleased me, he could arrange for me to purchase some.
He had been charming and affable, and with his slight frame I didn’t deem him much of a threat to me personally, so I followed him back to his room.
Then I felt a syringe being plunged into my back, and everything went dark before I could so much as utter a whimper in protest.
Someone repositioned the swivel light so that it wasn’t pointed directly at me, and I could see that the operating theatre was ancient, likely dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Instead of the sterile white that would be expected in any modern medical facility, everything here was browned and yellowed and stained with time. There was wood where there should have been ceramic tiles, and cast iron where there should have been stainless steel. It was decrepit, but not quite derelict. Someone had kept the place functional, and given my present circumstances, their motives couldn’t possibly be innocent.
The tiered rows of seats that encircled me were all dimly lit, but I could tell there were figures sitting in them. I could discern no details, so they were all merely humanoid silhouettes to me. They moved only slightly, and I thought that here and there I could catch the light reflecting in their eyes, but they were a deathly quiet lot. There was no whispering, no coughing, and I couldn’t even be sure they were breathing.
Squeaking wheels and the bellows of a respirator began to creep towards me, and from the periphery of my vision, I witnessed a brain in a bubbling jar slide up beside me. It was mounted on some kind of antique pedestal, with a gramophone horn, tesla coil, and all matter of steampunk-looking contraptions built into it. The oddest thing about it was that there was a bowler hat placed on top of the jar.
At least, that was the oddest thing until it spoke.
“Welcome, welcome, scholars and students of forbidden gnosis and the damned sciences. Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” a voice boomed from the gramophone horn as the brain bobbed and flickered in a strange blue light with every syllable.
“Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” the audience murmured in unison.
“Thank you all for coming. For those that don’t know me, I am High Adderman Professor Whitaker C. Crowley of the Harrowick Chapterhouse; Preternaturalist, Parapsychologist, Crypto-anatomist, Alchemical Consultant, and – when the occasion calls for it – enthusiastic vivisectionist! For your education and entertainment, tonight I will be demonstrating the neuro-ethereal functions of the human brain with this fully paralyzed, yet fully conscious, test subject. Though he cannot move an inch to save his life, he can see, hear, and most especially feel everything that happens here tonight. Whether or not he’ll survive or be in any mental state to remember any of this when it’s over is… uncertain at best.
“Of course, due to my physical limitations, I will not be performing this vivisection alone. Assisting me tonight will be Master Addermen James and Mary Darling.”
The audience began murmuring amongst themselves, the names evidently meaning more to them than they did to me. I heard footsteps crossing the wooden floor, and when they stopped, I saw the young man from earlier standing beside my bed. He wore a blood-stained leather apron over a dark Howie lab coat, his cloth mask drawing focus to his gleaming and gleeful blue eyes.
By his side stood a young woman so much like him that she could only be his sister. She had the same pitch-black hair, worn in bunches, and the same striking blue eyes that glittered with a manic psychosis. She was dressed in a red and white nurse’s uniform from a bygone era that I couldn’t quite place, and was likely just intended to look old-fashioned without actually belonging to any actual time period.
“Please, please, there’s no need for concern,” Crowley said, trying to assuage the misgivings his audience apparently had with the visiting surgeons. “It’s the Darlings we have to thank for bringing us this test subject in the first place. I’d like to remind you all that the Darling Twins are fellow members of the Ophion Occult Order, and you are all to treat them with the respect that they’re due. I’m aware that they don’t technically possess any formal medical training, but their extensive self-taught knowledge of human anatomy should prove quite useful.”
“I’ve always found that the difference between a butcher and a back alley surgeon was one of entrepreneurship,” James added.
“That’s exactly the sort of amoral heterodoxy I like to see in my colleagues!” Crowley heartily agreed. “I do however feel the need to point out that your personal protective equipment is simultaneously inadequate and, given the circumstances, not strictly necessary.”
“It’s mainly for show. I like to get into the part,” James said, holding up a pair of hands clad in old leather gloves that were surely far more unsanitary than any bare hands could ever be.
“And so do I, just not as much as I like to drink and smoke,” Mary said, and I saw her raise a martini glass to her unmasked face and take a sip. “Oh, that reminds me. Professor Crowley, I’d like to apologize for you having the misfortune of witnessing me during one of my rare lapses into sobriety at our last encounter. I want to assure you that that dreadful experience was enough to knock me back off that horrible wagon and I’m proud to say that I have not been sober since.”
“That’s… good information to have, I suppose,” Crowley said. “To be blunt, your cannibalistic tendencies are a far greater concern to me than your proclivity for inebriation. I trust you’re able to refrain from entering your ‘Wendigo psychosis’ when the situation calls for it?”
“Wendigo psychosis? We’re not Wendigos,” Mary corrected him. “Wendigos are cursed with an insatiable hunger as a punishment for resorting to survival cannibalism, which seems a little judgmental if you ask me. The spirit cursing you couldn’t be bothered to intervene when you were starving, but once you solve your own problem it suddenly gets off its high horse just to condemn you for it? Regardless, James and I are not Wendigos. We are Randian, Nietzschean Übermenschen. We recognize our intrinsic superiority and reject morality as a means for the weak to oppress the strong. We do as we damn well please, and we find living off the flesh of our victims incredibly pleasing. If no one can stop us, then why should we stop? Also, Wendigos have antlers.”
“No, they don’t,” Crowley objected.
“Ah, White Wendigos do. I’m pretty sure those accounts take precedence,” Mary said.
“Right. Well, random racism and self-serving philosophical butchery aside, I was referring to your propensity to strip down and wallow in your victim’s viscera as you gorge yourself on their raw flesh,” Crowley clarified. “Whatever it is you call that.”
“I call it a good time,” Mary said, raising her glass in a toast before taking another tip.
“You will refrain from resorting to any such debauchery tonight,” Crowley insisted. “Tonight, you’re here to work. Is that understood?”
“Work? Me? Absolutely out of the question. James promised me I’d never have to work a day in my life. Isn’t that right, James Darling?”
“Technically, I forbid you from working. But, you being you, took that as a very loving gesture,” James corrected her.
“Hmmm. If you say so, James Darling. It’s a moot point, regardless. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; that a pretty girl like me would ever need to work or that a drunk like me could ever hold a job.”
“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Mary Darling. You’ve always managed to be a spectacular homemaker in spite of, perhaps even because of, your drunkenness,” James complimented her.
“Now don’t go getting all women’s lib on me, James Darling. If being a homemaker was a job, then the invisible hand of the free market would give it a salary,” she disputed. “As rational, Randian Übermenschen, we do not question the existence or wisdom of invisible hands.”
“Well, you’ve got me there, Mary Darling,” James conceded.
“But if you’re not here to work, then why – I mean, if you don’t mind my asking – why come at all?” Crowley demanded.
“We couldn’t find a sitter, and we thought this would make a nice family outing,” Mary replied.
“You… what?” Crowley asked.
It was then that I saw James smile with his eyes in the worst way possible.
“Sara’s here,” he explained, waving up at the tiered seats. “Hello, Sara Darling!”
“Hello, Daddy Darling! Hello, Mommy Darling!” the cheery voice of a preteen girl called out from somewhere outside my field of vision. I heard the audience react in dismay at the revelation of her presence, which was very confusing as I couldn’t fathom how a young girl’s presence could have gone unnoticed in such a setting, or why it would be a cause of such trepidation.
“You brought your forsaken child into my operating theatre!” Crowley demanded, a violent outrage somehow surging through his mechanical voice.
“Forsaken? How dare you! We may not be helicopter parents who oversee our daughter’s every waking moment, but we gave her everything she needed to grow into the truly magnificent abomination she’s become,” Mary said.
“It’s true we don’t often take her out hunting with us, as she often prefers much more elaborate means of tormenting her prey than we do, but this isn’t a hunt,” James added. “This sort of thing is much more her style, and we thought it would be a genuinely educational experience for her.”
“Educating bright young minds full of potential and advancing intellectual progress is always a valid reason for vivisecting a low-utility plodder like this,” the girl asserted.
“You see how conscientious she is? Always thinking about the ethics of things,” Mary dotted. “I honestly have no idea where she gets it from, but if she says it’s morally obligatory for superior beings like us to do as we please in order to maximize overall happiness, I’m not going to argue with her.”
“Is everything all right, Crowley? You’re looking more wrinkly and pickled than usual,” James said with a menacing grin that stretched out his mask. “Our Darling daughter is welcomed here, isn’t she?”
“I promise I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Crowley,” the girl said sweetly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse who’s terrified of what the priest will do to him if he tells his secret.”
The brain pivoted in his jar, turning back and forth between the Darling Twins and their unseen child in the audience as if he could somehow see despite his lack of eyes.
“Yes. Of course, she’s welcome here. My apologies. I’m just not accustomed to having children around, but of course, your daughter is the exception,” Crowley muttered a forced and flustered apology.
“She’s more than exceptional, Crowley. She’s a Darling,” James boasted proudly. “When you’re as perfect as we are, inbreeding only makes the bloodline stronger.”
“I’ll defer to your considerable expertise on the matter of incest. However, I feel we’ve kept our spectators waiting long enough,” Crowley said. “Whenever you’re ready, we can begin the procedure.”
“Of course, Ducky. You might have to bear with me a bit though. Usually, when James and I play doctor, I’m the patient, not the nurse,” Mary explained. “I get drugged up, stripped down, and felt up. Always a good time.”
“That’s not how Daddy and I play doctor,” Sara chirped out.
