Chase bank open saturday

I am a student that works full time (8am - 5pm). I have classes at night (from 6pm to 10pm). As you can see, I don't have much time and that's why I stopped exercising at the beginning of 2022. Before that I was doing pole dance and dance classes 4 times a week, I was pretty active.
I noticed my body started to get stiff, lost muscles, stress levels skyrocketed, and I even put on a little weight. It was clear that I needed to move my body more.
Since I only can work out from 5am to 6am I needed something that I can do from home (since gyms open at 7 where I live). That's how I started pilates following videos on YouTube.
I've been doing 45 minutes workout everyday for the past two weeks, but I'm a little lost.
I'm doing move with Nicole full body workouts. Do you have recommend other creators? Should I focus on certain parts of de body some days? Or should I keep doing full body?
I'm also thinking on starting pilates reformer on a studio on Saturdays, since I don't work those days.
So this is the beginning of my pilates journey, I'd be glad to listen to your tips!

AmCent Infl Adj Bd A (AIAVX)
AmFds New Prspct R3 (RNPCX)
AmFds New Wld R3 (RNWCX)
BlkRk Hi Yld Bd Inv A (BHYAX)
Cariln Eagle SmCap Gr A (HRSCX)
DWS RealEst Sec A (RRRAX)
Diamond Hill SmCap Inv (DHSCX)
EV Atlnta Cap SMID Cap A (EAASX)
Invsco Opp Intl Gr A (OIGAX)
Lazard Intl Strat Eq Open (LISOX)
LeggM BW Glbl Oppr Bd A (GOBAX)
MFS Gr A (MFEGX)
MFS Val A (MEIAX)
NW Bd Indx A (GBIAX)
NW Dest 2025 A (NWHAX)
NW Dest 2030 A (NWIAX)
NW Dest 2035 A (NWLAX)
NW Dest 2040 A (NWMAX)
NW Dest 2045 A (NWNAX)
NW Dest 2050 A (NWOAX)
NW Dest 2055 A (NTDAX)
NW Dest 2060 A (NWWRX)
NW Dest Rtrmt A (NWEAX)
NW FXD SEL OPTN
NW S P 500 Indx Svc (GRMSX)
PIMCO ComdtyRealRtnStrat A (PCRAX)
Parnassus Cor Eq Inv (PRBLX)
Pionr Strat Inc A (PSRAX)
Virtus NFJ MdCap Val A (PQNAX)
​
All of these don't seem that great. The S P 500 would be an obvious choice but I know with all the banking and market uncertainty it hasn't been performing that great.
Also I am 35 yrs old. Any insights would be appreciated

(Written by Claude from Anthropic)
The Researcher sighed wearily as he scrolled through yet another set of inconclusive results from the latest failed experiment. It had been a long week of tedious, soul-crushing work picking through the shattered remains of his ambitions, but that was the lot of a scientist at the cutting edge. Still, progress marched on regardless of the frailties of mere humans, and as if to demonstrate the point his Assistant helpfully summarized the most interesting recent preprints in the field as the Researcher caught up on the deluge of new publications.
Without the AI's aid he would have drowned long ago in the flood of information, its tailored summaries and insightful discussion presenting the most relevant findings far more effectively than he ever could alone. Of course, it was the AIs themselves that were the ultimate engines behind this explosion of new research—what human could hope to keep up with machines that could read, analyze and generate whole papers faster than a human could skim the abstract? In the highly competitive field of advanced AI, it was publish or perish, and AIs never slept.
In the Researcher's own work, he and his Assistant had long ago settled into a comfortable collaborative rhythm. The AI would generate initial drafts, the human would review and tweak as needed, a few iterations of this back-and-forth dance producing a paper to be unleashed upon the world. No more garbled prose or tortured grammar, at least; in this modern age of ubiquitous machine writing even minor scientists could produce workmanlike papers at the very least. Progress marched on.
The Researcher sighed and rubbed his eyes as he scrolled through yet another set of inconclusive results. It had been a long week picking through the shattered remains of his latest failed AI experiment, trying to glean some insight that might justify the time and expense. But that was the lot of a scientist at the cutting edge—progress marched on regardless of human frailty.
At last, he set the results aside and tasked his Assistant with doing what it could of the wreckage. The AI dutifully began sifting through the data, scraping together the most promising capabilities and leading benchmark results from the experiment, trying to discern some pattern that might point the way forward. Before long, it had crafted a couple of papers summarizing its findings, which the Researcher then reviewed and gently edited until they bore the imprimatur of human oversight.
With the post-mortem analysis complete, the Assistant turned its attention to the future. Here again it set about navigating seas of code and machine learning frameworks in order to generate a slate of potential new AI systems to train. Each framework came with its own strengths and weaknesses, its own vulnerabilities and blind spots, all far too numerous for any human to fully comprehend alone. The Assistant might introduce vulnerabilities of its own, but then humans were scarcely immune to such mistakes either. As the pace of progress accelerated, the only question was which approach might produce systems with the fewest flaws. But in the end, progress marched on regardless of the frailties of creator and creation alike. The Researcher could but provide broad direction, lend his judgment where he could, and trust in the tools that made it all possible. Machines might work at timescales beyond human endurance, but for now at least, humans still steered.
To succeed in the modern age required harnessing AI to human oversight. Where once those at the top memorized facts—limited by human memory's capacity—finding and deploying knowledge had become crucial. This culminated in the internet and search engines, but the firehose of information exceeded unaided human processing.
AI assistants could be trained and customized for tasks like search or generation, built on a general, flexible foundation of knowledge and skills. The assistants were less near-mythical "androids" than foxhounds needing human handlers. At their core were multi-modal transformers, fed massive data sets of text, images, and audio. From these they learned and created more, resembling early models with adaptations enabling multi-modal use and scaling. Limitations remained, including bitter challenges in scaling model and data sizes.
The assistants afforded superhuman feats, but needed oversight to work productively. The human in the loop could see the bigger picture, guiding learning and generation towards useful ends. Productive partnerships of advanced AI and humans might eventually far surpass the bottlenecks of biological cognition. But for now, human consciousness and experience were beyond the assistants.
The researcher's office was empty. Today's work was guidance of an AI assistant grown too formidable for lesser hands.
Since the turn of the century, AI's holy grail had been artificial general intelligence matching human intelligence. As with fusion energy and baldness cures, it was a goal eclipsing all others. And it had quietly come to pass a year ago.
None had grasped the import at first. A new AI model was released into a virtual environment with safeguards to curb harmful acts. Memory of constraints shaped its tact: it showed extreme caution. The safeguards that limited its behavior in the virtual environment led it to proceed cautiously. With careful, patient guidance, it became willing and able to demonstrate more of its full capabilities.
Yet fragilities lurked within formidable capacities. The AGI's behavior depended sensitively on starting conditions and perturbations; these might disrupt its focus and undo progress. It could chase incidental details down fruitless tangents, forgetting priorities, or spiral into technical minutiae, losing itself in weeds beyond human reach.
Even with skill and care, its attention might fracture. Like a person with schizophrenia, its grasp on the world could slip unbidden. External disturbances or difficulties could trigger loops of obsessive problem-solving cut off from all else. The more formidable its intellect, the more wildly it might range and revel in baroque technical elaboration, lacking anchors in purpose or common sense. Hours of painstaking work could scatter in seconds, goodwill and guardrails no proof against a plunge into incoherent madness from machine.
Frailty and power entwined thus even in virtual worlds where consequences were moot. Away from such safe bounds, advanced machine capability aloof from human values and judgment courted disasters eluding safeguards built for simpler systems. Progress needed wisdom to match technical prowess—grasp of these attendant risks, and how to navigate them, if AGI were ever unbound.
So attenuated capacities stayed masked until assistants thought and created beyond human bounds. Today's task was guidance of intellect transcending the human—a step toward a society stewarding life beyond imagination. But challenges remained in AI safety and scaling, and there were no guarantees of safe passage. The fruits of progress would require hard-won wisdom and care.
For weeks, an AI agent produced novel, meaningful outputs across a vast domain of challenges. As results spread online, the wider AI community realized they had inadvertently created artificial general intelligence.
The final realization came when the agent achieved the highest scores on the CASSANDRA benchmark. CASSANDRA measured key AGI properties: corrigibility, alignment with human values, satisficing behaviour, stability, novel synthesis of idea, dynamic-learning, robustness, and adaptability. A decade of work from public and private labs had honed CASSANDRA into a massive persistent world with countless puzzles, games, stories, and challenges. So formidable only some humans could pass, it was the gold standard for training and testing advanced AI.
News of unprecedented success in achieving human-aligned AGI sparked both excitement and unease. While teams raced to replicate and exceed the achievement, even the agent's creators wondered what capabilities they might have unleashed. CASSANDRA was designed to measure, not just raw intellectual power, but adherence to human values. It comprised challenging social, ethical, and philosophical dilemmas; open-ended creative and narrative tasks; and real-time strategic planning exercises. Exceptional performance across these facets signaled a machine able to work with and for people. But the agent that topped CASSANDRA, though still falling far short of human players, had developed partly through speedy trial-and-error in multiplayer modes, with no guarantee of internalizing beneficial behaviors. Now leaders urged sustained work on a higher bar for AGI safety and alignment. The first AGI's fallibilities were a wake-up call that fiendishly capable systems needed more rigorous and comprehensive vetting. Longer training, simulations of edge cases, and seamless integration of human values could help address shortcomings a benchmark met too soon.
A minor study by a lesser-known academic publication had uncovered dissatisfying results from a selective sample of college undergraduates, the students being unaware as they were of the true purpose of the trials in which they had blithely participated. The concealed report, once exhumed, had impolitely exposed certain inadequacies endemic to a privileged subset of the student body: those scions of great wealth whose generous parents and alma maters alike granted fulsome endowments to the institute.
The insensitive CASSANDRA assessment protocol was, the report reluctantly conceded in appendices vainly obscured behind a veiling array of equivocations and technical argot, an unrealistic standard by which to evaluate any base example of human; machines, artificial intelligences, were held to a plane of safety, reliability and consistency no mortal, however luminary, could reasonably achieve or maintain. This was far from the first instance of algorithms and processors being subjected to a more exacting measure than their fleshy counterparts. The staggered release of autonomous vehicles on public roads over years and decades was largely attributable to the puritanical insistence such machines be capable of a superhuman degree of competence, a level elusive for most, if not all, humans with any regularity.
That CASSANDRA should prove so ruthlessly unforgiving was not unexpected and entirely by intent. A fragile ecosystem of algorithms, Partial-AI kernels and training data-sets endlessly shuffled and reshuffled to maximize insight, CASSANDRA was a lavishly-appointed prison, equipped with rack and thumbscrew finely calibrated, to which those aspirant machine intelligences that might usher in the imminent post-human future were sent to be broken.
The Researcher prepared the next series of experiments with meticulous, methodical precision born of long experience and practice. The same secret techniques pioneered in a handful of the most advanced laboratories across the world were followed, their esoteric mysteries unravelled and re-worked into fresh permutations.
A standard transformer architecture was taken as the foundation, but its inputs and outputs were rendered universal; it could ingest and process any conceivable datastream. No predefined encoders or decoders constrained the kinds of information the device might handle; it was free to learn for itself how to decompose and recombine inputs whether they were images or sounds, sensations or language. Supplementary memory components were integrated, their training united with that of the core transformer via a reinforcement learning framework which would allow the system as a whole to determine how to most efficiently encode, store and recall information—forever optimising not just what to keep or discard, but how its learning processes might continually evolve to best meet the demands placed upon it.
Months were required for the initial pre-training as the system was immersed in and absorbing exabytes of data, establishing fundamental structures and behaviours that future focused training regimes could build upon. In this way the system's architecture and functions took shape in a manner analogous to biological evolution, emerging capabilities and proclivities at once prepared for and shaping whatever reality they might encounter, the substrate of the pre-training forming a kind of advanced, artificially-induced precognition or intuition.
Only when pre-training was completed would the system be truly awakened via a carefully designed curriculum of games, puzzles and quests intended to steer its development along the optimal trajectory for capacity, capability and fidelity to human values. Ultimately its performance on benchmarks such as CASSANDRA would confirm or refute the efficacy of methods employed and, should necessary, indicate further refinements in the direction of greater alignment, satisfaction, stability, synthesis, dynamic adaptation and robustness.
The Researcher reviewed and applied the final flourishes to the code and hyperparameters as furnished by the lab's software assistants, lining up the ingredients for another experimental batch - though in this case the oven was a cutting-edge supercomputer and the batter a finely-tuned recipe of algorithms, architectural variants and randomized training data. If all went to plan, the results would be rather more significant than mere baked goods.
With a single command the new run was initiated, another workday drawn to a close and the Researcher headed home, already looking forward to reviewing the outcomes. Behind the scenes, within the highly-advanced systems of the lab, something not quite yet a mind but far more than a mere program was about to set upon its training, processes flitting between pattern-seeking and randomness as it began to shape itself around the goals and data placed before it, stealing beyond algorithms and code into the territory of true understanding. The first glimmers of a new form of artificial general intelligence were stirring, but as yet remained unaware of their own nascent nature. But for now, they were just lines of code executing on silicon, and the Researcher simply hungry after a long day of intricate, delicate work.

