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BonesOfTheMoon @lemmy.world

I had a neighbour friend who was not a mortician but embalmed his own wife.

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  • When I was a kid (18?), one night a friend of my friend called us to come give this drunken girl a ride. They said they were at a party and the guy took some time to babysit her and take her home but he couldn't handle her anymore.

    We went and picked her up and were going to take her wherever in the area she wanted to go as a solid for this guy. She got in the car and started berating us and trying to turn up the volume and complaining about the music. She said she had sucked dick and whatever other mess and wasn't going to put up with our shit this evening. She was much more intoxicated than I thought she would be. She requested to be taken to her car and she started giving us directions. She said she was going to sleep it off in the car so her parents wouldn't know. We planned to take her keys and come back later or something. We were honestly blindsided by how ridiculous everything got so quickly.

    Turns out her car was parked at a local recycling center or something and when we pulled in there, there was a brand new Cadillac, lights came on car started. She said it was probably her grandpa. We let her out and started driving away so that they could figure it out, we wanted to be done. Grandpa didn't even stop to let her in the car or get her in her own car or anything. He immediately started following us. He tailgated us all the way down the highway back to my friend's house with his brights on. We drove normally but tried to concoct a plan. We pulled up the driveway at my friend's place about 15 minutes later and he stops short a few car lengths into the driveway.

    I kind of lost it at that point and walked down the driveway to ask him what the hell he was thinking and he steps out of the car standing behind the driver side door. As I come up to him to give him a piece of my mind he raises his hands and he has a pistol pointed right at me. I guess being young and full of adrenaline I absolutely went off on him yelling what the hell did he think he was doing pulling a gun on this we were just trying to give his granddaughter a ride we didn't even really know her. I mean I got right up in his face. I can't believe I did that in retrospect, I would never do that now. After I yelled at him he dropped his hands and looked confused. Said "What was I supposed to do?" I'll never forget those words.He quickly got in his car and started to turn around. I tried to block his car so I could call the police but as I started to get on the phone he punched it and ran over my foot. Thankfully I moved to just enough to the side that it didn't really do anything. Cops showed up later and the officer stood around for a while talking to us and getting statements. He said that we have to go down to the magistrate downtown to do anything about this.

    We went there and the magistrate asked us a bunch of the same questions. He did some paperwork stuff and essentially concluded that the guy who pulled a gun on me had already come by and filed a report that we were threatening him and that the two conflicting statements would cancel each other out - nothing would happen to either of us. Come to find out later on that the man who pulled a gun on me was a retired police chief from the area, very well known, who owned a local car wash. He had a sketchy past and I guess this was just another day in the life of a police officer abusing power.

    I look back and think what the hell was that girl doing? Was she actually being taking advantage of? Did the friend of a friend know that would happen so he set us up to take the fall for it? Was he the abuser? Was she just being sloppy and shitty and he didn't want to get in trouble? How in the world did those things cancel each other out especially with no investigation into it. They couldn't have. I'll never forget that. I never talked to that idiot friend of a friend again and I never saw police officers the same either.

  • I was very close to either dying or having permanent brain damage due to a stun grenade in a protest in my country. While being a completely unarmed, non-violent and basically running away/hiding protestor.

    I was with a friend and a bunch of people outside our campus. Everything was peaceful and then, out of nowhere things got bad, with stun grenades and tear gas everywhere. We were used to it, but that time the tear gas was so bad that the neutralizer we brought was doing nothing. We took cover with a wall (bad idea, but we were panicking badly), and I wasn't able to breath, so I wanted us to run away from there. I told my friend to let's just run certain way, and I was so full of adrenaline and ready to run, but he stopped me. 1 second later, a stun grenade fell from the sky just 1 m away of us, in the direction I wanted us to run; no doubt it would have hit me in the head.

    After that I just took his hand and we ran away, not able to see nor breath. Me holding his hand was a huge saver for both of us, as we could, more or less, guide each other. We ran some 20-30 m and just fell to the ground, but in a somewhat safe place. We crawled some 10 m more and just rest there. It took us some solid 15 minutes to catch our breath. Never said a word to my family about the whole incident.

    Fun times.