“Oh, Sara Darling. That’s because Daddy loves you and knows that if I ever saw you as a sexual threat, I’d kill you,” Mary replied, casually taking another sip from her martini.
For a moment there was dead silence, not a single person daring to risk interceding in this bizarre and disgusting threat between mother and child.
“…You mean you’d try to kill me,” Sara said at last, her tone flat and cold, the juvenile joy and innocence I’d heard before now utterly absent.
I may have spotted a transitory glint of fear in Mary’s eyes before she burst out laughing.
“Atta girl, Sara Darling. Sometimes I forget how much we’re alike,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Mommy’s just a jealous old drunk. So long as you don’t get any older, you can be Mommy’s little monster forever.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy Darling. I won’t,” the girl promised. “Puberty doesn’t sound like it’d be any fun anyway.”
“That’s because you don’t have a brother to play with,” Mary chortled. “Which I suppose I should get back to. James Darling, what should I do first?”
“Well Mary Darling, even though you’re not playing the patient today, I would never dare deprive you of your beloved drugs, and I think it would best if I gave them to you now before I get too occupied with the surgery,” James said.
“Goodfellas?” she asked hopefully.
James nodded, and Mary eagerly outstretched her hand and allowed him to tap a few pills into her palm. She raised the pills to her mouth, but paused before swallowing.
“You’re not just giving me these so that I’ll be out of your way during the surgery, are you James Darling?” she asked.
“No of course not ‘just’. I’m still going to have my way with you later,” he promised.
“Okay, good. I was worried there for a second,” she sighed in relief before chasing down her pills with what was left of her martini. “Mmmm. Everyone out there in the audience, a moment if I may! I may not be a real nurse, but I have a lot of first-hand experience with prescription drugs. As any reputable pharmaceutical representative will tell you, an addiction to prescription medication is a crucial component of a happy and fulfilling life. I can personally attest that amphetamines and benzos have justly earned their reputation as Mommy’s little helpers. I take Adderall when I need the mood and energy for housework, exercise, and lovemaking, Valium to help me unwind and to keep the shakes from waking me up through the night, and of course opioids whenever the booze isn’t quite enough to keep me in my happy place. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the silly little warnings on the labels telling you not to mix them with alcohol. They pair together marvellously, though I do think I ought to sit down before this hits me any harder. James Darling, I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“You just relax, Mary Darling. I’ve got this,” James nodded as Mary stumbled off out of my sight, the sound of her collapsing and failing to land in a wooden chair following soon after.
James reached for an electric bone saw from the surgical table, and held it up high to the light to examine it. Then, turning his head down to look at me, he addressed me directly for the first time.
“Hey there, buddy. How are you feeling?” he asked. “Listen, don’t feel bad about ending up on the slab here. Smarter people than you have fallen for my ploys, and I wasn’t even lying about the whiskey. I realize it’s customary to have some kind of painkiller during a procedure such as this, but as you just saw, the Missus cleaned me out. Happy wife, happy life, right? You understand, don’t you? Besides, my little girl’s up there, and nothing makes her happier than human suffering. You wouldn’t want to let her down, would you? The good news is that you’ve got plenty of paralytic pumping through your veins, and a complete lack of movement on your part is essential to reducing the risk of collateral damage. As much as this is going to hurt, you wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”
The rotary blade began spinning, singing its distinctive whirring hum. Placing his left hand on my chest and savouring the futility of my rapid pulse, James brought his saw down upon my forehead. I felt the ragged blade tear up my flesh and mutilate my nerve endings, every rotation of the blade feeling like a fresh cut. The only thing worse than the agony was the fear, the overwhelming compulsion to escape, to fight back, to do anything, all to no avail. I was completely helpless as I stared up with fully dilated pupils at my attacker, his mask unable to conceal the demented Joker’s smile underneath as he delighted in his mayhem.
My blood splattered up into his face, but this seemed only to delight him more. I could smell my flesh and bone searing from the friction of the saw, and my skull shook rapidly against its restraints from the continuous vibration. Throughout the ordeal, I was only able to hear two things over the sound of the saw against my skull; Crowley’s dry lecturing to his students, and Sara’s delighted laughter at her father’s atrocity.
When James had finally managed to cut through the entire circumference of my cranium, he turned the saw off and set it down on the tray beside him.
“There we are Crowley; not one bit of grey matter nicked,” he said proudly as he slowly lifted off the top half of my skull to reveal my exposed brain. “And he’s still conscious! I guess he didn’t lose as much blood as it looks like.”
“A successful craniectomy, and he was awake for every instant of it!” Sara exclaimed. “I could hear him screaming in my head the whole time. I’ve never felt terror that was so urgent and helpless at the same time. Thank you so much for letting me come tonight, Daddy Darling!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling! But we’re not done yet, are we Crowley?”
“Not remotely, no. Since the craniectomy went smoothly, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the procedure,” Crowley replied. “James, please insert the thaumic-electrodes in accordance with the diagram provided. Everyone, please take note that these electrodes are comprised of one hundred percent pure Seelie Silver, so their thaumaturgical conductivity is quite high. As you should all be aware, the Panpsychic force is the only direct link between the astral and physical planes, with consciousness being the only thing that exists across both realms. All preternatural phenomena are the result of focused and coherent Panpsychic force on either physical or astral reality. Now that James has all the electrodes implanted, you can see on the readout here that this brain’s thaumatological activity is nearly a flatline. Which is good, as I don’t much care for sharing my contraption here. Fortunately, these electrodes work both ways, and can channel psionic waves into as well as out of the brain. Please watch the readout carefully as James initiates electro-thaumic stimulation to the test subject.”
I hadn’t felt James insert the electrodes into my brain, since the brain doesn’t possess any pain receptors, but when I saw him flick a switch on whatever machine was behind me, I was suddenly aware of thirteen cold, metallic needles piercing deep into my brain tissue. It wasn’t pain, so much as they were announcing their presence and I understood what it meant. They had a quick, rhythmic pulse to them, but the pulse wasn’t in the physical matter of my brain but rather directly in my conscious mind. This was accompanied by a sensation I can only compare to static electricity accumulating inside my head.
“As anticipated, the subject is reacting to the electro-thaumic stimulation,” Crowley announced. “While a first-hand account of his experience would no doubt be illuminating, I’m highly skeptical he’d be cooperative if we reduced his paralytics. Nonetheless, we can still infer a great deal from what –”
“Can the machine go any higher?” Sara asked.
“It… it can,” Crowley replied hesitantly. “But that’s not relevant for tonight’s experiment. As I was saying, if we direct our attention back to the graph –”
“Daddy Darling, turn the machine as high as it will go,” Sara requested. “I want to see what it will do to him!”
“Absolutely out of the question!” Crowley objected. “That would jeopardize the entire –”
“I wasn’t asking you! I was asking Daddy!” Sara cut him off again. “Turn the machine as high as it will go!”
Crowley spun around in his jar to face James, who once again had a smile that no surgical mask could ever hide.
“James, if you turn that dial so much as one notch higher, you will be in breach of our agreement and will have forfeited the second half of your payment!” he warned him.
“Hmm… Mary Darling, are you following this?” he asked, turning towards where Mary collapsed some time ago. I heard her give an incoherent but affirmative-sounding response. “Crowley says he’s not going to pay up if I do as Sara Darling asks. Does this fall under my authority as a financial matter, or under yours as a family one?”
“Well… I suppose I did nearly ruin our family outing with my unprovoked death threat, so we should probably do something nice to make it up to her,” she replied. “If you don’t think the money’s worth fretting over, go right ahead.”
“I was never here for the money anyway,” James shrugged. “And what kind of monster would I be if I cared more about a little bit of money than my daughter’s happiness?”
“James, don’t you dare – ”
Before Crowley could even finish his sentence, James spun the dial as far as it would go.
The static electricity I had felt inside my head exploded into a thunderstorm, and I felt my bones break as I spasmed uncontrollably against my restraints. Bolts and waves of the strange sensation effortlessly escaped my body and began ravaging the environment around me. Some part of me that managed to remain lucid amongst the alien agony tried to direct these forces against my captors, but I found I was utterly unable to control it in any meaningful way.
The audience had broken out into panicked screams as they desperately tried to flee the operating theatre, except of course for Sara, who I heard laughing and applauding gleefully.
Crowley fired an electric arc from his tesla coil at James as he wheeled himself towards the machine behind me, but Mary had evidently been roused from her drugged stupor and attacked him from behind, stabbing a butcher’s knife through his bellows over and over until he lost all momentum and screeched to a stop. The bubbles in his jar all fell still, and he had seemingly lost the ability to speak through his horn as well, but the brain itself remained glowing and active, slamming itself against the glass in impotent rage.
“What do you think will give out first, Mary Darling? The man or the machine?” James asked, acrid smoke from the overloaded machine stinging my eyes as the violent spasms threatened to tear my body apart. Before Mary could answer, the machine sparked and sputtered out, its ungodly racket dying down to a raspy whimper as the psionic assault on my mind finally came to an end.
“Yay!” Sara cheered and applauded before running down to join her parents. She was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her throw herself into her father’s arms. “Thank you, Daddy Darling! That was so much more fun than just keeping it on one. He’s never felt pain like that before, and he still didn’t die! It was marvellous!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling,” James cooed. “Though, our subject’s surprising resilience does present us with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it? Mary Darling, do you think we should finish him off?”