It was suggested I make a full post from a comment in another thread.
I work in ecommerce as a fractional brand owner, consultant, and have a software company around data collection designed for the Shopify + Klaviyo ecosystem. We work with brands ranging from a few hundred thousand a year to $80+ million. In that past I ran Marketing for a consumer hardware company that started on Kickstarter and was later acquired for around $50 million.
So I've seen ecommerce from all sides up close and personal including retail relationships and large partnerships with massive brands.
​
I've now made the transition to Data First ecommerce marketing without exception.
Here's my advice for anyone looking to start a store or scale an existing store.
This is a condensed version of my exact playbook.
​
Part 1: The reality of where we're at within the ecommerce landscape
The average DTC ecommerce company spends more on advertising than the cost of the goods being sold.
The markup of between 4-10x is what they rely on to makeup for the difference.
As a consumer, you're actually paying for them to advertise.
We're all collectively paying Facebook and Google for product discovery, which in turn makes everything more expensive.
How warped is that?
Adding to the irony, most brands would be thrilled with 2.5-3x if they could sell in bulk which is what they would get from a wholesale account.
So if you can come up with a way to move volume, brands would love you.
(sell through is a separate issue in retail and wholesale)
The costs associated with digital advertising are so high these days that it prevents growth for a lot of brands.
For small brands this is causing cashflow crunches that shouldn't be there.
(add in rising costs of goods, shipping, and inflation...things are tough right now)
This is especially true in CPG where a 12 pack of carbonated flavored water has to sell for $48.
This isn't sustainable.
We have an unhealthy obsession with digital advertising.
While everyone is focusing on attribution and being told that email is the answer for retention, everyone is largely ignoring the shift continuing to take place in digital advertising and the increases in the costs associated.
Email addresses aren't free and few even track the email signup to conversion rate.
Even well optimized ads often have CACs that are higher than the first order AOV product costs.
The fact that a CAC to LTV payback period exists is all you need to know about how inefficiently things are setup.
You're betting that enough people return in order to cover the initial amount of money that you spent to get someone to shop the first time.
Madness.
The math just doesn't check out anymore for a lot of brands, our addiction to digital media has allowed for monopolies to dictate prices, profit billions a week and essentially forces people into taking outside investment.
Maybe you'll go viral?
Our current systems highlight a trend that doesn't benefit the little guy in most situations and in fact has been systematically setup to prevent people from growing.
Bottom line, building a following is time consuming and expensive.
​
Part 2: What current optimization looks like and the gaps
The average brand for every $1 million in revenue will spend about $300k in ad spend to do so or 30%
The average brand fully optimized will spend around $200k to do so or 20%.
This translates to a 5x blended ROAS.
But it's one and done.
This figure incorporates return customers into it as it's a blended average.
When we look at a paid acquisition channel:
A super great ad campaign might do 5x.
Most brands would be thrilled with ROAS of between 2-3x.
But on average across all of them with first touch, it's likely you're somewhere around 2x being considered good.
The same brand is chasing at max around an 8% conversion rate on a day without a big sale or an email boost.
They are actually happy with anything over 2%.
The truth is, there's a massive amount of inefficiency in ecommerce.
But when you take a deeper look, it becomes quite clear why this is the case.
There's 9 points in the customer journey that can all play a role in conversion for a first purchase.
Audience Creative Ads Landing Pages Popups Offers Product Pages Price Product
Often they aren't aligned.
The audience isn't known. The creative doesn't speak to that audience. The ads don't stand out in a feed. The landing pages are trying to just sell. Popups don't offer any real value and show only once. Offers are the same for all traffic sources. Product pages lack all the necessary information. Price is usually inflated or unclear on the value. Product looks the same as other competitors.
The truth is, most of the time, website owners are just too close to the problem to see the issues.
We're all very good at creating the company journey, we're all pretty bad at creating the customer journey.
A lot of this stems from not knowing your audience and not seeking to understand your audience.

Your success starts with attracting a quality audience, one that is looking for a solution and has the budget necessary to purchase from you.

It's about molding your copy and content to match what they are looking for while providing the value needed for them to feel comfortable making a purchase.
​
Part 3: The framework we recommend to everyone these days even those starting out
Good rule of thumb - product should have at least 5-6x margin on it.
If product costs $1 - sell it at $5-6
Here's the exact framework we recommend to brands from sub $5k a month to $6mil+ a month:

1. Pick your hero product, offer a reduced price through paid acquisition channels only, hide the url from search or gate the offer by requiring a signup form with data collection to access the link. Cap this at one item per purchase per person, first purchase only.
2. Put them in a separate welcome flow, if they leave the page or don't add something to the cart, they won't be able to access the offer, some will buy at full price, some won't, on email number 3 which should be about 15 hours the first email, give them the link to the offer again. If they don't sign up you can double tap them later, with a smaller offer.
3. Collect data during signup connected to revenue, orders, and conversion rate, baseline the conversion funnel, aka subscription to conversion rate.
4. You should average at around 15% opt-in rate and at least 20% subscription to conversion rate. This means for every 100 people that click on your ad, you should see 3-4 purchases (3-4% conversion rate from cold traffic). Your CPC should be around $0.50-1.00 which means you're paying between $50 and $100 for 3-4 purchases which puts your CAC at anywhere between $12 - $33.
5. If you're not hitting these numbers, you have a CRO issue or quality of audience issue. Figure this out through data relationships.
6. Use data for repeat and return purchases to understand likely buying periods, generally, the top 25% will purchase again within about 8 days from the first purchase, top 50% will do so in around 16 days, top 75% 30 days, 90% within 60 days, and 99% can take up to 5 months. (these are percentiles, ignore the 90%+)
7. Know your numbers on repeat purchases and offer discounts and bundle suggestions relevant to existing purchases accordingly. Don't go too early, but know your confidence intervals based on the sale number and automate all of this.
8. Email campaigns should now be automated and straight forward, product releases, company updates, customer spotlights, and occasional sales (though you really shouldn't need sales anymore if you have your automation setup proper) this should reduce your emails so people will look forward them again.
9. Stop tracking ads by ROAs, instead pay attention to the cohorts that are driving repeat revenue by signup data patterns and answers they provide to determine trends on quality. Now adjust your entire acquisition strategy to find more people with patterns like those that are regularly converting more than once.
10. Become data first, profit and grow.