  • Once put one of those plastic wrapped potatoes in my uniform apron to put back in produce at my first retail job (got abandoned in the mac and cheese section). I then completely forgot and took it home. Took it out of my apron and put it on my desk next to my car keys because "I'll remember to take it back". I did not. Lived with me for a week or something when I finally put it in my apron again because I wasn't remembering. I took it to work. I completely forgot about it and never returned it. It made this trip several times. I put it back on my desk because this wasn't working out, surely I'll remember if I see it.

    Then I forgot about it for like three months. One day I look over at my desk and it's a shriveled potato with a new potato growing from its own husk...

    In essence, potatoes are amazing and horrifying. Just like my short term memory lol.

    • Then you plant the potato, determined to pay it back with interest. Months later, you harvest 5 potatoes that make it back to work but end up forgotten and back at home again. You even remember them at work frequently, but never when you're in the right section of the store.

      You do remember to plant them the next year though. The first year, you just put them in a pot in your back yard, this year they get a small dedicated place in the ground. The 5 potatoes turn into 34 and no longer all fit in your apron pockets. But you do remember to return the 4 you have on you one day at work, and then forget to grab more before the other 30 are all sprouting the next year.

      So the potato garden gets bigger year 3. You build a small shed to store the couple hundred you harvest. You're getting good at growing potatoes.

      You eat one, not because you think you deserve it, but to make sure the potatoes you still want to return to the produce section are up to the high standards your employer's customers expect.

      It's pretty good.

      No, not just good. Your potato is amazing, the best you've ever tried. Wait, no, your work's potato is the best you've ever tried. You vow to repay that potato, hardening your resolve. You bring a whole bag in on your next day.

      It only takes you three days to remember to drop off the bag of potatoes with the others (after a colleague asks about the bulge on your back where you were carrying them under your shirt). But then you realize with horror that the colour of the bag you made doesn't match the others. They are beige while yours is a bright beige. You return home that day with your bag plus a work bag, just so you can match the colour properly.

      It takes you two more years to finally master the potato bag making craft. It wasn't just the colour that was off, you also had to match the font and placement of the text and then noticed that your stitching holding the bag closed was pretty different.

      Your potato garden had taken over your entire back yard by then and you knew with dread that you wouldn't have enough space to plant them all next season. But your neighbour lets you use some of their 50 acres in return for two potatoes a day. You feel a bit guilty because they aren't your potatoes, but you justify it because it's an investment.

      You don't forget about returning potatoes at work anymore. You can't forget. Potatoes have all but taken over your life at this point. You bring in a bag and fill your pockets with them each day and take each chance you can get to casually pass through the produce section and leave some potatoes without anyone noticing (which is difficult because you'd been promoted to the deli counter).

      You've grown strong from getting used to carrying a bag of potatoes while still walking normally, not to mention the slight of hand tricks you use to pull it out of its hiding spot and leave it with the other bags without anyone noticing.

      But you're still gaining potatoes overall, filling the shed and the storage building that replaced it. You consider high jacking the truck that delivers potato orders to your work, but you know Ed in receiving would notice something was up if there was an extra delivery they didn't pay for. You had already heard some confusion about potato shrinkage being negative and worried you'd never be able to repay your debt.

      Then a complaint came in and you thought it was all over. A customer bought a bag of potatoes and they were all trash compared to the last one. The store was going to trace the batch number, which you had just been making up and even having a bit of fun with.

      You felt a confused relief when you heard that the trace had led to nothing unusual being discovered. Turns out the trash potatoes were from the usual source and you wondered if that earlier bag was the one from you.

      And then one day your nightmare comes true. You had just stealthfully placed three potatoes with others--that were much smaller and didn't look nearly as good (you were considering sending some anonymous tips to the producer so yours wouldn't stand out so much)--and made eye contact with one of your colleagues who was standing by the carrots. She saw. It's over. My whole potato empire is about to crumble to nothing and I'm going to prison for theft.

      She looked dumbfounded. A little too dumbfounded, actually. You were wondering if this was a bigger deal than you had thought when you notice a bright orange object fall from her sleeve to the ground. It was a carrot. And it looked significantly better than most of the carrots your work had on display.