“There’s no fun in killing someone who can’t put up a fight. He’ll probably be pretty onery once the paralytics wear off, but I don’t really want to wait around for that, especially not with Crowley’s associates likely on their way,” Mary replied. “Plus, that adrenaline surge I just got is already fading and the fentanyl is kicking right back in. We ought to head home. What do you say, Sara Darling? Have you had enough fun for tonight?”
“I have. Thank you for taking me with you, Mommy Darling,” she said sweetly. “And I forgive you for threatening to kill me. I know it was only because you love Daddy so much. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. I’m sorry about the damage to your theatre, but it made me very happy and I learned a lot, so it was worth it.”
“In addition to the other half of my payment, you can keep the test subject as well,” James offered. “That should set as even, Crowley, don’t you think?”
Crowley responded by angrily bashing himself into the glass of his jar.
“Well, that’s a pity then. Let’s head out then, girls, before crotchety old Crowley gets the wind back in his bellows,” James said.
“Just a minute, Daddy Darling,” Sara said, and I felt someone pulling out the electrodes from my brain and then setting my severed cranium back in place. “Thank you too, mister. I really did enjoy watching you suffer like that, and because you made me so happy, I’m going to let you walk away from this.”
Looking up, I could see her bending down to kiss my forehead. She had a flawless porcelain face framed by long dark locks; a perfect, darling daughter that any parent would be proud of, except for her eyes. From any casual viewing distance, they could pass for being very dark brown, but when she was face to face with me, I could tell that her irises were actually filled with some sort of animate black fluid, swirling like hurricanes of obsidian storm clouds.
When she kissed me, every broken bone and my body snapped back into place and began slowly, excruciatingly knitting themselves back together. If I could have screamed, I would have cursed the demonic little girl out for her perverse sense of mercy.
Pulling back, she gave me a smug smile, undoubtedly aware of how much pain she was causing me and exactly what I thought of her.
“You're going to want to get out of here as soon as you can stand, before Crowley's cronies show up,” she said as she undid my restraints one by one. "Feel better, mister!"
Singing happily, she turned around and skipped off with her parents, the sound of their footsteps slowly receding until eventually fading altogether, leaving me and Crowley lying humiliated and defeated in the now silent and forsaken operating theatre.

Content Warning: This story contains depictions/mentions of abduction, torture, incest, cannibalism, normalized drug and sexual abuse, and verbal child abuse.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the bright glare of an overhead lamp. After a few seconds of dull confusion, panic set in when I realized I couldn’t possibly be in my own bed. I tried to jolt upwards, but found that my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak or scream or even voluntarily control my own breathing.
The only things I could move were my eyes. As they adjusted to the bright light above me, I was just able to make out enough detail to realize that I was in an operating theatre of some kind. Had I been in an accident? I strained my simultaneously drowsy yet adrenaline-shocked brain to remember how I could have ended up here.
I was just barely able to recall a slim young man with slicked black hair and blue eyes. I had been on a trip and ran into him at the hotel bar. During our conversation, he mentioned that he distilled his own whiskey with home-grown corn. It sounded intriguing, and he told me that he had a small bottle of it back in his hotel room. He said that I was free to try a glass, and if it pleased me, he could arrange for me to purchase some.
He had been charming and affable, and with his slight frame I didn’t deem him much of a threat to me personally, so I followed him back to his room.
Then I felt a syringe being plunged into my back, and everything went dark before I could so much as utter a whimper in protest.
Someone repositioned the swivel light so that it wasn’t pointed directly at me, and I could see that the operating theatre was ancient, likely dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Instead of the sterile white that would be expected in any modern medical facility, everything here was browned and yellowed and stained with time. There was wood where there should have been ceramic tiles, and cast iron where there should have been stainless steel. It was decrepit, but not quite derelict. Someone had kept the place functional, and given my present circumstances, their motives couldn’t possibly be innocent.
The tiered rows of seats that encircled me were all dimly lit, but I could tell there were figures sitting in them. I could discern no details, so they were all merely humanoid silhouettes to me. They moved only slightly, and I thought that here and there I could catch the light reflecting in their eyes, but they were a deathly quiet lot. There was no whispering, no coughing, and I couldn’t even be sure they were breathing.
Squeaking wheels and the bellows of a respirator began to creep towards me, and from the periphery of my vision, I witnessed a brain in a bubbling jar slide up beside me. It was mounted on some kind of antique pedestal, with a gramophone horn, tesla coil, and all matter of steampunk-looking contraptions built into it. The oddest thing about it was that there was a bowler hat placed on top of the jar.
At least, that was the oddest thing until it spoke.
“Welcome, welcome, scholars and students of forbidden gnosis and the damned sciences. Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” a voice boomed from the gramophone horn as the brain bobbed and flickered in a strange blue light with every syllable.
“Ave Ophion Orbis Ouroboros!” the audience murmured in unison.
“Thank you all for coming. For those that don’t know me, I am High Adderman Professor Whitaker C. Crowley of the Harrowick Chapterhouse; Preternaturalist, Parapsychologist, Crypto-anatomist, Alchemical Consultant, and – when the occasion calls for it – enthusiastic vivisectionist! For your education and entertainment, tonight I will be demonstrating the neuro-ethereal functions of the human brain with this fully paralyzed, yet fully conscious, test subject. Though he cannot move an inch to save his life, he can see, hear, and most especially feel everything that happens here tonight. Whether or not he’ll survive or be in any mental state to remember any of this when it’s over is… uncertain at best.
“Of course, due to my physical limitations, I will not be performing this vivisection alone. Assisting me tonight will be Master Addermen James and Mary Darling.”
The audience began murmuring amongst themselves, the names evidently meaning more to them than they did to me. I heard footsteps crossing the wooden floor, and when they stopped, I saw the young man from earlier standing beside my bed. He wore a blood-stained leather apron over a dark Howie lab coat, his cloth mask drawing focus to his gleaming and gleeful blue eyes.
By his side stood a young woman so much like him that she could only be his sister. She had the same pitch-black hair, worn in bunches, and the same striking blue eyes that glittered with a manic psychosis. She was dressed in a red and white nurse’s uniform from a bygone era that I couldn’t quite place, and was likely just intended to look old-fashioned without actually belonging to any actual time period.
“Please, please, there’s no need for concern,” Crowley said, trying to assuage the misgivings his audience apparently had with the visiting surgeons. “It’s the Darlings we have to thank for bringing us this test subject in the first place. I’d like to remind you all that the Darling Twins are fellow members of the Ophion Occult Order, and you are all to treat them with the respect that they’re due. I’m aware that they don’t technically possess any formal medical training, but their extensive self-taught knowledge of human anatomy should prove quite useful.”
“I’ve always found that the difference between a butcher and a back alley surgeon was one of entrepreneurship,” James added.
“That’s exactly the sort of amoral heterodoxy I like to see in my colleagues!” Crowley heartily agreed. “I do however feel the need to point out that your personal protective equipment is simultaneously inadequate and, given the circumstances, not strictly necessary.”
“It’s mainly for show. I like to get into the part,” James said, holding up a pair of hands clad in old leather gloves that were surely far more unsanitary than any bare hands could ever be.
“And so do I, just not as much as I like to drink and smoke,” Mary said, and I saw her raise a martini glass to her unmasked face and take a sip. “Oh, that reminds me. Professor Crowley, I’d like to apologize for you having the misfortune of witnessing me during one of my rare lapses into sobriety at our last encounter. I want to assure you that that dreadful experience was enough to knock me back off that horrible wagon and I’m proud to say that I have not been sober since.”
“That’s… good information to have, I suppose,” Crowley said. “To be blunt, your cannibalistic tendencies are a far greater concern to me than your proclivity for inebriation. I trust you’re able to refrain from entering your ‘Wendigo psychosis’ when the situation calls for it?”
“Wendigo psychosis? We’re not Wendigos,” Mary corrected him. “Wendigos are cursed with an insatiable hunger as a punishment for resorting to survival cannibalism, which seems a little judgmental if you ask me. The spirit cursing you couldn’t be bothered to intervene when you were starving, but once you solve your own problem it suddenly gets off its high horse just to condemn you for it? Regardless, James and I are not Wendigos. We are Randian, Nietzschean Übermenschen. We recognize our intrinsic superiority and reject morality as a means for the weak to oppress the strong. We do as we damn well please, and we find living off the flesh of our victims incredibly pleasing. If no one can stop us, then why should we stop? Also, Wendigos have antlers.”
“No, they don’t,” Crowley objected.
“Ah, White Wendigos do. I’m pretty sure those accounts take precedence,” Mary said.
“Right. Well, random racism and self-serving philosophical butchery aside, I was referring to your propensity to strip down and wallow in your victim’s viscera as you gorge yourself on their raw flesh,” Crowley clarified. “Whatever it is you call that.”
“I call it a good time,” Mary said, raising her glass in a toast before taking another tip.
“You will refrain from resorting to any such debauchery tonight,” Crowley insisted. “Tonight, you’re here to work. Is that understood?”
“Work? Me? Absolutely out of the question. James promised me I’d never have to work a day in my life. Isn’t that right, James Darling?”
“Technically, I forbid you from working. But, you being you, took that as a very loving gesture,” James corrected her.
“Hmmm. If you say so, James Darling. It’s a moot point, regardless. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; that a pretty girl like me would ever need to work or that a drunk like me could ever hold a job.”
“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Mary Darling. You’ve always managed to be a spectacular homemaker in spite of, perhaps even because of, your drunkenness,” James complimented her.