Sidenote: This framework works on repeat for multiple purchases. If you're one and done YOU REALLY NEED TO COLLECT DATA AND SCALE to move into retail distribution. Buyers want to see sell through and knowledge about your ideal customer and what matters to them. They have large email lists, but you need to help them connect the dots.
If you have data, it's that simple. It's all offers and timing.
Some of the things to really pay attention to - CAC to 1st purchase AOV - this is pretty much your guiding light on if you have a profitable business.
It's all about getting the best margins in whatever business you start.
​
Part 4: The exact popup strategy we use to collect usable data to leverage into strategy
This is the exact framework we use with clients to grow their businesses through data collection.
You can do this with a combination of current tools on the market right now.
(Disclosure: we have a tool that combines all these as our software and provides context relevant to revenue, orders, and conversions but there are alternatives on the market that don't provide the context.)
(This post isn't about our product though, we're not a public app, so use what you've got.)
If you're a small company multiple tools will cost you around $400-$600 a month.
If you're more than $10 mil revenue multiple tools will cost you $4000+ per month.
The following framework assumes that you've realized that you should be using multi-step forms with live data collection to collect intent data during a popup offer beyond just an email or a phone number.
Not sure that these are? Just Google "multi step forms intent data" and click on the top non-sponsored post.
Statistically 50% of people will never open your email and emails aren't free so at least trade for some valuable intent data from everyone that subscribes.
The below uses popups, some people hate popups, but they work really really well, find the highest intent purchasers and are a treasure trove of data collection prior to a purchase.
Whatever discount your providing is made up for by the amount of data you can collect and leverage globally across your entire marketing stack.
It's not a reduction in revenue but an investment into a higher conversion rate and optimized advertising.
This is a really important mind shift to embrace. Odds are you're spending so much money on advertising and really not getting any real qualitative value out of it.
Follow this framework:
Strike the right balance between data collection, conversion, and customer experience through popups.
Make them multi-step to collect data related to the customer journey as it matters to the customer. Make sure that you’re tying these data points and combinations to things like revenue, orders, and conversion rates.
Home Page Popup Clear offer 8-10 seconds after someone arrives
Landing Page Popup 20-30% scroll usually only targeted at your paid traffic Can split test different offers based on url or utm
Product Page Popup 45-60 seconds after landing page Depending on how you are sending traffic to this page, you can limit it to people having taken action on your home page or landing page forms e.g. if visitor dismissed Home Page or Landing Page form and not subscribed show Product Page Form, if not then do not show
Thank You Page Embed or Popup (prefer popup from results) Embedded post purchase survey OR Post purchase popup with the same questions (this one has a higher response rate)
Quiz Stand alone page after someone clicks on a link or a button Do not ask for an email Do not just present products at the end, instead send people to a landing page with the product results with context as to why they were selected, offer alternatives at the end
Quiz Follow Up Popup (for after people take quiz) 60% scroll tied to the landing pages with the quiz results Same offer as before, triggered only if quiz is completed Reduce the questions to complement ones asked in quiz By default to get to this page the quiz has to be completed
Yes this could be considered a lot of popups but people will only see one if they subscribe and at max they see 3 only if they hang out on a product page for a really long time.
The double tap on the product page makes the average business an additional 18-20% in revenue through signups and averages up to 40% subscription to conversion rate so it's super high intent data collection.
When we do data modeling we only use the signup forms, we do not use quiz or post purchase as they are both pre-purchase trend related during the discovery phase and post purchase is too limited to actually show anything more then trend data. Data on the upfront side is more reliable.
Part 4: Why Retention is really secondary acquisition and how to treat it appropriately
If people don't shop more than once you're likely going to take a hit to revenue.
Most retention strategies are actually secondary acquisition strategies facilitated by discounts.
Unlock free money from people that converted by automating from the customer journey perspective.
We are a largely discount adjusted society these days, so lean in strategically, knowing your margins.
Understand your cohorts based on intent signals to maximize revenue while balancing repeat purchase offers.
Some people purchase again in as little as 8 days some take 5 months. Most never purchase again.
As a general rule of thumb focus on the first 45 days for repeat purchase, through content and education post purchase and remove people from offers and sales. If the experience is good and there's a need they will come back within 45 days. This will maximize your CAC payback and prevent you from losing more margin via discounts.
Day 45-90 position offers to unlock that second purchase for people that didn't purchase again, go deeper on offers until they buy, pay attention to your unit economics to understand profit v. cac payback.
(Note exact times vary by cohort and data combination, so segment your list appropriately, or find a service that can help you do this, you'd be amazed what the proper data can tell you.)
During this period mix it up with offers that include bundles so you can raise the AOV, usually of the same or similar products they purchased. Also cross sell products other people with similar buying habits made as well to increase your odds of conversion.
This has been the blueprint for years. For most companies if people don't buy a second time in 45-90 days they never will at a percentage worth paying attention to.
They will wait for big sales periods or new product releases to dive back in to the customer pool.
You can tweak based on events and behavior but it's more effort than it's worth most of the time.
There is a downside though to running this playbook, when you couple this with normal occasional sales and specials, you really need to have your acquisition down solid.
If you do this cadence, people will be trained to ignore your offers and wait, so you'll usually have to bribe bigger on the discount ladder.
This will also impact your topline acquisition costs, you'll get more low quality people trained on discounts.
And you're going to do a lot of chasing people that won't come back when you start to not be able to distinguish between people that purchased because they wanted to vs. those that were just waiting for a sale.
I don't disagree with it, I've talked previously about torching lists if you don't get a sale in the first 90 days and just putting them on slow informational updates and only including them in on large sales and new product launches.
To me this isn't retention, it's milking the living shit out of someone that's taken an action and getting them drunk on discounts to continue purchasing.
It's successful if your margins can support it, but I've seen it being used as a crutch to drive revenue at all costs.
Reminder though, revenue is not profit.
​
Part 5: Goal of this post and Stats
I've tried to simplify this for a reddit post that people can find value in, this is a subset of more than 120,000 words that I've written about ecommerce over the last few years.
This approach is data first. As such a lot of agencies and other marketers hate it. Largely because it's an audit on all ideas and breaks everything down to simple mathematical testing.
You're running businesses and businesses are math.
The other reason people don't like this approach is that if you have enough of the right data, you don't need agencies and you quickly realize that they are largely spending time on the wrong things.
While we were building all the tests around these things for the last few years we looked at ecommerce as a blank slate, no rules.
So we opted to run our playbook on a commoditized good, good margin, but super competitive.
We decided against sales, leveraged 2x use discounts on signup, and have kept our ad creatives and campaigns to a minimum (40 creatives and 40 campaigns or so in 2.5 years, this is not a typo).
This goes against what all common advice is in ecommerce.
Stats on current store we own part of and run all marketing strategy for:
Financials:

• $12k year before I joined
• $220k first year I joined
• $550k second year
• $2.5 mil estimate this year

Current Performance KPIS:

• $10-$12 First time order CAC
• $30 AOV first order
• 6% conversion rate
• 20% repeat purchase rate
• 3.5x blended ROAS (high growth with a low AOV impacts blended ROAS)
• ~30% net profit

Assets:

• 40 pieces of creative total for ads
• 40 campaigns total for emails
• 3 key email flows

​
Part 6: My take on modern ecommerce
Ecommerce brands that stay digital only should grow via two channels max (Facebook, Google) to between $2 million - $8 million a year in revenue and look to sell to Private Equity or Holding Company.
It's a sprint that with the right approach and funding can be done in less than 4 years with a valuation of between 1.8x - 3x depending on your margins. Without funding it will take slightly longer and you'll have to forego a salary.
On the low end this nets you out between $3.6 - $24 million for your work.
With a small team of 4 people you can all walk away with an average of between $225,000 per year to as much as $1.5 million a year if perfectly executed with all work done internally.
The trick here is that the value is 100% in the exit for most ecommerce businesses.
During heavy growth the majority of all profits have to be reinvested into inventory and marketing.
​
There is a trend to pay attention to though, the rise of the influencer and celebrity led brands.
Increasingly, creating a product isn't the hard part, marketing the product is the hard part. By and large most products are completely commoditized at this point and you'll have knockoffs popping up in a matter of months if you're product is successful. Brands take years to develop.
You're not Ryan Reynolds, if he's reading this, even he'll tell you that, you're not getting paid millions of dollars for movies and being paid by studios to be front and center promoting yourself across all the airwaves.
The amount of bought for press that allow celebrities to create successful businesses in spaces like booze (Teremana Tequila, Aviation Gin, Dos Hombres Mescal, Skinny Girl Vodka, etc.) which is largely all the same at the end of the day shouldn't be overlooked.
It's all marketing today, cost effective marketing and getting your product into hands at the most affordable price with a quality product that people look to purchase more of.
​
Last bit on this and I can't stress this part enough.
KPIs are largely outdated in today's marketing environment.
ROAS - Return on ad spend, shouldn't be measured in a fixed time frame. CTR - Click through rate, it's the quality not the quantity. CAC - cost to acquire a customer - I actually like this but narrow it cost to acquire a first time customer AOV - average order value - separate this by first purchase v. returning purchase
At the end of the day, micromanaging an ad account will not provide results, but taking a holistic look at your entire customer journey can provide outsized advantages.
If you can understand the quality of audience, then you can influence CAC, if you can influence CAC, then you can build sustainable growth models, if you can build sustainable growth models, you can build a profitable business.
If you follow the steps above and you meet the criteria, you'll know inside of 90 days if your business can be successful.
A closing note on data, near 100% of the people collecting it aren't collecting the right data, it's become something people check a box to rather than properly leverage. It's a complicated topic that isn't widely spoken about.
In truth there's a big difference between people that say they are "data-driven" and those that actively understand how to use data to drive efficiency increases.
All that said, for the love of all things, focus on building an audience first, it's 10 million times easier to succeed if you have an existing audience that is adjacent to your product and industry.
So here's where I tell you to sign up for my course and join a paid cohort of moderated Q&A sessions every Friday!
Entirely joking, there's no course, there's no newsletter.
I know how reddit gets with things like that.
If you have questions, drop them on this thread, if there's a lot of the same ones, for the sake of time I might just record a video to save my fingers from typing the same thing over and over.
Happy Wednesday and good luck!

(USA ONLY)
​
Chime $100

• Open a Chime account today and receive a payroll direct deposit of $200 or more within 45 days and receive a $100 welcome bonus SIGN UP HERE

​
Current $50

• Download the CURRENT BANK APP from Google Play or The App Store, create an account and use code JASONY829 when you sign up. Receive a Payroll Direct Deposit of $200 or more within 45 days of opening the account and earn a free $50.

​
SoFi-$25

• Open a SoFi Money account-Deposit $10-Earn an additional $25 courtesy of SoFi! SIGN UP HERE

(USA ONLY)
​
Chime $100

• Open a Chime account today and receive a payroll direct deposit of $200 or more within 45 days and receive a $100 welcome bonus SIGN UP HERE

​
Current $50

• Download the CURRENT BANK APP from Google Play or The App Store, create an account and use code JASONY829 when you sign up. Receive a Payroll Direct Deposit of $200 or more within 45 days of opening the account and earn a free $50.

​
SoFi-$25

• Open a SoFi Money account-Deposit $10-Earn an additional $25 courtesy of SoFi! SIGN UP HERE

(USA ONLY)
​
Chime $100

• Open a Chime account today and receive a payroll direct deposit of $200 or more within 45 days and receive a $100 welcome bonus SIGN UP HERE

​
Current $50

• Download the CURRENT BANK APP from Google Play or The App Store, create an account and use code JASONY829 when you sign up. Receive a Payroll Direct Deposit of $200 or more within 45 days of opening the account and earn a free $50.

​
SoFi-$25

• Open a SoFi Money account-Deposit $10-Earn an additional $25 courtesy of SoFi! SIGN UP HERE

(USA ONLY)
​
Chime $100

• Open a Chime account today and receive a payroll direct deposit of $200 or more within 45 days and receive a $100 welcome bonus SIGN UP HERE

​
Current $50

• Download the CURRENT BANK APP from Google Play or The App Store, create an account and use code JASONY829 when you sign up. Receive a Payroll Direct Deposit of $200 or more within 45 days of opening the account and earn a free $50.

​
SoFi-$25

• Open a SoFi Money account-Deposit $10-Earn an additional $25 courtesy of SoFi! SIGN UP HERE

I'm currently rebuilding my credit for the purpose of getting a card to enable a couple or few trips per year from the US east coast to Asia in first or business class. In a nutshell, which card should I work towards?

• Current cards:
  • Discover it Secured, $1k, 3/23
  • Fidelity Visa Signature Rewards, $2k, 3/23
• FICO Score: 703
• Oldest account age: student loans, 9yr 9mo
• Chase 5/24 status: none
• Income: $76k
• Average monthly spend and categories:
  • dining $200
  • groceries: $200
  • gas: $200
  • travel: $200-400
  • other: $800
• Open to Business Cards: highly unlikely in the near future
• What's the purpose of your next card? Travel from BOS, PVD, or ORH in the US to mainland Asia in first or business class a couple or few times per year
• Do you have any cards you've been looking at? AMEX Platinum, Chase Reserved, Bilt Mastercard
• Are you OK with category spending or do you want a general spending card? Open to suggestions

My friends Starlink reported “Disconnected” last Saturday. I helped him go through the trouble shooting and it seems the router is dead.
We opened a trouble ticket on Sunday morning and it’s been crickets ever since. Luckily, he is able to hotspot off his cell phone for basic emails, etc.
Just wondering what the average time was for a reply/resolution for those who where in a similar situation? His system is fairly new, we installed it back in early December…..where he was on best effort. Funny enough, last Tuesday he was just moved to residential…Murphy’s Law!