    • You might have ADHD lol

      • Potato: the traditional ADHD houseplant. (Reminds me, I should see if any of my bag of potatoes have volunteered to be planted/have sprouted yet)

      • I have definitely wondered the same myself lol I am also pretty shit with time management...

    • Why didn't you just eat the potato?

  • Okay, so I have a mechanical heart valve. One time, while I was in the basement of my childhood home with one of my brothers, I was close to him as he was playing The Godfather PS2 (I'm pretty sure it was that game). It was pretty quiet, so he somehow heard the ticking of my valve and his mind went to some sort of explosive like a pipe bomb being close by.

    • If you don’t mind my asking, how do you deal with the ticking? I understand it can be very audible internally, and for some recipients can be incredibly difficult to deal with. I have a friend who has one too, and he says he doesn’t even notice it at all anymore. His brain tunes it out unless he thinks about it.

      • It's just something that has become constant internal background noise over the years. I don't know about anyone else with mechanical heart valves, but I'm constantly aware of mine and am so used to it that it doesn't bother me. I assume my brain tunes it out, but I'm not sure because I don't think about that.

  • I was kidnapped (by a parent) as a kid.

    • Story? Don't feel pressured if you don't want to but since you brought it up I'm guessing you're OK with talking about it

      • I was 7, my dad woke me up at like 10 pm, told me to come with to the neighbors across the street. I'm gonna stay the night with my friend. Get there, we hang for like 2 hours, it's after midnight and he tells me we're leaving.

        "You said we were staying the night"

        "it's after midnight, we did stay the night"

        My dad is a big fan of technically true statemelies like that.

        He put us on a bus, and took us from Chesapeake, Virginia to Columbia, South Carolina, where we're originally from. We were there for about 2 months. I was with family, and cared for, and not abused or anything. But it was still scary. I knew my phone number, but it was the late 90s, and you didn't need to know the area code to call local, so I didn't know it. My dad had instructed everyone not to tell me. I couldn't talk to my mom or brother, and that scared me really badly. While I was there, my mom and brother both had a really terrible flu, no money (and by no money I mean none. They delivered papers for income, and my dad did tree work when he felt like it.). They couldn't afford the gas to come get me, even after my cousin helped me figure out the area code to call them.

        From my point of the view at the time, it was framed as like, a trip home to see Grandma, but being away from my mom and brother, and not being allowed to speak to them, was really scary. Not to mention frustrating. I knew I was being lied to, and having things kept from me, and I didn't appreciate it. I started having panic attacks at night when it came to go to sleep, and they lasted until my late 20s. Like, almost every night. I had to learn breathing exercises and shit to deal with them in my teens. It's wild the shit that can be traumatic. I was safe. I was with my father, and my grandma (although, she was whole other piece of work), and I got to hang out with my older cousin who was good to me, even though her sister was a complete bitch. But it seriously damaged for a long time. I still have unresolved issues about it, and pretty severe separation anxiety and shit. I'm like a shelter dog sometimes. Lmao When the panic attacks started my aunt told me it was because I ate chocolate, and no one would believe me that it wasn't just, like, heartburn or something. They were real, and I didn't learn what they were until I was like 16, because panic attacks aren't, like, typical presentation. They're weird. Everything feels the wrong size. Like my hands feel tiny, or my teeth feel enormous. The bed feels like it's the size of an ocean, or the phone I'm using to distract myself feels like a matchbook in my hands. Just a whole bunch of shit. I guess I never really got past it.

        But my mom got us a hamster when I got back, so that was cool. They found it in the driveway, and we named him Clyde. Later a neighbor rehomed theirs with us, and we renamed her Bonnie.

        ... Then Bonnie chewed through her enclosure and Bonnie ate Clyde, so altogether pretty shitty. Lmao

    • Oh wow, I just told a story above about my friend who was kidnapped by his dad.

      https://lemmy.world/comment/14534609

      Also I know you're not him for anyone who asks. He's not on Lemmy even though I keep telling him he'll like it. He won't get off Reddit. Drives me nuts.

      • That's wild!