“Now don’t go getting all women’s lib on me, James Darling. If being a homemaker was a job, then the invisible hand of the free market would give it a salary,” she disputed. “As rational, Randian Übermenschen, we do not question the existence or wisdom of invisible hands.”
“Well, you’ve got me there, Mary Darling,” James conceded.
“But if you’re not here to work, then why – I mean, if you don’t mind my asking – why come at all?” Crowley demanded.
“We couldn’t find a sitter, and we thought this would make a nice family outing,” Mary replied.
“You… what?” Crowley asked.
It was then that I saw James smile with his eyes in the worst way possible.
“Sara’s here,” he explained, waving up at the tiered seats. “Hello, Sara Darling!”
“Hello, Daddy Darling! Hello, Mommy Darling!” the cheery voice of a preteen girl called out from somewhere outside my field of vision. I heard the audience react in dismay at the revelation of her presence, which was very confusing as I couldn’t fathom how a young girl’s presence could have gone unnoticed in such a setting, or why it would be a cause of such trepidation.
“You brought your forsaken child into my operating theatre!” Crowley demanded, a violent outrage somehow surging through his mechanical voice.
“Forsaken? How dare you! We may not be helicopter parents who oversee our daughter’s every waking moment, but we gave her everything she needed to grow into the truly magnificent abomination she’s become,” Mary said.
“It’s true we don’t often take her out hunting with us, as she often prefers much more elaborate means of tormenting her prey than we do, but this isn’t a hunt,” James added. “This sort of thing is much more her style, and we thought it would be a genuinely educational experience for her.”
“Educating bright young minds full of potential and advancing intellectual progress is always a valid reason for vivisecting a low-utility plodder like this,” the girl asserted.
“You see how conscientious she is? Always thinking about the ethics of things,” Mary dotted. “I honestly have no idea where she gets it from, but if she says it’s morally obligatory for superior beings like us to do as we please in order to maximize overall happiness, I’m not going to argue with her.”
“Is everything all right, Crowley? You’re looking more wrinkly and pickled than usual,” James said with a menacing grin that stretched out his mask. “Our Darling daughter is welcomed here, isn’t she?”
“I promise I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Crowley,” the girl said sweetly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse who’s terrified of what the priest will do to him if he tells his secret.”
The brain pivoted in his jar, turning back and forth between the Darling Twins and their unseen child in the audience as if he could somehow see despite his lack of eyes.
“Yes. Of course, she’s welcome here. My apologies. I’m just not accustomed to having children around, but of course, your daughter is the exception,” Crowley muttered a forced and flustered apology.
“She’s more than exceptional, Crowley. She’s a Darling,” James boasted proudly. “When you’re as perfect as we are, inbreeding only makes the bloodline stronger.”
“I’ll defer to your considerable expertise on the matter of incest. However, I feel we’ve kept our spectators waiting long enough,” Crowley said. “Whenever you’re ready, we can begin the procedure.”
“Of course, Ducky. You might have to bear with me a bit though. Usually, when James and I play doctor, I’m the patient, not the nurse,” Mary explained. “I get drugged up, stripped down, and felt up. Always a good time.”
“That’s not how Daddy and I play doctor,” Sara chirped out.
“Oh, Sara Darling. That’s because Daddy loves you and knows that if I ever saw you as a sexual threat, I’d kill you,” Mary replied, casually taking another sip from her martini.
For a moment there was dead silence, not a single person daring to risk interceding in this bizarre and disgusting threat between mother and child.
“…You mean you’d try to kill me,” Sara said at last, her tone flat and cold, the juvenile joy and innocence I’d heard before now utterly absent.
I may have spotted a transitory glint of fear in Mary’s eyes before she burst out laughing.
“Atta girl, Sara Darling. Sometimes I forget how much we’re alike,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Mommy’s just a jealous old drunk. So long as you don’t get any older, you can be Mommy’s little monster forever.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy Darling. I won’t,” the girl promised. “Puberty doesn’t sound like it’d be any fun anyway.”
“That’s because you don’t have a brother to play with,” Mary chortled. “Which I suppose I should get back to. James Darling, what should I do first?”
“Well Mary Darling, even though you’re not playing the patient today, I would never dare deprive you of your beloved drugs, and I think it would best if I gave them to you now before I get too occupied with the surgery,” James said.
“Goodfellas?” she asked hopefully.
James nodded, and Mary eagerly outstretched her hand and allowed him to tap a few pills into her palm. She raised the pills to her mouth, but paused before swallowing.
“You’re not just giving me these so that I’ll be out of your way during the surgery, are you James Darling?” she asked.
“No of course not ‘just’. I’m still going to have my way with you later,” he promised.
“Okay, good. I was worried there for a second,” she sighed in relief before chasing down her pills with what was left of her martini. “Mmmm. Everyone out there in the audience, a moment if I may! I may not be a real nurse, but I have a lot of first-hand experience with prescription drugs. As any reputable pharmaceutical representative will tell you, an addiction to prescription medication is a crucial component of a happy and fulfilling life. I can personally attest that amphetamines and benzos have justly earned their reputation as Mommy’s little helpers. I take Adderall when I need the mood and energy for housework, exercise, and lovemaking, Valium to help me unwind and to keep the shakes from waking me up through the night, and of course opioids whenever the booze isn’t quite enough to keep me in my happy place. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the silly little warnings on the labels telling you not to mix them with alcohol. They pair together marvellously, though I do think I ought to sit down before this hits me any harder. James Darling, I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“You just relax, Mary Darling. I’ve got this,” James nodded as Mary stumbled off out of my sight, the sound of her collapsing and failing to land in a wooden chair following soon after.
James reached for an electric bone saw from the surgical table, and held it up high to the light to examine it. Then, turning his head down to look at me, he addressed me directly for the first time.
“Hey there, buddy. How are you feeling?” he asked. “Listen, don’t feel bad about ending up on the slab here. Smarter people than you have fallen for my ploys, and I wasn’t even lying about the whiskey. I realize it’s customary to have some kind of painkiller during a procedure such as this, but as you just saw, the Missus cleaned me out. Happy wife, happy life, right? You understand, don’t you? Besides, my little girl’s up there, and nothing makes her happier than human suffering. You wouldn’t want to let her down, would you? The good news is that you’ve got plenty of paralytic pumping through your veins, and a complete lack of movement on your part is essential to reducing the risk of collateral damage. As much as this is going to hurt, you wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”
The rotary blade began spinning, singing its distinctive whirring hum. Placing his left hand on my chest and savouring the futility of my rapid pulse, James brought his saw down upon my forehead. I felt the ragged blade tear up my flesh and mutilate my nerve endings, every rotation of the blade feeling like a fresh cut. The only thing worse than the agony was the fear, the overwhelming compulsion to escape, to fight back, to do anything, all to no avail. I was completely helpless as I stared up with fully dilated pupils at my attacker, his mask unable to conceal the demented Joker’s smile underneath as he delighted in his mayhem.
My blood splattered up into his face, but this seemed only to delight him more. I could smell my flesh and bone searing from the friction of the saw, and my skull shook rapidly against its restraints from the continuous vibration. Throughout the ordeal, I was only able to hear two things over the sound of the saw against my skull; Crowley’s dry lecturing to his students, and Sara’s delighted laughter at her father’s atrocity.
When James had finally managed to cut through the entire circumference of my cranium, he turned the saw off and set it down on the tray beside him.
“There we are Crowley; not one bit of grey matter nicked,” he said proudly as he slowly lifted off the top half of my skull to reveal my exposed brain. “And he’s still conscious! I guess he didn’t lose as much blood as it looks like.”
“A successful craniectomy, and he was awake for every instant of it!” Sara exclaimed. “I could hear him screaming in my head the whole time. I’ve never felt terror that was so urgent and helpless at the same time. Thank you so much for letting me come tonight, Daddy Darling!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling! But we’re not done yet, are we Crowley?”
“Not remotely, no. Since the craniectomy went smoothly, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the procedure,” Crowley replied. “James, please insert the thaumic-electrodes in accordance with the diagram provided. Everyone, please take note that these electrodes are comprised of one hundred percent pure Seelie Silver, so their thaumaturgical conductivity is quite high. As you should all be aware, the Panpsychic force is the only direct link between the astral and physical planes, with consciousness being the only thing that exists across both realms. All preternatural phenomena are the result of focused and coherent Panpsychic force on either physical or astral reality. Now that James has all the electrodes implanted, you can see on the readout here that this brain’s thaumatological activity is nearly a flatline. Which is good, as I don’t much care for sharing my contraption here. Fortunately, these electrodes work both ways, and can channel psionic waves into as well as out of the brain. Please watch the readout carefully as James initiates electro-thaumic stimulation to the test subject.”
I hadn’t felt James insert the electrodes into my brain, since the brain doesn’t possess any pain receptors, but when I saw him flick a switch on whatever machine was behind me, I was suddenly aware of thirteen cold, metallic needles piercing deep into my brain tissue. It wasn’t pain, so much as they were announcing their presence and I understood what it meant. They had a quick, rhythmic pulse to them, but the pulse wasn’t in the physical matter of my brain but rather directly in my conscious mind. This was accompanied by a sensation I can only compare to static electricity accumulating inside my head.
“As anticipated, the subject is reacting to the electro-thaumic stimulation,” Crowley announced. “While a first-hand account of his experience would no doubt be illuminating, I’m highly skeptical he’d be cooperative if we reduced his paralytics. Nonetheless, we can still infer a great deal from what –”
“Can the machine go any higher?” Sara asked.