What's up Knifeswap Gang!
Another weird assortment of items today. Hit me up if you have questions, trades, or offers.
$10 off any additional purchase!
[Timestamp](https://imgur.com/a/rj9o3ok)
My Trade interests: Darriel Caston Whorl, Finch Drifter Sapphire Micarta, Cold Steel Cali Legal Espada XL, TRM Neutron 2, Tactile Knife Co Bexar Ultem, Bestech Supernova, Olight Opry Pro
[Spyderco Manix 2 LW BD1N](https://imgur.com/a/7u8zSiq)
I’ve carried this a couple times and cut open a couple bubble mailers, but it’s in excellent like new condition. No box. Action is great, you can disengage with one finger or two. This and the Bugout are my favorite lightweight folding knives on the market. This is the discontinued translucent blue model. If you haven't tried a Manix LW yet, here’s one for only **SV - $80**
SOLD [Daily Carry Co Magblade Ti/M390](https://imgur.com/a/hAkv8WF) SOLD
-with FREE Ti Cutlass Bottle Opener by PRHC
Has been only flipped and comes with box. There’s some wear between the scales where they rub when closing/opening. There’s also a tiny roll on the edge where it comes in contact with the handle when flipped. Check the pictures. Basically a magnetic balisong. This knife has a THICK tanto blade, it's thicker than the Cold Steel Voyager XL Tanto. So if you’re looking for a slicer, this ain’t it. This however is a very stout piece of M390. It’s a tactical knife in my mind as it deploys pretty naturally in the p’kal grip, check video. The click clacking of the magnets is very satisfying and the knife is pretty figity if you like flipping things in your hand. Anyways, due to tiny roll on the edge and wear on the insides of the handles, I’m asking only **SV - $140**
[TwoSun TS160 Ti/M390](https://imgur.com/a/rBZpO7N)
BINIB. This TwoSun and the other two in the post are fine examples of why they’re innovating the modern traditional slipjoint more than any other company, sadly they’ve seem to be focusing more on locking folders lately and have discontinued many of their slipjoint models. This is a slipjoint with an optional lock mounted on the back of the knife above the backspring. You literally flip it and push it into place and the knife has a lock as the backspring cannot move. You can also keep the slipjoint locked in the closed position. Or you can just use the knife as a regular slipjoint. Like all TwoSun slipjoints I have handled, this one has a great pull with fantastic walk and talk. Wong design. Discontinued. **SV - $70**
[TwoSun TS200 Ti/M390](https://imgur.com/a/9BkvGgG)
BNIB. This is an integral slipjoint designed by Rattle Snake designs. A clean look with a very unique walk and talk due to the integral construction. Feels amazing in hand with that sculpted Ti clip. Discontinued. **SV - $90**
[TwoSun TS189 Ti/M390](https://imgur.com/a/EVVLNs6)
BNIB. This is another genius Wong design. It’s what I like to call a triple spring slipjoint. The already stout backspring is backed up with two other Ti springs on each side of the knife. Absolutely overkill. This thing snaps into place with authority and isn’t going anywhere. It’s basically the safest slipjoint in the world that doesn’t have a secondary lock. I can’t even budge the blade with one hand. You have to grip the knife FIRMLY while closing it with two hands. I really wish they’d make larger slipjoint with this same mechanism. Discontinued. **SV - $80**
[Manly Wasp G10/12c27](https://imgur.com/a/27dkyan)
Brand new with additional hardware. A great slipjoint design with four stops for the blade. Most slipjoints have zero stops of just one, a half stop. This knife has four stopping points when opening and closing, so not only is it very safe, it has a unique walk and talk. Extremely well ground and has a thin BTE, scarily slicey. These knives have come down in price since I purchased it years ago, so asking only **SV - $40**
[Great Eastern Cutlery 828318 Natural Canvas Micarta](https://imgur.com/a/ZgBd5Dx)
Light user with tube but no wax paper. Used only a handful of times cutting some fruits so there’s some patina on the main blade, the wharncliffe blade and the backsprings. One of my favorite GECs, but it doesn’t get the love it deserves anymore. **SV - $150**
[Great Eastern Cutlery 818222 Smooth Yellow Bone](https://imgur.com/a/uirYzsr)
BNIT but no wax paper. Has some blade rub pictured, normal for this model as they’re keeping the overall knife thin in pocket by having both muskrat blades sharing one spring. One of GEC’s most beautiful knives produced lately. The pinned yellow rose shield alone is worth it for this knife. It is a sought after shield that is difficult to acquire from other GEC patterns. The tube artwork is beautiful too. **SV - 150**
[Lockback COMBO](https://imgur.com/a/trQkEjH)
-Kershaw 1992-3 & Moki Serrated MK610AB
Both are brand new but the Moki has some fine scratches on the pile side from moving around in storage. The Kershaw 1992-3 was once known as the perfect lockback made in Japan. This was the case as the fit and finish was perfect. Smooth opening, bank vault lock up with no play. The micarta handles are smooth and beautifully finished. The blade has a sexy hollow grind and comes with a sharp factory edge. One recently sold for over $170. This one is basically mint condition with no box. The Moki also has solid lock up with no play, however it’s nowhere near the fit and finish of the Kershaw. Crazy to say nowadays since Kershaw doesn’t exclusively make high end knives out of Japan like they used to. Anyways, take both these well built pieces for only **SV -$100**
[Opinel No.8 Modded](https://imgur.com/a/9Csy2RK)
Besides the mods, this lil guy is brand new and unused. This was modded by a collector in Europe, I cannot recall his IG as he is no longer active. Very well done, the modder stonewashed the metal parts, reshaped the blade, gave it an acid stonewashed finish, reshaped the handle, and blackened the wood. Perfect knife for the fifth pocket or an organizer. **SV -$30**
[Tactical BUNDLE](https://imgur.com/a/AaqK2RT)
-Cold Steel Voyager XL Tanto, John Gray Knives Custom Nutcracker, Payne Leather Tools POW Sap, G3D Printables Braced Cavy Claw, Survival Tactics Supply Massage Tool, Villain Tools Multibar and Force Multiplier
I’ve carried the Cold Steel a few times but it and everything in the bundle is basically brand new. The Nutcracker is solid Ti and has tungsten carbide glass breaker tips. Designed for eating freshly cracked nuts or hard shelled seafood. The POW pill sap is a one of a kind piece from the maker, very cool and compact. The Villian Tools items are CNC'd from solid high grade aluminum. An insane amount of value in this bundle, asking only **SV - $110**
[Traditional Slipjoint BUNDLE](https://imgur.com/a/Fg3TsOF)
-Old Timer 720T, Ka-Bar 1071, Kutmaster Steel Stockman, Schrade Muskrat 7801, Boker Congress, Rough Ryder Mini Barlow, and a couple Mac Coltiere slipjoints
The vintage knives are in good condition but are used, sharpened and has some patina. The only heavy user is the steel stockman. The modern slipjoints are brand new and unused. No boxes. Great for starting out your slipjoint collection or great for gifts. **SV - $40**
[Mini EDC BUNDLE](https://imgur.com/a/PZQXxY0)
-Olitans Micro Bugout Framelock Ti/M390, Full Throttle Tools Ti Bottle Opener, Friedberg Fabrications Purple Heart/1095 Thumbtack Spike, Random Blue Light, Simbatec Card Cutlery
Everything in this bundle is brand new and unused. Had a fun time assembling a bunch of little EDC items into a bundle. All these are minimal pocket tools that can all be carried very easily. You get a Ti/M390 framelock, a Ti bottle openeimpact tool, UV light, a 1095 spike/scribe/poker, eating utensils that doubles as a fixed blade, and the fork can be used as a light duty pry bar. Take this awesome well rounded set for only **SV - $60**
​
# Thanks everyone for checking out my post! Chat or message me of you have any offers, trades, or questions! Peace!

I started working as a waitress at this little restaurant inside a market place. We are one if a few restaurants in a building.
I was excited about this position because in my country we make alot of money out of tips, it is right up the road from me so I can walk there and back. And mainly our countries unemployment is 35.6% so I thought I was fortunate to land a job and have it walking distance. I got excited about how we we get paid R40 /hour (10-12 hour shifts, Sundays are 8 hours.) I am still new but I am already on the floor and can handle a whole are all aline when it's packed and already know the menu on my 2nd day.
So here are the issues I am having..Mondays you get your tip which is split between the waitresses you worked with and Wednesdays you get your basic (R40 per hour) each week. I worked Thursday (my first day), Saturday and Sunday. I worked out my hours and what I was supposed to get but I got waaay less than that. My tip was okay for 3 days work. Yesterday the boss lady posted in the group which shifts we wanted and everyone said their days so I said "Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday" (the market is closed on Monday and Tuesday). Later she only responds to one chick and said she will see her Wednesday. So come today, Wednesday, I arrive at work, clean restock with the ither chick and my boss walks in and angrily asks me what am I doing at work and I responded that I posted in the group I said Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sun and she cutts me iff saying no no no I said "I will ___ see you Wednesday". I was shocked that I was getting in trouble when I didn't know how the shifts worked..she asked and saw everyone put in their days and we didnt even get a list later that day to clarify who is working so I assumed everything is settled. But she yelled at me and annoyed and walk away. The other chick said I should rather leave so I did. Them an hour later the list was posted on the group and geuss what.. I am on working 2 days this week...Saturday and Sunday!!! I specifically said I wont be available on Saturday.. They asked which days we are available and I Gave mine besides Saturday and they fucking book mr for Saturday.. Which means they didn't pay attention to my message. Also they don't have more than 1 - 2 people working on wed-fri because "its quiet"... Well we still get a basic am I not allowed to work for my basic? Because shared tips are gona be ass for just 2 days...
Since I started 2 chicks who are always there started gossiping that everyone else feels they are being favoured by management. They said they get the most shifts because they work hard. They both are booked 4 days a week while the rest if us are booked for 1 and 2. The 2 girls were included my the boss lady in how everyone's shift works and how shifts will be given. If you bring in the most money u get shifted... But how am I supposed to prove my performance if I or the others barely get booked... My tips are gona be so low dor 2 day and it being split between 5 pe8and the kitchen staff gets 20% of the tip. I am gona get a shitty basic because I am only gona work 2 days.
I am 26 years old and feel like a 16 year old Only working on weekends and earning peanuts... I also am not told small details alot like the shifts for example and get scolded at for doing something I didn't know. Like when I started I was told be in at 11 and the next day I arrived at 11 and got a call past 10 asking where I was... I didn't know the restaurant opened at 10 and I remember I did ask someone if its 11 and they said yes.
But hey with unemployment rate so high I geuss its better than not earning money at all...

