Sugar maple cabins pigeon forge
Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
2018.09.05 00:24 AbsolutTBomb Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
A subreddit for Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
2012.01.03 11:53 AbsolutTBomb Gatlinburg
A subreddit for Gatlinburg, Tennessee
2012.10.16 03:42 Miikeymt Townsend, Tennessee
A subreddit for Townsend, Tennessee
2023.05.28 07:37 Mantis_Shrimp47 Blackberries in an Open Grave
My grandmother, Ida, loves to talk. She'll tell stories for days, but she only told me this story once, and never spoke about it again.
There’s an abandoned steel skeleton on the other side of the cemetery where Ida grew up. It used to be a cell tower, or maybe it was for power lines; there’s no way to tell now. The blackberry plants are still there, though. They twist around the places where the metal still disappears into the dirt, the beams sunk deep into the ground despite the way the whole structure has fallen sideways into the grass. The graves are in almost the same state of disrepair, with most of the names scrubbed away by the rain and the wind. But there’s one heads tone that still gleams like it did on the day it was made, the marble cast with shifting shadows from the sugar-maple tree that looms over it. Charlotte Telor is etched into it, along with beloved.
Charlotte’s mother, Ida, is eighty-three now. She can barely walk from all the cancers that have left her body weak, and she hobbles along with one hand on her husband's shoulder and one hand on mine. She kneels in front of Sharon’s tomb and prays over it, then puts down new flowers to replace the old ones. She comes here so often that the previous flowers still look almost fresh. When Ina gets up, she has a stinging nettle rash on her right knee and an oak gall stuck to her sweater.
They’d pick the blackberries, Charlotte and Ida, back when the tower was still standing proud over the cemetery. Charlotte loved to gather up a handful of berries and put one at the foot of every grave, with a pause between each to eat one herself, of course. She thought that each patch of dirt contained an angel, and she could gain their favor by feeding them. She picked up bits of tombstones and tried to fit the puzzle pieces back together, even when the graves looked like nothing more than a bare patch of dirt.
Ida goes to church every Sunday and puts her whole heart into it, singing as loud as her throat can manage, even when it hurts her. She bakes bread once a month to share at the community dinners, donates candles for Christmas service, and is generally a pillar of the Spartanburg community.
“They all came over when Charlotte died,” Ida told me. “All of my friends, every single one of them.” She didn’t spend a moment alone, and she didn’t have to cook for herself for a month. There was a collection sent around, the following Sunday, to pay for Charlotte's medical bills.
It started when Charlotte started walking around hunched over, her arms wrapped tight around her stomach. When she started vomiting and didn’t stop, Ida took her to the emergency room in their old car, rattling over the potholes at seventy miles an hour. They were sent away at the emergency room, though, because Charlotte wasn’t crying and it was busy. Another day passed. Charlotte grew more and more sick. They went back to the emergency room, and finally talked to a doctor.
The doctor looked her over, pressed on her belly, and then went silent. He picked her up and took her into the next room without a single word, except to brush off the secretary.
“They need to sign in,” the secretary said.
“No time,” the doctor answered, his voice still deathly quiet.
Ida doesn’t remember what happened after that. It’s lost to her in a haze of grief and people running. All she knows is that her baby died from a burst appendix because she was sent away the first time they went to the doctor. Charlotte was two years old. She was buried in the same cemetery that she used to hunt for blackberries in.
“She didn’t cry,” Ida said. “The whole time, she didn’t cry. The doctors told me that she must have had such a massive tolerance for pain.”
But my grandmother tells me something different.
"I saw them take her," Ida says. "The demons. They crawled out of the graves and killed Charlotte's blackberry angels."
According to Ida, she didn't cry because the demons had stuffed their claim into her mouth, gagged her on their rotting flesh and planted their poison in her.
“The God that I know is a loving God,” Ina said. "I don't know how he could let that happen. It just slipped by his notice, I guess."
She is eighty-three years old and losing a child is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her. Her confession to me, in an ashamed whisper, is that she can only keep going because she knows that she will see Charlotte again, one way or another. She's been catching glimpses of the demons out of the corners of her eyes for decades.
submitted by Mantis_Shrimp47 to nosleep [link] [comments]
There’s an abandoned steel skeleton on the other side of the cemetery where Ida grew up. It used to be a cell tower, or maybe it was for power lines; there’s no way to tell now. The blackberry plants are still there, though. They twist around the places where the metal still disappears into the dirt, the beams sunk deep into the ground despite the way the whole structure has fallen sideways into the grass. The graves are in almost the same state of disrepair, with most of the names scrubbed away by the rain and the wind. But there’s one heads tone that still gleams like it did on the day it was made, the marble cast with shifting shadows from the sugar-maple tree that looms over it. Charlotte Telor is etched into it, along with beloved.