        My story isn't that crazy. I feel weird/kind of guilty talking about like sometimes, because I know how much worse situations like that are for most people who have been through it. But you can't help the shit that fucked you up in childhood. Lol

        Does your buddy still have contact with his dad?

  • When I used to be spiritual I had a very small cult following of 12 people whose extreme believe in my lies actually showed me how frigthening Religion is.

    • Go on...

      • His name was Derek. But he went by 'the Prophet' when times were good, or 'the Law Giver' when times were bad.

        I moved onto his prayer farm with 45 other members of the Salvation Star Boys, who died in a mass suicide. But not me. 'Cause I don't like root beer. And I only drink what I like.

        After it was all over, I called Lois to pick me up. She was mad. But she's what Derek calls an Oppressing Doubter.

        May the light of Derek's Invincible Diamond shine through you.

      • Okay, found some time. First some background, what actually happened at the bottom.

        Background on me

        At the time (before smartphones and useful Wikipedia) I subscribed to some vague new-age gods-and-auras-and-spirits-and-energy beliefs loosely based on Germanic Neopaganism with some modern Druidry flavors. But I knew I was just going through the motions. I wanted it to be real and I wanted magic to exist, but I was also quite educated and no matter how much "knowledge" of the subject I acquired, I was still a little bit conscious of the fact that I was just a teenager/young adult lying to myself.

        Background on the situation

        I was charismatic, convincing, a compulsive liar and a horny teenage asshole. I was also the leader of a big guild on an active Ultima Online roleplay server that had quite a couple of attractive female players which I, through some very convenient coincidences, had convinced that there must be something true about my beliefs and my claims of shamanism.

        For example: I often had long talks with one of the players, often deep into the night and one time she asked me to pay her an astral visit, if I was able to astral-project, and tell her stuff about her room, so she could verify. I now know that what I did then was basically cold reading her answers and being vague enough that she could interpret everything I said as accurate. She was impressed.

        The piece de resistance was a lucky coincidence. To scare her a little and impress her more, I made something up about there being somebody with her in the room, not necessarily in the physical world, but that there was a presence there with her. She denied that for some time, got even angry as she caught on that I might be lying to her (I actually tried to imply it might be a spirit)... until the cat that never, never enters her room appeared behind the curtains and meowed at her.

        This completely turned her anger into awe.

        She hadn't know the cat was there, the cat never got into her room except that night, I had "known" something about her room that she didn't... she could not explain that. So her explanation was: He really visited me, he really has some magic powers. And she told the story to everyone in the guild, earning me more awe from the other players. I on the other hand knew that I had completely made that shit up and hit the jackpot through sheer luck... but the taste of all their awe felt soooo good. So I, with more lucky coincidences, more cold reading, more confident lying and just being charismatic slowly got into the heads of my guildmates and enjoyed all the attention of the girls. My character basically acquired a harem for naughty roleplay and I would try to do the same.

        My chance arrived at the IRL-camping trip meetup.

        What happened

        It was supposed to be a fun trip, a weekend of camping with friends and guildmates, meeting the people we only ever interacted online with, some booze, some barbeque, a warm summer night under the stars. It started out great, we talked and talked and had lots of fun, drank a lot, smoked (no weed), danced around a fire. Sometime around evening I found myself surrounded by my guild talking about spiritual bunk that I mostly just made up on the spot. Viking pyramids, Ley lines, my ability to sense dark and bright presences, shit like that. My goal was to impress the girls and maybe scare one or two a little, so I could later protect them from evil spirits by inviting them to my tent... again some lucky coincidences lent me a hand.

        We saw a meteor that night, and I don't just mean like a tiny falling star, we saw a big-ass chunk of rock break apart in the atmosphere and burn up in a bright orange fireball.

        Later we had a stroll around the local lake and I kept insisting that there was some bright energy coming from the lake but that a dark presence was gathering at a little wooded area in front of us. I don't know what actually was in there, most likely some roe deer or maybe wild hogs, but when we got close a wind from behind us blew towards the forest and made it shiver just a little, we made two steps more and then the little forest started shaking violently. I think whatever animal had hidden in there just fled, but the others were instantly convinced that I had known there was something and that we should not go that way and that it would come after them.