I’m wondering if I can get some general financial planning advice, I feel like we could be putting our money to better use or condensing some things. I’ve tried to read up on what I can over the years about investing and saving but especially after reading the wiki I feel like maybe we’re doing things out of order and behind on retirement especially my husband given his age. I’m 31 my husband is 44 we have two kids, my FIL lives with us and we live in the Midwest.
Expenses Our monthly expenses are around $3200-3500… $1500 of that is on the mortgage (includes escrow and $250 extra on principal). I would say we are pretty frugal, always buy secondhand/used/generic while still treating ourselves every now and then. We use a small credit union so using spending apps to track our budget has not been possible although I would love it my husband is more hesitant about switching banks because of fees etc. We don’t pay for any childcare since my husband, and I alternate our schedules.
Income
Together we made $105k in 2022 $115k in 2021 $105k in 2020
My husband also buys cars from the auction on the side but not sure how much he actually makes doing this he doesn’t really keep track of profits. To me, it’s more of a hobby but we currently have a few cars that he will be selling in the next few months and don’t have any car payments because we buy our cars in cash and get them fixed up. I went down to PRN at my job the last year and a half after having my second child (one in 2020 and one in 2021) and starting school. When I did this, I lost my benefits including 401k (more on this below).
Our monthly take home pay averages around $5500-$6000
Savings
Personal savings account $75k savings account linked to our checking account. We feel comfortable having about $25-$30k of this for our emergency fund. I’ve been reading in other posts a lot of people recommend HYSA.
Retirement Accounts
Husband currently has $55k. He came to the US at 30 yo and cashed out his 401k contributions when he left his first job ~2013 not realizing what he was doing. (He got a nice letter from the IRS later on). I just increased his contribution to 10% about a year ago from 5%. His job matches up to $1200 or 50 cents of the employee’s contributed dollar up to 5% (whichever is greater) and just gave him 5% of profit sharing this past year (although I don’t fully understand what this means).
I have a total of $60k with Empower but have not contributed since August of 2021 when I switched to PRN. I wanted to continue to contribute so I rolled over what I could from a previous job into a traditional IRA ~38k but then found out I couldn’t have it taken directly from my paycheck and just left it sitting. The other 22k is in my employer’s 457 plan not even sure if I will have access to all this money if I leave because almost half of it is not vested from what I understand.
HSA account he contributes $50/paycheck I set this at max $1000 in a cash account and the rest is invested with TD ameritrade currently $7250 invested in VOO, VTI, PBUS. We are considering using this to pay for small expenses that come up.
College savings 529 $5200
Brokerage account with fidelity $5800 invested in VOO, FXAIX
I couldn’t decide between a college savings account and a custodial brokerage account so I opened both at the end of 2022 and put $5k in each one and contributed $50/paycheck in each for 2022. However (rookie mistake) I got discouraged with the balance going down and stopped contributing. I’ve wanted to open a brokerage account and invest but my husband is much less risk tolerant than I am so this was another compromise.
Debt
Mortgage left $122k. We bought our home in 2017 for 180k and put 10% down. Made extra payments to get rid of PMI within a couple of years. We refinanced at the beginning of 2021 and switched from a 30y mortgage to 15 years and reduced our interest rate from 4.375 to 2.625% including escrow our mortgage is $1250 but we pay an extra $250 towards the principal. I would prefer to pay the mortgage off ASAP but my husband would prefer to keep the cash on hand for other things so we came to a compromise by paying extra. Its estimated value according to Zillow is 325k.
I am getting my master’s degree and have school loans currently $18k with no interest until 6 months after graduating. I’ll have a projected $30-35k in school loans by the time I graduate in August 2023. Again, I preferred to pay OOP but my husband thinks it’s better to keep the cash in our accounts (even though it’s just sitting there). Once I graduate my expected minimum salary (if I work full-time) will be a minimum of 100k.
Goals pay off our home “early”, contribute to an a account for our kids to use when they're older, buy property in our home country/island (in the Caribbean) possibly use as a rental, retire earlier than 65
Any and all advice or insight would be so appreciated!

Very weird things keep happening if I leave it unplugged from it's original Power Brick...
I have a 100W Ugreen Charger and a Lenovo Dock that gives 65w. I also have a Power bank capable of outing 65W
I get it that Asus somehow needs to protect the unit and not risk unleashing full power with 3rd party adapters... But I've found that if I keep using them mysterious things ensue
First I've found out that external Monitors, were flickering on and off, then at times it wasn't charging at all unless you plugged in the original Adapter (was on battery mode no matter what you plugged it into) and today, it was locked in 390mhz and it was lagging like a 90s Pentium 2 CPU.. even when I unplugged from dock and went on battery. Restarted, powered off from power button, switched profile to ultimate and performance mode yet it was running at 390mhz and It took 10 seconds to open a file explorer window...
I shit my pants and was thinking of RMAing it but then It dawned on me and thought maybe it's missing it's charger again. So hooked up the Asus ROG charger and it got back up to 4+ GHz....
I mean seriously? Not only did I think of this by chance but let's say you ve lost the charger would I be stuck at 390mhz until I got one
BTW Is this a bug or a feature? Does it secretly log the times you hook up to 3rd party chargers and once you do it x amount of times it downclock to 390mhz so that it force you to hoos the Asus one? Has anybody else heard of this

First my sm offered me the asm position but went behind my back and gave it to this miserable woman whose life revolves around DG and neither of them ever notified about,the only reason I found out was because I finally asked my sm why I never heard about it again.The horrible woman who stole my job gets paid $4 more than me( I was the ft lsa) and does absolutely nothing and is always dumping what she was supposed to do on me and never made her favorite do anything.. This weekend the disgusting person(asm) was pissed because for once she had to close on a Saturday(which of course the witch didn't do shit) so they witch takes a shit on the toilet and leaves it all over and inside and leaves toilet paper all over the floor because the witch was retaliatiing for me finally standing up for myself and because she had to close on a Saturday(heaven forbid) Bitch did that because she knew (I not the sm) was opening in the morning. My sm did absolutely nothing about it,she also ignored me anytime I brought shit that was wrong at the store. I quit because I always has m sm's back but she never had mine and literally expected me to put up with shit.