Charlotte’s mother, Ida, is eighty-three now. She can barely walk from all the cancers that have left her body weak, and she hobbles along with one hand on her husband's shoulder and one hand on mine. She kneels in front of Sharon’s tomb and prays over it, then puts down new flowers to replace the old ones. She comes here so often that the previous flowers still look almost fresh. When Ina gets up, she has a stinging nettle rash on her right knee and an oak gall stuck to her sweater.
They’d pick the blackberries, Charlotte and Ida, back when the tower was still standing proud over the cemetery. Charlotte loved to gather up a handful of berries and put one at the foot of every grave, with a pause between each to eat one herself, of course. She thought that each patch of dirt contained an angel, and she could gain their favor by feeding them. She picked up bits of tombstones and tried to fit the puzzle pieces back together, even when the graves looked like nothing more than a bare patch of dirt.
Ida goes to church every Sunday and puts her whole heart into it, singing as loud as her throat can manage, even when it hurts her. She bakes bread once a month to share at the community dinners, donates candles for Christmas service, and is generally a pillar of the Spartanburg community.
“They all came over when Charlotte died,” Ida told me. “All of my friends, every single one of them.” She didn’t spend a moment alone, and she didn’t have to cook for herself for a month. There was a collection sent around, the following Sunday, to pay for Charlotte's medical bills.
It started when Charlotte started walking around hunched over, her arms wrapped tight around her stomach. When she started vomiting and didn’t stop, Ida took her to the emergency room in their old car, rattling over the potholes at seventy miles an hour. They were sent away at the emergency room, though, because Charlotte wasn’t crying and it was busy. Another day passed. Charlotte grew more and more sick. They went back to the emergency room, and finally talked to a doctor.
The doctor looked her over, pressed on her belly, and then went silent. He picked her up and took her into the next room without a single word, except to brush off the secretary.
“They need to sign in,” the secretary said.
“No time,” the doctor answered, his voice still deathly quiet.
Ida doesn’t remember what happened after that. It’s lost to her in a haze of grief and people running. All she knows is that her baby died from a burst appendix because she was sent away the first time they went to the doctor. Charlotte was two years old. She was buried in the same cemetery that she used to hunt for blackberries in.
“She didn’t cry,” Ida said. “The whole time, she didn’t cry. The doctors told me that she must have had such a massive tolerance for pain.”
But my grandmother tells me something different.
"I saw them take her," Ida says. "The demons. They crawled out of the graves and killed Charlotte's blackberry angels."
According to Ida, she didn't cry because the demons had stuffed their claim into her mouth, gagged her on their rotting flesh and planted their poison in her.
“The God that I know is a loving God,” Ina said. "I don't know how he could let that happen. It just slipped by his notice, I guess."
She is eighty-three years old and losing a child is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her. Her confession to me, in an ashamed whisper, is that she can only keep going because she knows that she will see Charlotte again, one way or another. She's been catching glimpses of the demons out of the corners of her eyes for decades.
2023.05.28 07:36 Mantis_Shrimp47 Blackberries in an Open Grave
There’s an abandoned steel skeleton on the other side of the cemetery. It used to be a cell tower, or maybe it was for power lines; there’s no way to tell now. The blackberry plants are still there, though. They twist around the places where the metal still disappears into the dirt, the beams sunk deep into the ground despite the way the whole structure has fallen sideways into the grass. The graves are in almost the same state of disrepair, with most of the names scrubbed away by the rain and the wind. But there’s one heads tone that still gleams like it did on the day it was made, the marble cast with shifting shadows from the sugar-maple tree that looms over it. Charlotte Telor is etched into it, along with beloved.
Charlotte’s mother, Ida, my grandmother, is eighty-three now. She can barely walk from all the cancers that have left her body weak, and she hobbles along with one hand on her husband's shoulder and one hand on mine. She kneels in front of Sharon’s tomb and prays over it, then puts down new flowers to replace the old ones. She comes here so often that the previous flowers still look almost fresh. When Ina gets up, she has a stinging nettle rash on her right knee and an oak gall stuck to her sweater.