“It… it can,” Crowley replied hesitantly. “But that’s not relevant for tonight’s experiment. As I was saying, if we direct our attention back to the graph –”
“Daddy Darling, turn the machine as high as it will go,” Sara requested. “I want to see what it will do to him!”
“Absolutely out of the question!” Crowley objected. “That would jeopardize the entire –”
“I wasn’t asking you! I was asking Daddy!” Sara cut him off again. “Turn the machine as high as it will go!”
Crowley spun around in his jar to face James, who once again had a smile that no surgical mask could ever hide.
“James, if you turn that dial so much as one notch higher, you will be in breach of our agreement and will have forfeited the second half of your payment!” he warned him.
“Hmm… Mary Darling, are you following this?” he asked, turning towards where Mary collapsed some time ago. I heard her give an incoherent but affirmative-sounding response. “Crowley says he’s not going to pay up if I do as Sara Darling asks. Does this fall under my authority as a financial matter, or under yours as a family one?”
“Well… I suppose I did nearly ruin our family outing with my unprovoked death threat, so we should probably do something nice to make it up to her,” she replied. “If you don’t think the money’s worth fretting over, go right ahead.”
“I was never here for the money anyway,” James shrugged. “And what kind of monster would I be if I cared more about a little bit of money than my daughter’s happiness?”
“James, don’t you dare – ”
Before Crowley could even finish his sentence, James spun the dial as far as it would go.
The static electricity I had felt inside my head exploded into a thunderstorm, and I felt my bones break as I spasmed uncontrollably against my restraints. Bolts and waves of the strange sensation effortlessly escaped my body and began ravaging the environment around me. Some part of me that managed to remain lucid amongst the alien agony tried to direct these forces against my captors, but I found I was utterly unable to control it in any meaningful way.
The audience had broken out into panicked screams as they desperately tried to flee the operating theatre, except of course for Sara, who I heard laughing and applauding gleefully.
Crowley fired an electric arc from his tesla coil at James as he wheeled himself towards the machine behind me, but Mary had evidently been roused from her drugged stupor and attacked him from behind, stabbing a butcher’s knife through his bellows over and over until he lost all momentum and screeched to a stop. The bubbles in his jar all fell still, and he had seemingly lost the ability to speak through his horn as well, but the brain itself remained glowing and active, slamming itself against the glass in impotent rage.
“What do you think will give out first, Mary Darling? The man or the machine?” James asked, acrid smoke from the overloaded machine stinging my eyes as the violent spasms threatened to tear my body apart. Before Mary could answer, the machine sparked and sputtered out, its ungodly racket dying down to a raspy whimper as the psionic assault on my mind finally came to an end.
“Yay!” Sara cheered and applauded before running down to join her parents. She was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her throw herself into her father’s arms. “Thank you, Daddy Darling! That was so much more fun than just keeping it on one. He’s never felt pain like that before, and he still didn’t die! It was marvellous!”
“You’re welcome, Sara Darling,” James cooed. “Though, our subject’s surprising resilience does present us with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it? Mary Darling, do you think we should finish him off?”
“There’s no fun in killing someone who can’t put up a fight. He’ll probably be pretty onery once the paralytics wear off, but I don’t really want to wait around for that, especially not with Crowley’s associates likely on their way,” Mary replied. “Plus, that adrenaline surge I just got is already fading and the fentanyl is kicking right back in. We ought to head home. What do you say, Sara Darling? Have you had enough fun for tonight?”
“I have. Thank you for taking me with you, Mommy Darling,” she said sweetly. “And I forgive you for threatening to kill me. I know it was only because you love Daddy so much. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. I’m sorry about the damage to your theatre, but it made me very happy and I learned a lot, so it was worth it.”
“In addition to the other half of my payment, you can keep the test subject as well,” James offered. “That should set as even, Crowley, don’t you think?”
Crowley responded by angrily bashing himself into the glass of his jar.
“Well, that’s a pity then. Let’s head out then, girls, before crotchety old Crowley gets the wind back in his bellows,” James said.
“Just a minute, Daddy Darling,” Sara said, and I felt someone pulling out the electrodes from my brain and then setting my severed cranium back in place. “Thank you too, mister. I really did enjoy watching you suffer like that, and because you made me so happy, I’m going to let you walk away from this.”
Looking up, I could see her bending down to kiss my forehead. She had a flawless porcelain face framed by long dark locks; a perfect, darling daughter that any parent would be proud of, except for her eyes. From any casual viewing distance, they could pass for being very dark brown, but when she was face to face with me, I could tell that her irises were actually filled with some sort of animate black fluid, swirling like hurricanes of obsidian storm clouds.
When she kissed me, every broken bone and my body snapped back into place and began slowly, excruciatingly knitting themselves back together. If I could have screamed, I would have cursed the demonic little girl out for her perverse sense of mercy.
Pulling back, she gave me a smug smile, undoubtedly aware of how much pain she was causing me and exactly what I thought of her.
“You're going to want to get out of here as soon as you can stand, before Crowley's cronies show up,” she said as she undid my restraints one by one. "Feel better, mister!"
Singing happily, she turned around and skipped off with her parents, the sound of their footsteps slowly receding until eventually fading altogether, leaving me and Crowley both helpless prisoners in our own bodies as we lay impotent and defeated in the now silent and forsaken operating theatre.

Hello everyone,
I put up a list of fraud consultancies and their contact information. This list consists of 129 consultancies applying multiple applications or scamming applicants by getting their money. If you are a genuine applicant and did not get an H1B visa this year, please don't be hard on yourself. Understand you have little change because of these consultants and applicants. I have already reported these consultants in two ways:

1. Reporting via Tip Form: https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form
2. Email directly: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

USCIS will take action if many of us start to report these consultancies.
If you find any consultancies that are not on the list, please add them in the comments section and I will report them as well.
I am not saying all consultancies are bad, but there is a considerable amount of them doing fraudulent activities.
Please do the needful and take action from your side to control your own destiny.
Fraud Consultancy name:
HEPTE Overseas
Pinnacle Soft Solutions