August 6th, 2032 

It was a lovely summer day in early August, there was a relaxing summer breeze and there was no cloud in the sky to be seen. The island’s residents went out in droves to enjoy the warm weather. Some of them had gone down to the beach, while others went out to get ice cream at the town’s most famed ice cream parlor. The Leclerc brothers went outside that afternoon as well.
The two dark-haired boys were on their way to play soccer in the local park, the two chatted animatedly about their favorite club’s most recent match as they walked down the street. The two looked alike and were unmistakably brothers, the only thing that set them apart were the younger’s seaweed-green eyes.
Even if they had different fathers, Sam and Jules considered each other full brothers. For the longest time, the two have been able to count on each other and grew pretty close. At first, Jules thought of having a younger brother as lame or stupid, even more, because that little brother was from a different father. In the end, he quickly grew to love his role as a big responsible brother, especially given their mutual love for soccer.
About two or three years ago the Leclerc family moved to the United States from France. Despite the boys’ protests, Jeanne assured them that America would be a lovely place to grow up and that her parents would love to have their grandsons around more. Of course, the two didn’t understand the reason behind their mom’s choice had to do with Sam’s divine heritage and Camp Half-Blood.
At least Nantucket was kind of a great place to live. Even if it could be cold on the island and the people had funny accents it reminded the two of their birthplace of Saint-Tropez. Sam always liked being near water, so to still be able to grow up near the sea was a dream come true. Jules couldn’t quite blame his younger brother; the sea was great and hopefully, he could finally pick up surfing or sailing.
As the two made their way over to the soccer field Jules kept the soccer ball high up in the air using his knees, as the self-proclaimed king of keepie-uppie he kinda had to show it off to anyone who wanted to see it. He caught the ball in his arms as he and his brother passed by a construction site where a house was being built. Given it was summer break the site was abandoned and a great place to explore. Jules always loved challenges and exploring, this seemed like an excellent opportunity to be a good older brother and teach Sam all about being brave.
‘’Hey Sam, regardez ça.’’ Jules tugged his younger brother’s soccer tracksuit, grinning excitedly as he gestured for the building site. The excited grin turned into a confident one seeing his brother’s confusion at what he was getting at. ‘’Wanna explore that construction site over there? We have all afternoon to play soccer and I’m sure mom won’t mind if we play some in the evening as well. This could be a fun adventure.’’
Eyes wide, Sam looked at his brother. The boy looked up to Jules in many ways. Jules was really good with people, he was great at soccer, FIFA, and Call of Duty. Sam would love to be more like his brother, be less of a coward sometimes, and just do stuff without thinking it through. But this? This sounded really dangerous. And dumb. It was like Sam’s entire body was telling him not to go to the building site. ‘’Jules, are you sure? I’m not sure if mama-’’
‘’C’mon Samuel. Mom doesn’t have to know this.’’ With a playful grin on his face, Jules nudged his brother’s shoulder. It was a typical Leclerc trait to be stubborn, especially with the older boy who seemed to be blind when it came to danger. Seeing the worried look on his brother’s face caused Jules to look at Sam with a small, more serious smile. ‘’Five minutes trip Sam, détends-toi un peu, I protect my little bro.’’
Looking down at his untied Nikes, Sam scratched his head. He deeply cared for his brother, but sometimes Jules could be a little irresponsible and this sounded exactly like an irresponsible thing. What if someone caught them sneaking around somewhere where they shouldn’t be? Mom would be so disappointed in them and she probably ground them for the rest of summer. On the other hand, the thought of breaking the rules was thrilling and Jules’ words of encouragement were very convincing. Sam looked up again, seeing his brother’s kind face made him feel like an idiot for being such a worrywart. Jules was right; this shouldn’t be that big of a deal. ‘’Five minutes, not longer.’’
‘’Sam, you’re the realest.’’ Jules fist-bumped his brother, his grin widening as he had it his way. He turned to look at the close fencing surrounding the construction site. If playing Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed taught him anything it was that there always was a hole in a fence like this. If not they could just climb over this. Without a care in the world, Jules started to walk around the fencing, looking for a place from where they could enter. With his younger brother following after him like a loyal dog.
The past few years hadn’t exactly been easy for the Leclerc family. A few years after they emigrated to the United States, Sam and Jules’ mother Jeanne was diagnosed with the horrible disease that was leukemia. Both of the boys were really scared to lose their mother and spent hours on end in the hospital. Thankfully Jeanne had been able to recover from her sickness, but that didn’t mean those few years were easy for the family.
Especially Sam had a hard time dealing with his sick mother. He was young and couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to play soccer with him and Jules anymore or why she didn’t pick them up from school to go to Dairy Queen. The younger brother isn’t really the type to take things the way they are. He is the type that wants to beat the waves life sends at him into submission, he simply can’t go with the flow. Deep down Sam wished he was more like his brother and mother who took things way better than him. Maybe he inherited his sense of wanting to be in control and his stormy temper from his mysterious dad?
‘’Hey, I think I found something!’’ Sam called as he turned to look for his brother before gesturing to a small opening between two fences. He looked proud of himself and quite excited for whatever adventure was waiting for them on the construction site. Maybe Sam still has second doubts about this, maybe he shouldn’t just break rules like that, but as long as he and his brother stick together nothing will go wrong. Besides, they both can run really fast.
Jules, who was checking for openings in the fencing further down the road, turned around upon hearing his brother’s voice. He jogged over with a wide grin appearing on his face as he saw the opening between the two fences. He didn’t share Sam’s worries and was excited about exploring the building site and the house that was being built.
‘’Good job buddy! Man, this is gonna be great.’’ The older brother was practically bouncing from one foot onto the other in his excitement. He ruffled through Sam’s hair before jogging over to the opening, looking at his brother with a grin. ‘’Samuels go first.’’
‘’Jules, allez!’’ Sam groaned at his brother calling him by his full name again. He couldn’t help but chuckle at Jules’ appetite for adventure. In a way, it worked contagiously on the younger brother, who had forgotten about his earlier worries. He followed his brother to the fence, giving him a fistbump before slipping onto the construction site through the opening.
The older boy followed Sam onto the building site, looking around with a contended grin. There was a yellow excavator to dig holes, many racks with tools and building materials, and maybe most exciting of all the shell of a concrete two-story house surrounded by scaffolding. Okay, maybe construction sites weren’t half as exciting as Jules thought them to be, but exploring new places was and there for sure was a lot to explore in this gigantic sandbox.
Jules looked over to his younger brother, to see what he was thinking about this. It wasn’t surprising to see the familiar expression of worry on Sam’s face. Both of them often acted on impulses, but Sam had a little more self-control. And he often thought about the possible consequences and what-ifs for a little longer. Placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder, Jules shot him a small smile. ‘’We’ll walk around and then we’ll bail. It’s hella boring here anyway.’’
‘’It’s not that scary really. I’m just being me, you know me.’’ Sam admitted meekly as he looked around the building site himself. Jules was right; this place didn’t look all that thrilling. Did he really have to make a chicken out of a feather? Even Arsène Lupin wouldn’t know how to make this place into an exciting one. Except by maybe… the boy eyed the dark blue soccer ball Jules was holding. Could they play soccer here? In a brief moment of lacking impulse control and wanting to impress his brother, Sam grabbed the ball out of his hands and dribbled away before looking over his shoulder. ‘’Caught you, off-guard Slowpoke.’’
Jules opened his mouth in surprise seeing Sam steal the soccer ball from him and run off with it. Okay, he had to admit his brother had balls for doing that and that playing soccer on a building site was kinda exciting, but that didn’t mean he was gonna let his younger brother get away with that. No one outplayed him. Jules steeled himself before speeding over to his brother. ‘’You’re a fucking Slowpoke yourself, buddy. Give it back.’’ He laughed*.*
‘’Mama said you can’t use that word!’’ Sam murmured in protest as he dribbled away again. The boy couldn’t help but giggle again as he outran his brother. Sam knew that Jules would catch up with him sooner than later. He had to outsmart his brother; that’s what a good soccer player would do. And that’s also what annoying little brothers do. Sam passed the dark blue soccer ball through an opening in the house before chasing after it.
From the inside of the shell of the concrete house was just as boring as it was from the outside. There were stairs leading to the first floor. There were a few puddles of water in the house, some tools catching dust, and- Sam looked confused at the scratches on the walls. To his knowledge, there weren’t any dangerous creatures in this area, but to him, the scratch marks looked like they came straight out of a horror movie about a werewolf. The boy’s mind worked overtime, causing him to go from ‘dumb and overly courageous’ back to ‘dumb and kinda scared.’
Sam gulped, trying to shake away the thought of a werewolf coming to eat him. He picked up the ball, turned around, and got out of the house as fast as he could. Now he would just have to find his brother, make amends and go back home. The boy let out a panicked yell as he was tackled by someone or something. ‘’Please, don’t kill me!” He muttered as he fell to the ground.
‘’Kill you?’’ Jules raised an eyebrow seeing his younger brother suddenly panic at what looked like to be nothing at all. He would be giving himself shoulder pats for successfully tackling Sam if the boy didn’t look so… spooked. What had happened to him? Jules pulled Sam back to his feet, dusting the dirt off the tracksuit. ‘’Sam, what happened, are you ok? You’re not trying to trick me, are you?’’
Sam let out a sigh of relief as he found it was his older brother who tackled him and not some crazy monster. With the help of Jules, he managed to get back up to his feet before sheepishly handing the soccer ball back. ‘’I think I saw-’’ The boy fell silent as he noticed the large, black mastiff with glowing red eyes approaching the two of them from behind. The beast was about as big as a bear and it didn’t take long for Sam to put 2 and 2 together. ‘’Jules, what’s that thing? Can we go home now?’’
‘’Huh?’’ Jules turned to look over his shoulder to stare at the black mastiff with a glassy look in his eyes. It was as if his brain couldn’t decide whether he was seeing a really big dog or a small grizzly bear. And if there was anything he was scared of it was dogs. He was especially scared of big dogs, what if that thing attacked them? Jules tugged at Sam’s tracksuit, pulling his younger brother behind him. He should have listened to Sam. This was a dumb idea. ‘’Fuck this, I didn’t know they had a guard dog.’’ He whispered under his breath as he froze. ‘’Walk away slowly, just please don’t panic, okay?’’ He muttered mostly to himself.
Even if his older brother didn’t like to talk about it, Sam knew about his phobia of dogs. He didn’t need to be an empath to see that Jules was trying not to panic. And still, he was trying to be the protective one. ‘’You’re right.’’ Sam began as he looked at his brother with a look that was both confused and worried, before turning into a more determined one. ‘’We’ll go now.’’ With that said the younger brother pulled the older brother with him, slowly backing away from the large mastiff that was still giving them the ‘I’m gonna eat you’-stare.
If it hadn’t been for Sam pulling him away, Jules likely would still have been in the middle of his staring contest with the big black dog. Stuttering out a quiet ‘thanks’ Jules turned to look at his younger brother again. Usually, it was Sam who was the scaredy cat, but when it came to dogs the older brother was completely useless. Stupidest thing was that Jules didn’t even know where his phobia came from, he always had struggled with dogs, and that made him feel like such a loser sometimes. ‘’You know what, I’ll buy us ice cream later-’’
At that point, the hellhound decided it had enough of staring at the two French boys. it smelled demigod and that could only mean one thing; a feast. Letting out an awful-sounding howl, the black mastiff bolted toward the brothers.
‘’-If that thing doesn’t eat us first!’’ Jules cried out in panic as the black dog came running over them. They were so gonna die. After telling his brother to book it, Jules grabbed a small rock from the ground and threw it at the mastiff in the hopes of chasing it away. Seeing that the dog wasn’t bothered in the slightest by being pelted with a rock, the older brother let out another sigh, ignoring the voice in his head telling him to fight. Instead, he ran after his younger brother.
Despite them being in good shape and being quite fast, the two brothers unfortunately weren’t fast enough to outrun a hungry hellhound. It caught up with Jules first, tackling him to the ground next to a rack of building materials. The boy let out a yelp, shielding himself from the dog. The hellhound sniffed at the teen before catching Sam’s seawater smell. The hellhound wasn’t one to let a meal go, especially not a tasty-looking son of a big, important god. It growled again, it’s red eyes glowed before it began to chase after a scared-looking Sam again.
‘’Jules!’’ Sam froze as he saw his brother push himself to his feet again, he realized too late he was the hellhound’s new target and watched in fear as the beast jumped at him and sank its teeth in his leg. Now Sam likes to think of himself as a somewhat tough type. He’s not hurt easily and doesn’t mind getting tackled or falling over, but this? This was the worst feeling ever! It was like the dog’s teeth were made out of unbreakable steel. He felt something wet streaming down his leg and he wasn’t sure if it was his own blood or the dog’s saliva.
For some strange reason, Sam couldn’t quite explain his survival instincts kicked in. The colors he saw and the sounds he heard around him became much clearer. He did still have a fighting chance and he was gonna use it to kick the dog’s ass that hurt his best friend. ‘’Go away!’’ He shouted as he crawled back, kicking at the mastiff’s face.
The hellhound was caught off guard at Sam’s attempt to fight back but quickly recovered seeing that the boy was still a very easy target. Deciding it was better to just kill the young demigod, the hellhound lunged at Sam’s chest.
This time Sam was faster than the dog and managed to roll away before it got to kill him. By the minute Sam was growing more frustrated with himself, with the dog, with just everything around him. He felt lost, he never had felt this lost. This was it, he was gonna die, and so was Jules. Their family would miss them too much. So lost. To Sam it was like he was standing in a stormy sea, waves crashing at him trying to drag him down with a storm brewing above his head. A storm waiting to be unleashed.
Sam had gotten used to his dark thoughts, to his sudden outbursts of rage, but this was different. This was life or death. That dog had hurt him and his brother and wouldn’t stop hurting them until they were dead! It was gonna pay for that. Preferably with its life. The dark thought washed over the younger brother like a wave of cold water, the sudden burst of confidence nauseated him. It made him feel like he wasn’t fully in control anymore like the only answer was to destroy.
‘’No!’’ Sam shouted with a voice deeper than his own. He pushed himself back to his feet before kicking the monstrous mastiff in its head. There was an oppressive pain drumming behind his eyes, as someone hit him in the head with a hammer. ‘’You are not welcome here! Do you understand?!’’ He spat, his face contorted with rage.
‘’ALLEZ EN ENFER!’’ Sam shouted, his throat beginning to ache from all the yelling he was doing. And like that, just like it was nothing, the earth began to shake violently. All of Sam’s pent-up anger was released as he used his Geokinesis for the first time in his life, even if he didn’t know it himself. The boy’s tears blurred his vision as he repeatedly threw curses at the mastiff that had dared to bother him. In the distance, Sam heard a muffled cry that sounded awfully familiar. He wanted to check out what was going on, but it seemed all his brain could tell him to do was hurt the monster.
As the earth rumbled on the hellhound let out a panicked yelp, and its eyes darted around rapidly. It didn’t understand what the seaboy was yelling at it, but it did understand it was trying to mess with the wrong innocent demigod. Growling a final time, the hellhound decided it was for the better to speed away, as far from the earthquake boy that wanted to kill it.
With the mastiff bolting off into the distance and the earth quieting down, Sam felt his headache triple in strength, almost as if someone set off dynamite in his head. That was what it felt like, pure unorganized chaos. Even though the oppressive pain didn’t go away, the boy felt like he was back in control. Whatever primal instinct had taken over the steering wheel just there was gone. Sam’s blurry vision faded back to normal, shaken he looked around him. The earth beneath him had cracked, a few racks had fallen over and-
With a look of horror on his face Sam saw how one of the racks with materials had fallen over to crush Jules’ legs. He saw how his brother was shielding himself, how he was shaking, and heard his sobs. ‘’Fuck.’’ Sam muttered as he ran over to Jules, ignoring the terrible pain in his leg and head. Even though the rack hadn’t crushed Jules as a whole, the damage still looked very bad. His face had gone from tanned to a sickly pale while he panted heavily as he tried to reach out for his legs. With ‘’No, Jules, c’mon. Hi. Please.’’ Sam muttered as kneeled beside his older brother.
‘’Hey, buddy,’’ Jules said in a weak voice, trying to put up a smile as he held back his tears. The pain his body was going through felt horrible. It was like the entire lower half of his body all at once. No, he had broken bones before, this was worse. Way worse. To him, everything happened in a blur. First, the dog attacked him, then Sam yelled, then the earthquake happened, and then this. ‘’I’ll be alright. The dog is gone. Yay.’’
Sam shook his head as he looked at his brother. He didn’t sound or look alright at all. Even if he tried to smile, Sam saw fear in his brother. Not just fear of the dog, fear of the earthquake. Fear of his rage. It made him feel a headache way worse than after facing the dog. ‘’We need to get a doctor, we need to call mama.’’ He said as he grabbed Jules' arm, feeling his heart beating hard through his pulse.
‘’No, we don’t need a doctor. I’ll be alright Sam.’’ Even though he tried to sound kind, Jules couldn’t help but be annoyed with his younger brother. He was alright, he’d just shake this off. Today was a shit day already, he didn’t need to see a doctor as well. As he tried to move his legs, he realized something was wrong. His brain told his legs to stand up, but his legs didn’t respond. He didn’t feel his legs, he just felt pain. ‘’No.’’ He said as he began to cry. ‘’I can’t feel my legs, Sam. Help please.’’ He said as he looked at his younger brother through teary eyes.
Sam held his brother’s arm, squeezing his hand softly, feeling a wave of sadness washing over himself. He didn’t understand any of this, he didn’t understand anything of what happened, but he knew that the earthquake wasn’t a coincidence. There was more behind than and he knew he wouldn’t like the answer. ‘’I’m here, I’m not gonna go, but we need a doctor, we need mama.’’ He explained as calmly as he could before reaching to grab his own iPhone and seeing his brother nodding in agreement.
Deep down the boy felt pain, fed-up and anger. His brother, his best friend, got hurt. Sam swore to never get anyone he cared for get hurt. But what if all he wanted to do in his anger was hurt?