They’d pick the blackberries, Charlotte and Ida, back when the tower was still standing proud over the cemetery. Charlotte loved to gather up a handful of berries and put one at the foot of every grave, with a pause between each to eat one herself, of course. She thought that each patch of dirt contained an angel, and she could gain their favor by feeding them. She picked up bits of tombstones and tried to fit the puzzle pieces back together, even when the graves looked like nothing more than a bare patch of dirt.
Ida goes to church every Sunday and puts her whole heart into it, singing as loud as her throat can manage, even when it hurts her. She bakes bread once a month to share at the community dinners, donates candles for Christmas service, and is generally a pillar of the Spartanburg community.
“They all came over when Charlotte died,” Ida told me. “All of my friends, every single one of them.” She didn’t spend a moment alone, and she didn’t have to cook for herself for a month. There was a collection sent around, the following Sunday, to pay for Charlotte's medical bills.
It started when Charlotte started walking around hunched over, her arms wrapped tight around her stomach. When she started vomiting and didn’t stop, Ida took her to the emergency room in their old car, rattling over the potholes at seventy miles an hour. They were sent away at the emergency room, though, because Charlotte wasn’t crying and it was busy. Another day passed. Charlotte grew more and more sick. They went back to the emergency room, and finally talked to a doctor.
The doctor looked her over, pressed on her belly, and then went silent. He picked her up and took her into the next room without a single word, except to brush off the secretary.
“They need to sign in,” the secretary said.
“No time,” the doctor answered, his voice still deathly quiet.
Ida doesn’t remember what happened after that. It’s lost to her in a haze of grief and people running. All she knows is that her baby died from a burst appendix because she was sent away the first time they went to the doctor. Charlotte was two years old. She was buried in the same cemetery that she used to hunt for blackberries in.
“She didn’t cry,” Ida said. “The whole time, she didn’t cry. The doctors told me that she must have had such a massive tolerance for pain.”
But my grandmother tells me something different. "I saw them take her," Ida says. "The demons. They crawled out of the graves and killed Charlotte's blackberry angels."
According to Ida, she didn't cry because the demons had stuffed their claim into her mouth, gagged her on their rotting flesh and planted their poison in her.
“The God that I know is a loving God,” Ina said. "I don't know how he could let that happen."
She is eighty-three years old and losing a child is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her. Her confession to me, in an ashamed whisper, is that she can only keep going because she knows that she will see Charlotte again, one way or another. She's been catching glimpses of the demons out of the corners of her eyes for decades.
submitted by Mantis_Shrimp47 to u/Mantis_Shrimp47 [link] [comments]
Charlotte’s mother, Ida, my grandmother, is eighty-three now. She can barely walk from all the cancers that have left her body weak, and she hobbles along with one hand on her husband's shoulder and one hand on mine. She kneels in front of Sharon’s tomb and prays over it, then puts down new flowers to replace the old ones. She comes here so often that the previous flowers still look almost fresh. When Ina gets up, she has a stinging nettle rash on her right knee and an oak gall stuck to her sweater.
They’d pick the blackberries, Charlotte and Ida, back when the tower was still standing proud over the cemetery. Charlotte loved to gather up a handful of berries and put one at the foot of every grave, with a pause between each to eat one herself, of course. She thought that each patch of dirt contained an angel, and she could gain their favor by feeding them. She picked up bits of tombstones and tried to fit the puzzle pieces back together, even when the graves looked like nothing more than a bare patch of dirt.
Ida goes to church every Sunday and puts her whole heart into it, singing as loud as her throat can manage, even when it hurts her. She bakes bread once a month to share at the community dinners, donates candles for Christmas service, and is generally a pillar of the Spartanburg community.
“They all came over when Charlotte died,” Ida told me. “All of my friends, every single one of them.” She didn’t spend a moment alone, and she didn’t have to cook for herself for a month. There was a collection sent around, the following Sunday, to pay for Charlotte's medical bills.
It started when Charlotte started walking around hunched over, her arms wrapped tight around her stomach. When she started vomiting and didn’t stop, Ida took her to the emergency room in their old car, rattling over the potholes at seventy miles an hour. They were sent away at the emergency room, though, because Charlotte wasn’t crying and it was busy. Another day passed. Charlotte grew more and more sick. They went back to the emergency room, and finally talked to a doctor.