IMINDs
ALAMEDA Tech Solutions
Logging-In.com INC
INTUITES
Start Work Force
Loopbell
Abroad Learning
IBLE Soft
Indus Group Inc
3kliks IT
Stratitude
GIG Softlabs
Meta Picks LLC
Digix Form Inc
IKCON Technologies
O2 Technologies
JPC Tech
Nityoinfotech
Cloudnik
Snowstack
Tech Global
OpulentSoft Potla
Tech Solutions
Hyderabad Potla Group of Companies
Vastek, Inc - San Diego, CA
Intellectt Inc, Woodbridge, NJ
Ctekk Solutions
Profile DM Inc
Slesha IT
VAK IT Systems Inc
EA Team Inc
Pilvi Systems
Friendly Consultants
Nerdpine
Onpassive
Vyts Inc
Red Leaf ITS
Kloud LLC
Talent Hire Consulting Delaware
Datasync Inc - Sterling Virginia
Datalogics - Sterling Virginia
Datamids - Sterling Virginia
Exalync Inc - Tampa Florida
Saxon Global - Irving, Texas
SIBI Talent - Murphy, Texas
Emonics - New Jersey
SOL IT Systems - Charlotte, NC
FLUX Tek Solutions - Houston, Texas
Baanyan Software Services, Inc - Edison, NJ
Instant Serve LLC - Wayne, PA
Amiga Informatics Inc - Hickville, NY
Quantum World Technologies Inc - Thousand Oaks, CA
Cloud Resources LLC - Irving, TX
Sumas Corporation - Painsboro, NJ
Cygnus Professionals Inc - Somerset, NJ
Cloud Revolute Inc - Farmers branch, TX
Digi Cloud - Farmers branch, TX
Scottline Inc - Farmers branch, TX
Skillmaze Inc - Farmers branch, TX
Infylogy - Texas
Bridgetown Consulting Group - Piscataway, NJ
Exa Data Solutions, Inc - NJ
Texasoft IT Solutions Inc
Tetragen LLC
Snow Relic LIC
Combino IT
Bharathvio Technologies
Charter Global
Symplore
Echo IT Solutions
Career Soft Solutions
STOICS IT LLC
Agile Squad Inc
Hire IT People, Inc
Softstandard Solutions
Software Concepts LLC
Deemsys
Webait Solutions LLC
Enherite IT
Bluestone IT Solutions
Softnice Inc
ITEN Consulting
Vortalsoft
Indotronix International Corporation IIC
Revature
Epitomsoft LLC, Cedar Park, TX
Sark Technology Solutions
VycerTech LLC
GS Soft Inc
Nityosoft Inc
Core ITS LLC
TechSuffice LLC
Forge Technologies Inc
Codex Software Solutions inc
metro Care
Tachyon Solutions
Micro Fuse Solutions Inc
ACLAT
Hanuhigh technologies Inc
Ackerman Technologies LLC, California
Maritz Consulting Group Inc, Minnesota
Ameritech Global Inc, Illinois
IQIT Solutions Inc
Executive Software Guild Inc
Adroitco -Frisco, TX
SkillTune Technologies Inc
Source Mantra Inc, NJ
A1 Resourcing Inc - Arlington, TX
Red Hibbert Group, LLC
Cuboid LLC
Cyber Wave LLC
Makcats, Inc - Grand Rapids, MI
Golok Global - Gainesville, Florida
Safe Code Group LLC
Relis LLC, Virginia
Centillion Inforech LLC
IT Giants LLC
Mindzcape Solutions - Texas
Subashini Software Solutions Inc - Troy, MI
Cleversmiths Inc - Farmers branch, TX
Micronetbd Inc
KR IT Solutions LLC - Cumming, GA
Harvest Software Solutions LLC - Jacksonville, FL
Cognitive Technology Solutions Inc - Wilmington DE
Ancile Inc - Leander TX
Veridic Solutions LLC

https://minimalfreaks.co/2023/05/beatport-best-new-melodic-april-2023-566-tracks/

1. &ME, Rampa, Adam Port, Keinemusik – Before The Flood (feat. Cubicolor) (Ankhoï Remix) 07:25 121bpm Gm
2. &ME, Rampa, Adam Port, Keinemusik – Paris feat. Starving Yet Full (Bella Boo Remix) 05:41 124bpm Fm
3. &ME, Rampa, Adam Port, Keinemusik – Pay To Play (feat. Bell Towers) (Reznik & Mikesh Remix) 06:18 125bpm A
4. AALN – Welcome to the Future (Nick Schwenderling Extended Remix) 05:35 126bpm F
5. Able to Resist – Higher in the Sky (Original Mix) 06:07 122bpm Dm
6. Adam Port, Monolink – Point Of No Return (Extended Mix) 06:34 122bpm Am
7. Adam Ten, Yamagucci – The Girl Next Door (Original Mix) 05:48 124bpm F
8. Adriatique, Eynka – Beyond Us (Hatshepsut Extended Version) 05:23 126bpm Fm
9. Against the A.I. – Violated (Extended Mix) 06:22 124bpm Bm
10. Against the A.I. – Violated (Original Mix) 03:30 124bpm Bm
11. AIKON – Faith (Original Mix) 07:00 122bpm D
12. AIKON – Reflection (Original Mix) 06:32 120bpm Bb
13. AIKON – Wilds (Original Mix) 06:12 120bpm Db
14. Airsand, TuraniQa – 7 Days (Dub Mix) 07:00 125bpm A
15. Airsand, TuraniQa – 7 Days (Original Mix) 07:00 125bpm A
16. Airsand, TuraniQa – 7 Days (Radio Edit) 04:13 125bpm A
17. Alphadog, Monblaire – Get Down (Original Mix) 06:13 124bpm Am
18. Alphasheep – Keep Going (Original Mix) 06:46 125bpm G
19. Alphasheep – Save Me Now (Original Mix) 06:44 156bpm F
20. Alphasheep – Say Yes (Original Mix) 06:46 125bpm Cm
21. Amy Capilari, Jager – Butterfly (Soul Button Remix) 08:04 120bpm Ebm
22. Analog Sol – Lostalgia (Original Mix) 06:16 123bpm E
23. Analog Sol – Mezcalita (Original Mix) 06:10 123bpm Em
24. Analog Sol – Todo (Instrumental Mix) 08:02 123bpm Em
25. Analog Sol, DOMy Gee – Never Like You Before feat. DOMy Gee (Extended Mix) 06:06 123bpm Em
26. Analog Sol, Mr. Writ3 – Todo feat. Mr. Writ3 (Extended Mix) 08:02 123bpm Em
27. Andhim, Carlita – Life (Extended Mix) 06:04 124bpm Dbm
28. Andrea Oliva, Arodes – Future Call (Extended Mix) 07:23 122bpm D
29. Ann Clue – Create (Extended Mix) 07:26 125bpm A
30. Annett Gapstream – Complex Desires (Original Mix) 06:15 124bpm Cm
31. Annett Gapstream – Halluzination (Concious Remix) 06:50 124bpm Gbm
32. Annett Gapstream – Halluzination (Max von Sternberg Remix) 06:23 123bpm Gb
33. Annett Gapstream – Halluzination (Original Mix) 06:10 123bpm Gbm
34. Annett Gapstream – Obscurities of Now (Original Mix) 06:03 124bpm Cm
35. Annett Gapstream – Surrealism (Hollt Remix) 06:46 123bpm Gb
36. Annett Gapstream – Surrealism (Original Mix) 06:24 123bpm Gbm
37. Anton Tumas – The Sky Was Purple (Andre Lodemann Remix) 08:17 124bpm Ebm
38. Anton Tumas – The Sky Was Purple (Danny Bonnici Remix) 08:57 124bpm Abm
39. Anton Tumas – The Sky Was Purple (Jamie Stevens Remix) 07:19 124bpm Abm
40. Anton Tumas – The Sky Was Purple (Original Mix) 12:10 97bpm Abm
41. Anton Tumas – The Sky Was Purple (Reprise) 05:42 123bpm Abm
42. Anyma (ofc) – Explore Your Future (Extended Version) 05:09 124bpm E
43. Anyma (ofc) – The Answer (Extended Version) 06:27 125bpm Gm
44. Argia – Implacable (Original Mix) 05:09 125bpm Bb
45. Argia – XTZ (Original Mix) 05:47 125bpm Fm
46. ARTBAT, Fred Lenix – Dreamcatcher (Original Mix) 06:36 126bpm Bb
47. Artem Kai – Don’t Close Your Eyes (Original Mix) 06:27 124bpm Db
48. Artem Kai – Exit (Original Mix) 07:29 124bpm F
49. Auggië – Kelly (Denis Horvat Remix) 07:14 120bpm D
50. Auggië – Kelly (Original Mix) 06:26 120bpm D
51. Auggië – Martz (Original Mix) 06:22 121bpm Ebm
52. Avangart Tabldot – Come Together (Original Mix) 06:41 117bpm C
53. Avangart Tabldot – Forever (Original Mix) 06:08 123bpm Em
54. Avangart Tabldot – My God, You Never Loved Me (Original Mix) 05:14 120bpm C
55. Aves Volare, Darksun – Bionic Heart (feat. Aves Volare) (Circle of Life Extended Remix) 06:58 124bpm Em
56. Aves Volare, Darksun – Bionic Heart (feat. Aves Volare) (Extended Mix) 06:20 125bpm Em
57. AVNU (UK) – Before The Fire (Original Mix) 06:09 125bpm B
58. AVNU (UK) – Disco Tax (I Don’t Know Me) (Original Mix) 06:14 67bpm B
59. AVNU (UK) – Pride Before The Fall (Original Mix) 06:55 118bpm G
60. Axel Haube – Disconnected (Original Mix) 06:16 123bpm G
61. Axel Haube, Running Pine – Fading feat. Running Pine (Ivan Masa Ambivalence Remix) 07:44 124bpm Cm
62. Axel Haube, Running Pine – Fading feat. Running Pine (Original Mix) 06:16 124bpm Bm
63. Axel Haube, Running Pine – Fading feat. Running Pine (The Element Remix) 06:47 125bpm Bm
64. Azzecca – Ego Death (Extended Mix) 06:34 127bpm E
65. Basil O’Glue, Aaron Suiss, Peled – Into The Shadows (Original Mix) 07:01 121bpm E
66. Basil O’Glue, Aaron Suiss, Peled – Into The Shadows (Voices Of Valley Remix) 06:35 121bpm E