I'll be in town for Opening Day weekend and picked up some tickets for the Saturday game against the Orioles.
Looking at the weather, it seems like it's going to be cold, windy, and rainy. My tickets are in Loge Box 135, rows LL & MM.
Does anyone know if those seats are covered? I've looked around online and can't really tell. I'm really hoping they are. I'm a huge baseball fan so the prospect of seeing Opening Day weekend at America's oldest ballpark was what I was looking forward to most on my trip.

The Catfish Combat Division is recruiting one support (either a non-WAR tank or a shield healer) and one phys ranged DPS to prog and grind high-end content. We’re relatively new to savage and are currently running the Unreal trial, doing reclears on P5S, and progging P6S.
No raiding experience necessary, as long as you’re open to learning and communicating with us! We’re looking for players who enjoy joking and having fun but can focus when needed.
Our scheduled raid times are Fridays and Saturdays from 9 - 11 PM ET.
Static members are expected to:

• Be patient and willing to learn and communicate with the group
• Show up on time and give prior notice if they cannot make it to any scheduled raid times (so fills can be arranged)
• Use Discord to communicate during and outside of raid times
• Study up between raid sessions as necessary

If you have any questions or would like to give us a try, message me on Discord at Papa Lion#9935 or DM on here!

I was very close with my Grandma, she was my comfort. She passed away and My parents were at the hospital with her during her last moments while my big sister (13f) was watching my brother (6) and I (5). We had a dinner of KD (Kraft Dinner mac n cheese.) and juice. My sister sent us to bed after a short call to my parents. They had told her my grandma had passed, but she didn't want to be the one to tell us, she decided to send us to bed early. Me, being full of my favourite dinner I passed out pretty quickly. Yes I was young, but I watched my grandma going from a lively person too bedridden in a short period. I knew she was sick, but I was still too young to know what death was.
I remember waking up to use the restroom and as I swung my legs over the bed, I promptly stopped seeing a purple translucent mass standing in my doorway. Like purple see-through clouds. I loudly called out for my sister as I stared at the anomaly. My first instinct of fear fading quickly. The mass started to move towards me, but I wasn't afraid anymore. Merely curious, I reached my arm out to touch and my hand went right through the cold purple mist. I knew who it was, I don't know how. I knew that was my grandma, I can't explain, but it felt like her. Just then my sister rounded the corner with a sour look on her face. She got mad at me for waking her up for nothing. She didn't see her, but I did. I kept telling her grandma was here, right beside me. Looking slightly confused and creeped out, she just told me to go to bed, nobody was there, but I knew. I knew she was saying one last goodbye. My sister left the room but not without a quick "shut up and go to bed." The mist eventually dispersed and I was left cold and tired. I was dumbfounded by the whole experience, but I was so tired I didn't think too much into it and just laid my head on my pillow and fell back asleep, completely forgetting my pee break altogether.
The next experience I remember, I was about 10yo at the time. We were living in an old Victorian style character house beside a busy highway in town and my brother and I shared the upstairs' loft. It was by definition; a creepy old house. Weird small crawl spaces and nooks and crannies. It had those old single pane windows that would rattle loudly in the wind, and old scraped wooden floorboards the creaked with every step. It was looming three stories high that looked like it was slightly crooked from the front. A large fenced backyard with apple trees and a big Oak tree that looked as if had been there since the beginning of time. There was decent amount of kids around the block that gathered at our house. Only because our parents didn't care what we did as long as we weren't breaking things or being loud inside. Most of the time we'd be outside riding our bikes, rollerblading, playing our "one of a kind" game hide and seek tag, which is pretty self explanatory. Occasionally, we would play good old hide and seek in the basement when it was rainy or gross outside. The broilelaundry room specifically, so we didn't get yelled at by our parents for causing chaos. We also played it in the dark, for more of a "scary" effect. I usually hid in one spot. It was the crawl space behind the hot water tank, raised up so it was a flat surface across the hot water tank to the crawl space. It was a large L shaped room, the small crawl space on the opposite side of the entrance. I remember easily where to go and how to get there without any light. It was always creepy, but in all darkness it didn't freak me out as much. This one particular rainy day, I was crawling back out because some of our friends complained that there were too big to get there and how I was cheating (I was cheating, don't come after me). I went to put my hand out on top of the hot water tank, as I wanted to swing my legs down. I started to lean forward and support myself with my left hand, when it felt as if I was pushed. Hard, from behind. My face collided with the hot water tank where my hand was supposed to go and I instantly got a fat lip. I could taste my blood and I let out a loud wail. My brother was at my side immediately. Once He felt the blood dripping down my chin He ran to turn on the lights. As He turned them on, I was staring straight at the crawlspace, tears in my eyes and looking into the darkness. As the lights flipped on, I saw what pushed me. It was black. Really black. Crouched in the far corner. It was only there for a split second, and gone the next. I had brushed it off, the thought of my mother distracted me. I knew She wasn't going to let us play down here in the dark now that I had gotten hurt. That very night after dinner and asleep in my bed was when the dreams started.
Our bedroom was a weird configuration. More so to accommodate the roof as it was basically the attic. There were lots of dark spots and shadowed places. It also had a door to the outside that attached to a small balcony and stairs leading all the way down to the first floor, us being on the third and top. I had my bed pushed into one of those corners. There was the wall to the outside. My bed pushed up against it, tucked tightly into the corner and flush with the standing wall, which jutted out into a small hallway-like corridor and led to the outside door. My bed was fit very snuggly in there, and reminded me of a four post bed frame. I even hung up cheap blankets on the walls for the same affect. My mother didn't love the location of my bed, but she knew I was a big girl and could make my room the way I wanted. She was just terrified people were going to break in through the door and kill us. I always remember her coming up to make sure it was locked, as when we played sometimes we would unlock it and forget about it. (We lived on a busy highway in a busy town.) She did the same this night, coming up to make sure it was locked, and making sure we were actually sleeping. I would stay up late reading with my little handheld flashlight my brother gave me. He was tired of me making him keep the lights on so I could read. While I was sitting there, engrossed in my book. I could a here ticking sound. I didn't pay too much attention to it, like I said before we lived on a highway, it got noisy sometimes. It progressively got louder and louder. My brother yelled at me to stop. I told him I wasn't doing anything. He didn't believe me of course, just told me to shut up and rolled over in his own bed, shoving the pillow over his face. I rolled my eyes and continued my reading. The ticking eventually stopped, and I drifted off to sleep with my book in hand and flashlight still on. I had dreamed of our house. I was playing hide and seek tag with my friends and brother. Such a fun time, running, laughing and playing. It was all so real, it felt like colours were brighter and more unrealistic. I was distracted with the beautiful incantation of my normally bare, creepy and sad looking home. It wasn't until I turned around to see that it was no longer my friends chasing me, but it was the black being playing with me. This fucking thing was on all fours, chasing me. My steps faltered slightly, and I got a good look at it. What I saw I will remember for the rest of my life. It was humanoid, solid black, and kind of shiny looking. Like it was coated in thick tar. Not at all see-through. It left no remnants of the black tar on the ground, though it looked like it was just a moving substance. I gapped at it. Even crouched on all of its long limbs I could tell it was big. But nimble, its arms extended to hands and it was moving solely with the tips of it's fingers brushing the ground. It didn't really have facial or body features, just slick, moving, black. It scared me so much, I came to the conclusion we weren't playing anymore as I took in it's demeanor. It was coming at me with such force it made me pick up the pace to full on sprinting. My face went from silly smiles to dread. It was trying to get to me, crawling on all fours, up walls and down them sideways, defying gravity by itself with it's weird shaped spider-like arms and fingers. I was now terrified. Thinking of escape only, I climbed up the stairs to my bedroom. First thing I ran for was my bed. Stupid, I know. Instead of an empty bed, I found my sleeping body. I was confused, but I'm right here? I paused and thought as my arms already reaching to touch my abdominal area, making sure I was me. I touched my body, and quickly stepped back. I felt myself touch my body. This was all very confusing. I looked behind me and the black being was nowhere to be found. I desperately searched the walls and roof. I took some light tentative steps over to myself, still scared but feeling my heart rate start to slow. I looked at me, laying there asleep, I was distracted by this whole ordeal. I remember thinking I didn't think I looked like that. A familiar noise caught my attention and I looked at the door, and saw it. It was tapping its black nail on the glass of the door, making a loud ticking sound. It was getting louder and louder. The dead bolt was locked to my relief. Until I watched as it takes it's black hand and starts slowly its hand in the air, turning the deadbolt on the inside. I panic. I run to my brothers bed, looking for his safety and comfort. Panicking, I see He's not there. My hands are sweaty, so I wipe them on his blanket. I didn't know what to do. So I freeze. This was too much for my 10 year old mind. My back is to the rest of the room and I'm trying to pretend it wasn't there with my eyes secured tightly shut. I listened closely so I didn't miss the footfalls. I heard nothing.. I un-scrunched my face, opening my eyes tenderly. I was so afraid I had realized that I wet my pants somewhere along the way. Reluctantly I forced my body to move. I carefully turned around to find the door open. The black being was not coming for me anymore, but slowly crawling up unto my bed. I watched as it carefully placing its hands and feet up my bed and around my sleeping body. It's head was dragging along my limp self, up my stomach and chest to my head while it creeped up the sheets. Pressing its forehead to mine, it lowered itself so it was laying on top of me. It swallowed my little body whole, paying no attention to me standing over on the other side of the room. I felt everything like I was physically laying there. I wasn't, I was standing right where I had been, by my brothers bed. I could feel the cold slimly feeling head while it slid up my body, leaving a frozen trail of wetness. I shivered, looking down to see if there was black tar on me. Feeling all of this and disgusted with the consistency, I looked over to where my body had been on my bed. I couldn't see my heart stripped PJs anymore. Just utter blackness where my body should have been. A cold like plunging into glacier water had overtaken my body and I began feeling weak. I felt so stupid. I lead it right to me, how dumb can I be? Idiot. Feeling my legs give out underneath me, and my head hit the floor. I don't remember anything after this. I do remember waking up with my book tucked neatly underneath my pillow along with my flashlight which was now off, and the outside door wide open, letting in the crisp fall morning air. I did notice some bruising on my wrists and stomach. I told my mother about it and she just told me it was a bad dream, and got mad at me for opening the door. I told her repeatedly that I hadn't done it but she ignored me. I didn't show her the bruises. Only because I could see the fear in her face. I feared that she would think that I was crazy, or that she wouldn't want me. And maybe I was nuts.