The doctor looked her over, pressed on her belly, and then went silent. He picked her up and took her into the next room without a single word, except to brush off the secretary.
“They need to sign in,” the secretary said.
“No time,” the doctor answered, his voice still deathly quiet.
Ida doesn’t remember what happened after that. It’s lost to her in a haze of grief and people running. All she knows is that her baby died from a burst appendix because she was sent away the first time they went to the doctor. Charlotte was two years old. She was buried in the same cemetery that she used to hunt for blackberries in.
“She didn’t cry,” Ida said. “The whole time, she didn’t cry. The doctors told me that she must have had such a massive tolerance for pain.”
But my grandmother tells me something different. "I saw them take her," Ida says. "The demons. They crawled out of the graves and killed Charlotte's blackberry angels."
According to Ida, she didn't cry because the demons had stuffed their claim into her mouth, gagged her on their rotting flesh and planted their poison in her.
“The God that I know is a loving God,” Ina said. "I don't know how he could let that happen."
She is eighty-three years old and losing a child is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her. Her confession to me, in an ashamed whisper, is that she can only keep going because she knows that she will see Charlotte again, one way or another. She's been catching glimpses of the demons out of the corners of her eyes for decades.
2023.05.28 03:50 Typo_Matser Play on "The Color in Your Cheeks." Need a name
 | 1 oz Fernet 1 oz Bourbon .75 oz Lemon .5 oz Apple Syrup .25 oz Maple Syrup submitted by Typo_Matser to cocktails [link] [comments] Cinnamon Stick Garnish Shake over ice, serve in coupe. |
2023.05.28 03:47 ColeMorrigan Is this really gluten free? “No gluten added” kind freaks me out 🫡
submitted by ColeMorrigan to glutenfree [link] [comments]
2023.05.28 03:11 androstars Cinnamon sugar eggs and SF maple syrup
 | Wanted a high protein dessert. Am broke so I can't buy protein snacks. My compromise: this shit. About 150-200 calories, I wanna say? submitted by androstars to ShittyRestrictionFood [link] [comments] |
2023.05.28 03:10 TexasRanger6455 Bald Patch with Mushrooms
 | Hi everyone - I'm new to lawncare with my new house and attempting to fix a large bald spot in the front yard. The bald spot has mushrooms - the mushrooms grow nowhere else in my front or back yard (except within a few feet of the bald spot). I've read mushrooms aren't harmful for the lawn, so I don't really mind them I just don't know why they are in the bald spot. There is a large sugar maple tree (30ft-40ft tall) about 5 feet from the bald spot in good health. The bald spot was there coming out of the winter months. Denver CO area. submitted by TexasRanger6455 to lawncare [link] [comments] What I've done/am doing:
Can anyone identify what kind of grass I have for future knowledge? And I promise I'm not eating the mushrooms. https://preview.redd.it/1tq7dty63h2b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8df9172831994747e715e625ea225a9fc4871040 https://preview.redd.it/almrzqy63h2b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e1bb8ad7983076defe8b28389bc38e850f884bf5 https://preview.redd.it/fuf8jry63h2b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be7bc1eee40b1ebd22497015ad12bdc3d6cb0e5a |
2023.05.28 01:57 kokie777 Watching carpenter ants migrate from maple tree to garage
Hi folks,
I had a carpenter ant problem a couple of years ago. Had a pro come spray a few times and seemed to do the trick. Didn’t see any activity last summer.
Fast forward to this summer. I have a really old sugar maple tree that the city owns and is refusing to cut down. I’m basically watching ants migrate from the tree and across the driveway to my garage door frame.
Anything I can do to stop them in their tracks? I’m in Canada so limited on what I can buy but I do have leftover advion gel that I put near the entrance.
Trying to figure out if there’s a way to confuse the rest from following.
Thx
submitted by kokie777 to pestcontrol [link] [comments]
I had a carpenter ant problem a couple of years ago. Had a pro come spray a few times and seemed to do the trick. Didn’t see any activity last summer.
Fast forward to this summer. I have a really old sugar maple tree that the city owns and is refusing to cut down. I’m basically watching ants migrate from the tree and across the driveway to my garage door frame.
Anything I can do to stop them in their tracks? I’m in Canada so limited on what I can buy but I do have leftover advion gel that I put near the entrance.
Trying to figure out if there’s a way to confuse the rest from following.