67. Basil O’Glue, Aaron Suiss, Peled – Through The Darknezz (Original Mix) 06:36 93bpm Bb
68. Bedouin – Aliens (Original Mix) 04:38 124bpm E
69. Bedouin – Love And Hate (Original Mix) 05:07 122bpm Gm
70. Bertolt Meyer – Where Did the Day Go (Original Mix) 06:51 124bpm Gm
71. Beswerda – Anything (Original Mix) 06:12 125bpm E
72. Beswerda – Concord (Original Mix) 05:42 124bpm Cm
73. Beswerda – Terea (Original Mix) 06:16 125bpm Dbm
74. Binaryh – Izar (Bez Remix) 06:23 123bpm Bb
75. Binaryh – Izar (Lökust Remix) 05:38 121bpm Bb
76. Binaryh – Izar (Original Mix) 06:11 124bpm Bb
77. Binaryh – Izar (Space Traveler Remix) 05:48 123bpm Bbm
78. Binaryh – Osiris (Mila Jounée Remix) 06:34 124bpm F
79. Binaryh – Osiris (Original Mix) 06:53 123bpm F
80. BJORN (SE) – Chimes (Echonomist Remix) 05:53 126bpm Dbm
81. BJORN (SE) – Chimes (Original Mix) 06:39 118bpm Dbm
82. Blake.08 – High Fidelity (Extended Mix) 05:33 128bpm Em
83. Blake.08 – Star Sender (Extended Mix) 05:03 128bpm Gb
84. Blake.08 – Supermonster (Extended Mix) 06:09 126bpm Fm
85. Blindsmyth – All That Fiberglass (Adana Twins Remix) 07:14 124bpm Dm
86. Blindsmyth – Die Tiefe (Schtu Remix) 07:29 121bpm Em
87. Blindsmyth – Remember The Days (Borneo Remix) 05:45 125bpm Am
88. BOg – Breathe feat. Afnan Prince (Enai Remix) 06:32 124bpm Dm
89. BOg – Breathe feat. Afnan Prince (Fur Coat Remix) 06:15 125bpm D
90. BOg – Breathe feat. Afnan Prince (Jos & Eli Remix) 06:15 124bpm Dm
91. BOg – Breathe feat. Afnan Prince (Notre Dame Remix) 07:42 122bpm Dm
92. BOg – Breathe feat. Afnan Prince (Original Mix) 06:56 124bpm Dm
93. Bolth – Deep Affection (Extended Mix) 06:08 125bpm D
94. Booka Shade – Circulate (Together) 06:57 126bpm Em
95. Booka Shade – Pole One 23 (Original Mix) 06:53 124bpm Gm
96. Booka Shade – Sound Of The Dragonfly (Original Mix) 06:19 124bpm Fm
97. CamelPhat, Josh Gigante – Lost in a Moment (Original Mix) 05:47 124bpm Dbm
98. CamelPhat, Josh Gigante – Your Mind (Original Mix) 05:54 127bpm D
99. CENKK – ANL (Alican Remix) 05:19 123bpm A
100. CENKK – ANL (Joone Remix) 07:23 122bpm Am
101. CENKK – ANL (Original Mix) 05:42 122bpm Gb
102. Chris Avantgarde, Anyma (ofc) – Eternity (Extended Mix) 05:20 125bpm Cm
103. Christian Nielsen – Before We Go (Extended Mix) 05:20 124bpm Fm
104. Christian Nielsen – Broken Mirror (Extended Mix) 05:16 124bpm Db
105. Clemente, Thimble – My Own (Joone Remix) 07:45 155bpm G
106. Come Closer – Datsun Do (Original Mix) 08:06 120bpm Cm
107. Come Closer – Feel Like (Original Mix) 06:59 122bpm E
108. Come Closer – Jump Into The Fire (Original Mix) 05:40 122bpm G
109. Come Closer – Jump Into The Fire (Tokyo Fan Club Reinvention) 05:53 122bpm E
110. Cubicolor – Summer & Smoke (Collé Extended Mix) 05:44 124bpm Ebm
111. Cubicolor – Summer & Smoke (Trikk Selva Furia Extended Mix) 07:09 123bpm Ebm
112. DAARI, Tim Walche – Signal Unknown (Fat Cosmoe Remix) 06:19 124bpm Ebm
113. DAARI, Tim Walche – Signal Unknown (Original Mix) 06:30 121bpm E♭
114. Dani King, Gem & Tauri – Fatal Love (Extended Mix) 04:15 124bpm Ab
115. Dani Sbert – Agenda (Original Mix) 06:36 124bpm D
116. Dani Sbert – Baggage (Original Mix) 06:33 128bpm D
117. Darkmave – Empty Words (Original Mix) 04:36 127bpm G
118. Darkmave – Letter In The Bottle (Original Mix) 04:52 127bpm G
119. Darknezz – Feelings (Original Mix) 06:59 123bpm F
120. Darknezz – Mars (Original Mix) 06:34 123bpm D
121. Dee Montero – Freedom (Original Mix) 06:46 123bpm D
122. Delerium, Sarah McLachlan – Silence feat. Sarah McLachlan (Kryder Extended Remix) 06:32 125bpm Am
123. Delerium, Sarah McLachlan – Silence feat. Sarah McLachlan (Stereo Express Remix) 07:16 94bpm A
124. Denis Agamirov – My Mind (Original Mix) 07:40 124bpm D
125. Ditian – Foxia (Original Mix) 05:32 120bpm D
126. Ditian – Strange Pleasure (Original Mix) 07:49 120bpm C
127. DJ Minx – The Throne (Extended) 05:26 127bpm E
128. DMNK (DE) – In Search of Sunlight (Original Mix) 07:13 124bpm Dm
129. Dsnt Matter – Dream About (Extended Mix) 05:22 123bpm Cm
130. Dsnt Matter – Insane (Extended Mix) 05:43 123bpm D
131. EdOne – Brine (Ivory (IT) Re-traxx) 05:39 126bpm Bm
132. EdOne – Brine (Original Mix) 05:50 122bpm B
133. EdOne – Inwaz (Glowal Remix) 04:58 124bpm Em
134. EdOne – Inwaz (Original Mix) 06:42 120bpm G
135. EdOne – The Last Chance (Original Mix) 06:57 123bpm G
136. Einmusik – Shades Of Night (Original Mix) 06:49 124bpm D
137. Elderbrook – I Need You (Adriatique Extended Remix) 05:52 125bpm Am
138. Eli & Fur – Follow The Dark (Extended Mix) 06:26 126bpm Am
139. Eli & Fur – Talk To Me (Extended Mix) 06:26 123bpm Abm
140. Eli & Fur – Temptation (Original Mix) 04:53 120bpm Am
141. Eli & Fur – Where I Find My Mind (Extended Mix) 04:32 115bpm Bm
142. Eli & Fur, Meduza – Pegasus (Extended Mix) 06:06 125bpm Cm
143. Eli & Fur, Meduza – Pegasus (Original Mix) 03:00 125bpm Cm
144. Elif (TR) – On My Own (Original Mix) 06:34 122bpm Bm
145. Elif (TR), Gespona – Somber (Original Mix) 06:45 122bpm G
146. Emanuel Satie, Maga – Flores (Original Mix) 07:37 122bpm Gm
147. Emmit Fenn – Amman (Extended Version, Nils Hoffmann Remix) 06:22 123bpm Abm
148. enai – Aneris (Original Mix) 06:17 124bpm Em
149. enai – Ira (Original Mix) 06:39 123bpm Cm
150. enai – Ira (Yubik Remix) 05:43 123bpm Cm
151. enai – This Is a Dream (Original Mix) 06:05 122bpm Em
152. enai – This Is a Dream (Undercatt Remix) 05:55 122bpm Em
153. Evelynka – Letting Go (Cipy Remix) 07:04 120bpm G
154. Evelynka – Letting Go (Incláme Remix) 06:00 120bpm A
155. Evelynka – Letting Go (Jepe Remix) 06:28 120bpm Am
156. Evelynka – Letting Go (Original Mix) 04:16 120bpm Am
157. Fabian B. – The Void (Original Mix) 06:34 124bpm C
158. Fatum – Fear & Pain (Original Mix) 04:24 125bpm F
159. Fatum – Mastermind (Original Mix) 06:34 126bpm Eb
160. Fatum, Bigfett – Evolve (Extended) 05:30 124bpm Am
161. Felix Raphael – Pieces (Dub Mix) 06:35 122bpm Gm
162. Felix Raphael – Pieces (Original Mix) 06:35 122bpm Gm
163. Fideles – Overcome (Original Mix) 06:11 126bpm Am
164. Fideles, CamelPhat, Be No Rain – Night After Night (CamelPhat Remix) 06:58 124bpm A
165. Franc Fala – Shapeshift (Extended Mix) 05:38 125bpm Abm
166. Frankey & Sandrino – Der Sprung (Original Mix) 06:59 121bpm Ab
167. Frankey & Sandrino – Libelula (Original Mix) 05:46 120bpm D
168. Franky Wah, Korolova – Lost In Space (Original Mix) 07:31 124bpm Gm
169. Franky Wah, Sorley – Speak to the Highers (Original Mix) 06:31 123bpm C
170. Fritz Kalkbrenner – Moments Gone (Edit) 03:40 123bpm Dm
171. Fritz Kalkbrenner – Moments Gone (Extended Mix) 04:44 123bpm Dm
172. Gem & Tauri – Crownless (Extended Mix) 05:35 126bpm Fm
173. GEMINIS – Checkmate (Extended Mix) 06:20 124bpm E
174. GEMINIS – Mind Games (Extended Mix) 05:56 125bpm G
175. Genius Of Time – Tuffa Trummor Med Röst (Original Mix) 07:52 123bpm Gb
176. Genius Of Time – Tuffa Trummor Med Synt (Original Mix) 07:13 123bpm Em
177. German Brigante – Limpa Limpa (Original Mix) 06:09 120bpm C
178. Gespona, Abuk – Ambau (Original Mix) 06:39 120bpm G
179. Gespona, Abuk – Ephemereal (Original Mix) 06:23 118bpm D
180. Gespona, Abuk – Komenko (Original Mix) 06:47 122bpm F
181. Goom Gum, 3GGER – Vision (Original Mix) 06:53 122bpm G
182. Gorge – Tayo 2.0 (Original Mix) 07:16 124bpm Fm
183. Grigoré – Strange World (Original Mix) 06:42 124bpm Bm
184. Guzy – Chase The Lies (Original Mix) 05:15 124bpm Dm
185. Guzy – Devoted Manner (Original Mix) 06:09 125bpm G
186. Hardt Antoine – 3022 (Original Mix) 06:46 124bpm Cm
187. Hardt Antoine – All We See (Freedom Mix) 06:45 129bpm F
188. Hardt Antoine – All We See (Original Mix) 07:07 122bpm F