        This was a breaking point for some. As the night fell, booze and crowd dynamics took over, mass hallucinations set in as the mood turned from a relaxed, happy, cozy evening to frightened paranoia. I can't tell you how scary it is if you make up a neat little ghost story and feel in control of the things people believe, try to (mildly) scare some girls into your tent when suddenly people take it seriously, take it up and absolutely massively run with it, starting to create their own narrative. They suddenly started seeing things in every little thing. A crying fox to them suddenly was the death cry of a women who had drowned in the lake. We actually didn't know if someone had ever drowned in it, but they just as ready made things up and believed them as I had made them up... only I had known it was bunk, I was in control... they were not.

        It was scary, I was suddenly left the only sane person around, they clung to me, asked me a thousand things and every answer I gave, no matter how reassuring it was meant was turned into something frightening. It was very Life of Brian ("I'm not the messiah!" - "Only the messiah would deny to be the messiah!" - "Ok, I am the messiah." - "He said it, he IS the messiah!!!")... No matter what I did to get it back under control their beliefs had escaped me and group dynamics meant it spiraled out of control. The evening was lost. Two people just left and I spend the night with 3 guys and 8 girls on the (apart from us) empty campground, the mood was bad, frightened, my idea to get girls into my tent had worked but there was no thinking about anything naughty. All of them shivered, were deathly afraid, paranoid and some were sobbing... And I was the only one who knew that I had caused that, with lies. I had ruined their weekend, frightened them to the core, I had hurt people who believed in me, looked at me with awe and I myself spend the rest of the night and some of the next morning afraid that some might start hurting themselves.

        It was the most impressive example of group dynamics I have ever witnessed, it was extremely scary and I am absolutely certain that this is exactly how religions start... somebody lies and suddenly everything gets out of hand as others take up the ball and run with it, only they don't know that it's all just made up.

  • I'm so sorry that some people in this thread have much worse nightmares than I have. I don't recall having any nightmares that you might call visually grotesque.

    When I was in High School, I apparently discovered that looking at a person signals interest in the person, and that it's possible to look at something in this way on accident, or at least without conscious planning. From this I concluded into a mild obsession to basically be conscious of what I am looking at at almost every point in time. In hindsight, it feels kind of like the "you are now breathing manually" meme. This basically only happened with two people, along with it slightly reinforcing my bias against looking at girls, because I'm probably gay anyway, let them not get any ideas.* (this thought is completely stupid in any other way than being moderately considerate. it probably didn't do anything anyway, because I'm not very socially active and had approximately 1-2 friends.)

    • The girl who sat on the mirror-opposite side of the room from me in math class, which, If I didn't change seats on purpose, which I did when possible, basically put her in the center of my default field of view when not looking at the teacher. (Seating and desk arrangements in my country are very exciting.) She was really good at staring back, which is basically why I noticed that people care when they're being looked at. I don't really know whether she did this on purpose. I had nothing in common with her that would count as knowing her personally, but we did look pretty similar, so much that some people just told me this without being asked. She's the only person wearing a tie on one of the photos from graduation. I didn't feel a legitimate reason to care much, but basically, I cared because of how much I was constantly thinking about not looking at her. To my friend, I expressed myself as being kind of scared of her, though I never really said that I was scared that anyone capable of critisizing me would find out how much space this bullshit took up in my mind sometimes, or misrepresent this as being attracted or something. I also remember believing at some point that she was behind me on my way to school, (in some parts of europe, people bike to school,) as well as just actually seeing her on some paths beyond doubt, and thinking a moderate amount about what path she takes the least, which might just have been all of them, because of how rarely I saw her on the way.
    • The other guy isn't really at fault or anything. He's still really nice to be with now that I've gotten over this somewhat, though I see him rarely, which probably contributed to the brainworms spreading.

    *(I cultivate an off-internet bonus genre of brainworms where being asexual reinforces my faux-antiquated fear of being perceived as attracted to someone, which may or may not make sense)

  • This whole thread could use a whole lot more of spoiler tags and Content Warning. And I shouldn't have read all these stories. Luckily, I noticed my anxiety soon enough and just stopped.

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