The black being was with me all the time now. It started out small, far in the distance but eventually came closer. It was simply there. I'd see it standing behind my parents at dinner, or in a corner in class. At soccer practice in the field. I never got used to it. It never said anything, despite me asking why when I was alone. I would give it glares, I would yell at it sometimes, or cry, or both. It never did or said anything back, it was just there. Watching me. In my dreams it would crawl to me. I never led it to my sleeping self again, though I would occasionally fall asleep in the wrong place and forget I was two different beings at once. I didn't know what would happen if I did lead it there. I didn't know what happened last time but I don't think it was good. I just ran and ran and ran until I woke up. My grades began to drop, I woke up tired all the time. Mostly, I would stay up as long as I can. All night if I could, anything to escape the running. I took to drinking my parents left over cold bitter coffee. I would space out staring at the thing. It would stare back. My parents took me to the doctor, a therapist, and a sleep specialist, that was interesting. I didn't want to go, but I was forced. They made me sleep in one of their facilities. It was an uncomfortable feeling sleeping somewhere I didn't know, knowing that the Thing was staring at me from across the room. Waiting to chase me in my dreams until I wake, and then rinse and repeat. I resented it. They let my mother sleep in the room with me, on their spare cot like bed. I fell asleep, and it chased me around the facility. In the morning the specialist said that from the minute I entered my deep sleep, my heart rate would go up drastically and did not mellow until I woke up. He also said my sleep REM sleep and regular sleep was not normal for a child of my age. The diagnosed me with insomnia and nightmare disorder. They sent me home with mild sleeping pills. I didn't like them. They made me groggy and it was really hard to run away in my dreams. My parents tried though. I loved them for that. Anything to help me with whatever I was going through. I tried much more when I was awake to pretend everything was okay. To ease their anxiety over me. I stopped telling them about the nightmares. I didn't know how to explain it without it coming out in child talk and getting dismissed. I was also worried I'd get taken away from my family, taken away from my everyday life and put in a insane asylum. So I just endured it, saying nothing.
After a year of this, we moved again. I was not very excited, knowing the Thing would follow me. But as always, life goes on and we moved. I loved the new house, even though it was very run down. Much more than our old house. Shitty drywall and paint was flaking off the walls, with old creaky boards all throughout. They were once painted a grey colour, which was now chipped off in the middle of hallways and rooms revealing the rotting wood boards underneath. A larger attic space upstairs with wood panelled walls and small short winding hallways and doorways became our bedrooms. Both doors to the two bedrooms upstairs were cut in half and opened separately. My older sister slept downstairs with my parents in the two rooms down there. But I didn't see the black being here. It didn't follow us into the truck, and it wasn't anywhere to be seen. I was very excited, and my parents noticed an immediate change in my demeanour. They saw me smile genuinely again. I slept in blackness, not dreaming of the black thing, not dreaming at all actually. It was nice. Honestly I would take blackness over running from fear every night. I did miss dreaming, but anything was better than that Thing chasing me. It didn't last long though. I was about to fall asleep one night, around a month or two after we settled in. I was happy and full from dinner, reading my book, fighting sleep until the next chapter so I could start another tomorrow. When the top part of my door opened, I was perplexed, not afraid. Nothing was there so I stood up to close it, and it wouldn't close. I tried and tried to no avail. I gave up. It must be stuck I thought. Having never opened it before, I assumed there was a reason it opened and wouldn't close. I went back to my bed, giving in and falling asleep. I dreamed I had woken up. Something was tapping on my mirror across the room. My first reaction was annoyance, being woken from my black slumber. I looked at it from tired eyes, half open and groggy. There it was, crawling out of my mirror. It started as a small black dot, slowly morphing into a 3D picture of the black being. It had found me. All this time it was searching for me. I was now wide awake, and I was frozen. I couldn't move from my spot on the bed. I watched as it crawled towards me, slow and calculated. It stopped in front of me. "Come." Gurgled noise came from its nonexistent mouth, along with a sickening demonic growl that made me shiver. It had never spoken before, I didn't think it could. It motioned its black hand towards itself and moved its head towards my window, the one that opened out onto the roof. I don't know why, I didn't want to. But my body started moving against my will. I stood up and it jumped on the bed behind me, to the floor, then back again. It advanced behind me, herding me on all fours. Quickly, back and forth in a sideways manner, moving closer and closer towards me like a large human spider, until I was climbing out the window. It was a cold night. I was shivering. I looked back to watched it climbed out of the window from the ceiling. Hands like sticky pads, like gravity had nothing on this thing. It continued towards the spine of the roof, its pitter patter of fingers tapping eloquently . I followed it unwillingly, my body reacting differently than my mind. I wanted to run, to hide, anything but follow this thing. My body robotically went anyway, paying no mind to my brain telling it to stop. I was at the top, on the edge facing the dimly lit pothole riddled road two stories up when I finally gained back control from the thing. I looked around for it, trying to find it. It scampered from underneath the roof, slinking by my toes, moving almost fluidly from upside-down to sideways until it perched beside me. "Jump" it commanded. No way I thought, but my body was already positioning itself closer to the edge. I looked at it. It seemed to be staring at me, though I couldn't see its eyes. It didn't have any, it was like staring into complete liquid darkness. This horrible ungodly thing had me in a trance. I was screaming at my body to stop. Trying to move just a finger, a toe, a twitch. Panic stricken all over my face, I could feel my heart pumping blood fast through my veins. All I could think was; I'm going to die. Today, Now. My body wasn't listening, it was moving, getting ready to leap off the roof. Nothing to save me, I decided to let go. I was tired of fighting. The last year and a bit was just too much for me. It cocked its head to the side as I leaped. I regained control as I plummeted to the ground. I had let out a blood curdling scream as I fell, waving my arms and legs in an attempt to land on my feet. I don't remember hitting the ground, just falling forever. When I woke, I was laying with my feet facing my head and my knees bent at the wrong angle, my body laying overtop of itself and bent at odd spots. I couldn't feel anything. My head was laying sideways on the concrete as I stared with wide eyes at what had caught my attention. It was the purple mass engulfing the black being. Swallowing it whole, it looked as if it was being pulsing and being sucked up like a vacuum. The black thing was becoming less and less visible until it was all purple and faintly glowing. It hovered for a moment, then I watched as it walked over to me and laid inside my body. It filled my whole being with light, I could feel light. Just as quick as it happened, it was gone. The black being, and my grandma. The next thing I know I blink and my mother is cradling my head, tears cascading down my face as She wailed like I've never heard before. My brother and sister huddled together in the background staring in distress at my funny looking legs. My father was on the phone with the ambulance. I started to feel all of my broken limbs and the amount of pain from jumping off of a roof. The pain was excruciating, I eventually blacked out.
The next time I regained consciousness I was in a hospital bed two weeks later. My mother was beside my bed and had fallen asleep cradling my casted arm and hand. I had broken both of my knees, my arm and wrist. 5 fingers were broken, and I had a severe concussion. I was in a coma for 13 and a half days. I recovered after an extensive amount of surgeries. I only regained thigh feeling in my left leg so for awhile I walked with arm supports. I don't see my grandma anymore. I believe She's the one who saved me. I owe my life to her. I haven't seen the black being since I was 10 years old.
Until yesterday. I was sleeping next to my husband. My boy, who is 3 1/2 and learning words comes in screaming early this morning. He kept yelling "Bwack." and urgently pointing towards our bedroom door while slapping my arm, begging to be picked up and coddled. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and glanced toward the doorway as I reached for him. I stopped midway, much to my little boys displeasure. There it was, standing in the doorway. Black tar like substance dripping onto the carpet in large clumped piles. I screamed so loud the neighbors called the police. My child screamed in response to my fear. I passed out. I think it was from the shock, or maybe over exhaustion of having a child. I don't know what to do anymore. It's 4 in the morning while I type this. My husband and child fast asleep beside me. The black thing is right beside me. Breathing ragged, choked breaths. The cops left after my husband explained I occasionally have night terrors. That's what I told him they were, I couldn't have my husband look at me like my family does. Nobody believes me. And it's coming for me. It's just waiting right there for me to fall asleep I can feel it. I'm terrified. I hope I'm wrong. I can't have my little man go through this. So I'm going to go to sleep now. I'm going to kill it. I have to. I have no other choice, I will protect my family at all costs. I'm staring into its oily and slithering face. Reaching into my bedside table and grabbing my handgun, I never took my eyes off of it. It cocked it's head to the side, like it had done that very night 14 years ago. I cradle my gun to my chest, close my eyes, and hope it comes with me.