189. Hardt Antoine – Boiling Point (Original Mix) 06:06 123bpm Cm
190. Hardt Antoine – Nobody’s Watching (Original Mix) 07:05 127bpm D
191. Hardt Antoine – Radial (Original Mix) 04:04 86bpm A
192. Hardt Antoine – Wake Up (Original Mix) 06:25 121bpm D
193. Helsloot – Take Care (Extended Mix) 07:02 124bpm Bm
194. Henrik Schwarz, Richard Judge – Put All Your Faith In Me (Tensnake Extended Remix) 04:56 120bpm Gm
195. Hidden Empire – Alright (Original Mix) 06:52 123bpm G
196. Hidden Empire – Avalanche (Original Mix) 06:27 122bpm A
197. Hidden Empire – Last Call (Original Mix) 06:55 123bpm Ab
198. Hidden Empire – Momentum (Original Mix) 06:30 124bpm A
199. Hidden Empire, Felix Raphael – Who We Are (Original Mix) 07:41 122bpm F
200. Horisone – Intuition (Extended Mix) 07:16 125bpm Db
201. HunteGame, Hollt – Act Of Faith (Original Mix) 06:26 122bpm Gb
202. HunteGame, Hollt – Closure (Original Mix) 05:58 124bpm Fm
203. IDQ – Sympho (Original Mix) 07:44 121bpm G
204. IDQ – Sympho (Yousef Remake) 06:50 124bpm G
205. Ilya Shvetc – Space Racer (Original Mix) 06:08 124bpm Em
206. Inamo – La Llama (Still Burning) (Dub) 06:18 119bpm Bb
207. Inamo – La Llama (Still Burning) feat. Niña indigo (Vocalized Dub) 06:16 119bpm Bb
208. Inamo – La Llama feat. Niña indigo (Sasha Carassi Remix) 06:19 124bpm D
209. Inamo – La Llama feat. Niña indigo (Super Flu Remix) 07:42 124bpm C
210. Inamo – La Llama feat. Niña indigo (Vander Remix) 06:25 120bpm D
211. Inamo – La Llama feat. Niña indigo (Vocal Mix) 07:52 120bpm D
212. ivan masa – Lascia Che Sia Infinita (19:26 Remix) 06:03 124bpm C
213. ivan masa – Lascia Che Sia Infinita (Original Mix) 07:07 122bpm Cm
214. ivan masa – Uno (Original Mix) 05:59 122bpm D
215. Jaffer – Arcane (Original Mix) 06:08 120bpm D
216. Jaffer – Arcane (Radeckt Remix) 06:10 120bpm D
217. Jaffer – Fading Shades (Original Mix) 06:25 120bpm F
218. Jaffer – Undone (Original Mix) 06:19 122bpm Db
219. Jager, Sassa – Activate Electronic Robot (Extended Mix) 05:42 126bpm Am
220. James Organ, Will Easton – Prism (Original Mix) 07:14 124bpm Dm
221. James Organ, Will Easton – The Cut (Original Mix) 07:06 124bpm Dm
222. Jay Robinson, LIINKS – My Church (feat. LIINKS) (Extended Mix) 05:29 126bpm Gm
223. Jem Cooke, Paige, Franky Wah – Heavy Heat (Original Mix) 06:58 122bpm Em
224. Jepe – Illusion (Original Mix) 06:22 118bpm D
225. Jepe – Shady Arcade (Original Mix) 06:46 120bpm Dm
226. Jepe – Wutzsee (Alican Remix) 05:51 123bpm A
227. Jepe – Wutzsee (Original Mix) 06:12 120bpm A
228. Jil Tanner – Toxic People (Colin Levis & Bäggy Remix) 06:04 124bpm Ebm
229. Jil Tanner – Toxic People (Fab Massimo Remix) 05:45 128bpm Gb
230. Jil Tanner – Toxic People (Stil & Bense Remix) 06:35 125bpm Gb
231. John Monkman, Rinzen – Fade (Extended Mix) 06:43 126bpm Gm
232. John Tejada – Infinism (Original Mix) 05:37 128bpm B
233. John Tejada – Vereor (Original Mix) 04:57 130bpm D
234. John Tejada – Wild Ride (Original Mix) 07:08 130bpm Gb
235. Jonas Rathsman – Hush Hush (Original Mix) 06:30 118bpm E
236. Jonas Rathsman – Mystery Man (Original Mix) 07:01 119bpm D
237. Jonas Saalbach – Voids (Original Mix) 05:18 124bpm Cm
238. Jonas Saalbach, SBSTN – Alive (Original Mix) 06:39 126bpm Gb
239. Jonatan Bäckelie, Ten Walls – Anything But This feat. Jonatan Backelie (Anis Hachemi & Alex Kaspersky Remix) 05:56 124bpm D
240. Jonatan Bäckelie, Ten Walls – Anything But This feat. Jonatan Backelie (DJ Kent Remix) 05:54 120bpm Dm
241. Jonatan Bäckelie, Ten Walls – Anything But This feat. Jonatan Backelie (Justin Cholewski Remix) 06:27 122bpm A
242. Jonatan Bäckelie, Ten Walls – Anything But This feat. Jonatan Backelie (Original Mix) 07:00 120bpm Dm
243. Joseph Ray – Cos Of You (Original Mix) 06:13 126bpm Gm
244. KASIA (ofc) – Concussion (Original Mix) 06:14 122bpm A
245. KASIA (ofc) – Water World (Original Mix) 05:50 126bpm Eb
246. KATY RISE – Light House (Original mix) 06:29 123bpm Am
247. KATY RISE – Light House (Thodoris Triantafillou Remix) 05:47 123bpm Am
248. Keith Holland – Dinastia (Original Mix) 06:02 122bpm Abm
249. Keith Holland – Milenar (Original Mix) 06:14 119bpm Ab
250. Keith Holland – Neologia (Original Mix) 06:29 121bpm Ab
251. Keith Holland – Ressalva (Original Mix) 05:27 119bpm Abm
252. Kevin de Vries – Pegasus (Original Mix) 06:52 125bpm Gm
253. Khainz – Nightshift (Original Mix) 06:31 124bpm Gm
254. Khainz – Therapy (Original Mix) 06:19 124bpm Eb
255. Kiz Pattison – Arrowed (Original Mix) 07:38 126bpm Dm
256. Kiz Pattison – Finder (Original Mix) 07:13 125bpm Am
257. Klur – Apologue (Fejká Extended Remix) 05:38 90bpm D
258. Kolsch – Cold Air (Original Mix) 06:01 128bpm Am
259. Kolsch – Environ (Original Mix) 05:30 128bpm Am
260. Kolsch, Tim Engelhardt – Full Circle Moment (Original Mix) 06:33 127bpm Gm
261. Kolsch, Tim Engelhardt – Looking Class (Original Mix) 06:25 127bpm Bb
262. Kylian Lake – Alone in the Dark (Original Mix) 05:17 123bpm D
263. Kylian Lake – Play a Game (Original Mix) 05:44 124bpm E
264. Lane 8 – Woman (Original Mix) 10:27 164bpm Ab
265. Laroz, Jarvis, Sol Monk – Catch Your Tears (Original Mix) 05:57 124bpm Am
266. Lazarusman, Fka Mash – Mend It (Original Mix) 06:29 114bpm Gbm
267. Leaving Laurel – fireflies (for as far as we could see) (extended mix) 08:50 124bpm D
268. Leaving Laurel – the family we find (Original Mix) 04:57 124bpm C
269. Leaving Laurel – this time last year (Original Mix) 05:19 126bpm D
270. Leghet – Lions Inside (Malandra Jr. Remix) 06:39 123bpm E
271. Leghet – Lions Inside (Original Mix) 06:50 124bpm E
272. Leghet – Night Walks (Original Mix) 07:04 124bpm Abm
273. Lili Chan – Day & Night (Original Mix) 07:17 125bpm Fm
274. Lili Chan – Furusato (Kurayami Mix) 06:45 124bpm Cm
275. Lili Chan – Over You (Original Mix) 05:57 164bpm Ab
276. Lili Chan – Wabi Sabi (Original Mix) 05:11 125bpm Am
277. Linda Grazia – Find My Way Out (Original Mix) 06:26 124bpm G
278. Los Suruba, Thimble – Beautiful Dreamer (Original mix) 06:31 123bpm G
279. Los Suruba, Thimble – Warning Love (Original mix) 06:09 120bpm D
280. Losless – Concentrate (Original Mix) 06:05 121bpm F
281. Losless, Roman Kyn – Something I See (Original Mix) 07:14 122bpm Gb
282. Losless, Roman Kyn – Ubiquity (Original Mix) 06:32 123bpm Em
283. Luke Alessi – Scuze Me (Original Mix) 03:58 122bpm G♭m
284. Luke Garcia, Th3 Oth3r – Emphasys (Original Mix) 05:41 124bpm F
285. Luke Garcia, Th3 Oth3r – The Return (Original Mix) 06:51 122bpm B
286. M.A.N.D.Y., Booka Shade – Body Language (HOSH Extended Remix) 07:10 130bpm Gbm
287. M.A.N.D.Y., Booka Shade – Body Language (Original Remaster) 07:16 130bpm Gbm
288. M.A.N.D.Y., Booka Shade – Body Language (Patrice Bäumel Remix) 08:23 126bpm Gbm
289. M0B, Ricky Valens – Sleepless feat Ricky Valens (Extended) 06:28 124bpm Bm
290. Madben – Addicted (Extended Mix) 07:13 127bpm C
291. Made By Pete, Just Her – The Tide (Billka Remix) 08:48 120bpm G
292. Made By Pete, Just Her – The Tide (Djeff Remix) 06:58 120bpm G
293. Made By Pete, Just Her – The Tide (Jody Barr Remix) 06:34 123bpm Gm
294. Made By Pete, Just Her – The Tide (Original Mix) 07:04 120bpm G
295. Made By Pete, Zoe Kypri – Horizon Red (Black Coffee Remix) 09:25 120bpm G
296. Made By Pete, Zoe Kypri – Horizon Red (Damian Lazarus Re-Shape) (Original Mix) 08:49 120bpm Gm
297. Magit Cacoon – Send Return (Angelov Remix) 05:50 122bpm D
298. Magit Cacoon – Send Return (Ivory Re-phone) 06:41 122bpm Bb
299. Magit Cacoon – Send Return (Original Mix) 05:52 122bpm D
300. Magit Cacoon – Transience (Original Mix) 05:57 121bpm D