Thx
2023.05.28 01:28 MapleWalnutToast I have a ladybug Dot! Feel free to add me :)
 | submitted by MapleWalnutToast to peridotpets [link] [comments] |
2023.05.28 01:21 kescott Prognosis for a (sugar?) maple?
submitted by kescott to arborists [link] [comments]
2023.05.28 00:19 ChillenDylan3530 Stopped by Pepper Palace on the Island at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. They had samples, and this stuff had a ton of heat, but amazing flavor! If I didn’t have to fly home I would 100% of bought a few bottles!
 | submitted by ChillenDylan3530 to spicy [link] [comments] |
2023.05.27 22:53 Dad2BInsideU 28 [M4F] #Midwest- Curious to see if women still look for men who homestead in these trying times.
Welcome back to another day of surfing posts and looking to see if you can find a decent guy, I mean surely they exist somewhere don't they? You see couples all the time and people are having babies and making families and seriously... Why are they so damn hard to find? It's like every time I talk to a decent guy he is married or dating somebody.
Well for once, there is a single guy out looking to see who wants to say hi? A little bit about me in case you were wondering, I'm a bit of a nerd, a handy man, and a craftsman. I enjoy things from games, books, and movies; to gardening, sewing, and working in the forge. I bowl and swim and hike, but also just enjoy moonlit strolls and candle light baths. I suppose I'm a bit of a romantic.
When Im not working, I'm usually tending to the house, got that homesteader mentality. Really like the self sufficiency and being an independent concept. I've a soft spot for cottage and fairy tale style cabin concepts, take me to the ren fair and watch me giggle like a school girl.
What I'm looking for is a girl who is honest and open, but caring. I know that seems to be hard to find in both guys and girls, but I promise we are out there. I'm a family oriented type, so I hope you are ok with the idea of having kids. Hardworking, big dreams, and a heart so big even Grug will have a hard time giving it a hug in his cave drawings.
My discoveries have led me here and there and I've quite the open mind for exploring so I hope you are up for an adventure. If you feel that spark for the nerdy Milo Thatch come say hello, though I'll be honest getting a hug from Joshua Sweet and those big oh Dr arms... Woof. Makes a man want to work out just to get some quality cuddle times.
submitted by Dad2BInsideU to ImpregPersonalsReal [link] [comments]
Well for once, there is a single guy out looking to see who wants to say hi? A little bit about me in case you were wondering, I'm a bit of a nerd, a handy man, and a craftsman. I enjoy things from games, books, and movies; to gardening, sewing, and working in the forge. I bowl and swim and hike, but also just enjoy moonlit strolls and candle light baths. I suppose I'm a bit of a romantic.
When Im not working, I'm usually tending to the house, got that homesteader mentality. Really like the self sufficiency and being an independent concept. I've a soft spot for cottage and fairy tale style cabin concepts, take me to the ren fair and watch me giggle like a school girl.
What I'm looking for is a girl who is honest and open, but caring. I know that seems to be hard to find in both guys and girls, but I promise we are out there. I'm a family oriented type, so I hope you are ok with the idea of having kids. Hardworking, big dreams, and a heart so big even Grug will have a hard time giving it a hug in his cave drawings.
My discoveries have led me here and there and I've quite the open mind for exploring so I hope you are up for an adventure. If you feel that spark for the nerdy Milo Thatch come say hello, though I'll be honest getting a hug from Joshua Sweet and those big oh Dr arms... Woof. Makes a man want to work out just to get some quality cuddle times.
2023.05.27 22:52 Dad2BInsideU 28 [M4F] #Midwest- Curious to see if women still look for men who homestead in these trying times.
Welcome back to another day of surfing posts and looking to see if you can find a decent guy, I mean surely they exist somewhere don't they? You see couples all the time and people are having babies and making families and seriously... Why are they so damn hard to find? It's like every time I talk to a decent guy he is married or dating somebody.
Well for once, there is a single guy out looking to see who wants to say hi? A little bit about me in case you were wondering, I'm a bit of a nerd, a handy man, and a craftsman. I enjoy things from games, books, and movies; to gardening, sewing, and working in the forge. I bowl and swim and hike, but also just enjoy moonlit strolls and candle light baths. I suppose I'm a bit of a romantic.
When Im not working, I'm usually tending to the house, got that homesteader mentality. Really like the self sufficiency and being an independent concept. I've a soft spot for cottage and fairy tale style cabin concepts, take me to the ren fair and watch me giggle like a school girl.
What I'm looking for is a girl who is honest and open, but caring. I know that seems to be hard to find in both guys and girls, but I promise we are out there. I'm a family oriented type, so I hope you are ok with the idea of having kids. Hardworking, big dreams, and a heart so big even Grug will have a hard time giving it a hug in his cave drawings.
My discoveries have led me here and there and I've quite the open mind for exploring so I hope you are up for an adventure. If you feel that spark for the nerdy Milo Thatch come say hello, though I'll be honest getting a hug from Joshua Sweet and those big oh Dr arms... Woof. Makes a man want to work out just to get some quality cuddle times.
submitted by Dad2BInsideU to AgeGapPersonals [link] [comments]
Well for once, there is a single guy out looking to see who wants to say hi? A little bit about me in case you were wondering, I'm a bit of a nerd, a handy man, and a craftsman. I enjoy things from games, books, and movies; to gardening, sewing, and working in the forge. I bowl and swim and hike, but also just enjoy moonlit strolls and candle light baths. I suppose I'm a bit of a romantic.
When Im not working, I'm usually tending to the house, got that homesteader mentality. Really like the self sufficiency and being an independent concept. I've a soft spot for cottage and fairy tale style cabin concepts, take me to the ren fair and watch me giggle like a school girl.
What I'm looking for is a girl who is honest and open, but caring. I know that seems to be hard to find in both guys and girls, but I promise we are out there. I'm a family oriented type, so I hope you are ok with the idea of having kids. Hardworking, big dreams, and a heart so big even Grug will have a hard time giving it a hug in his cave drawings.
My discoveries have led me here and there and I've quite the open mind for exploring so I hope you are up for an adventure. If you feel that spark for the nerdy Milo Thatch come say hello, though I'll be honest getting a hug from Joshua Sweet and those big oh Dr arms... Woof. Makes a man want to work out just to get some quality cuddle times.
2023.05.27 22:52 Dad2BInsideU 28 [M4F] #Midwest- Curious to see if women still look for men who homestead in these trying times.
Welcome back to another day of surfing posts and looking to see if you can find a decent guy, I mean surely they exist somewhere don't they? You see couples all the time and people are having babies and making families and seriously... Why are they so damn hard to find? It's like every time I talk to a decent guy he is married or dating somebody.
Well for once, there is a single guy out looking to see who wants to say hi? A little bit about me in case you were wondering, I'm a bit of a nerd, a handy man, and a craftsman. I enjoy things from games, books, and movies; to gardening, sewing, and working in the forge. I bowl and swim and hike, but also just enjoy moonlit strolls and candle light baths. I suppose I'm a bit of a romantic.
When Im not working, I'm usually tending to the house, got that homesteader mentality. Really like the self sufficiency and being an independent concept. I've a soft spot for cottage and fairy tale style cabin concepts, take me to the ren fair and watch me giggle like a school girl.
What I'm looking for is a girl who is honest and open, but caring. I know that seems to be hard to find in both guys and girls, but I promise we are out there. I'm a family oriented type, so I hope you are ok with the idea of having kids. Hardworking, big dreams, and a heart so big even Grug will have a hard time giving it a hug in his cave drawings.
My discoveries have led me here and there and I've quite the open mind for exploring so I hope you are up for an adventure. If you feel that spark for the nerdy Milo Thatch come say hello, though I'll be honest getting a hug from Joshua Sweet and those big oh Dr arms... Woof. Makes a man want to work out just to get some quality cuddle times.
submitted by Dad2BInsideU to BreedingR4R [link] [comments]
Well for once, there is a single guy out looking to see who wants to say hi? A little bit about me in case you were wondering, I'm a bit of a nerd, a handy man, and a craftsman. I enjoy things from games, books, and movies; to gardening, sewing, and working in the forge. I bowl and swim and hike, but also just enjoy moonlit strolls and candle light baths. I suppose I'm a bit of a romantic.
When Im not working, I'm usually tending to the house, got that homesteader mentality. Really like the self sufficiency and being an independent concept. I've a soft spot for cottage and fairy tale style cabin concepts, take me to the ren fair and watch me giggle like a school girl.
What I'm looking for is a girl who is honest and open, but caring. I know that seems to be hard to find in both guys and girls, but I promise we are out there. I'm a family oriented type, so I hope you are ok with the idea of having kids. Hardworking, big dreams, and a heart so big even Grug will have a hard time giving it a hug in his cave drawings.
My discoveries have led me here and there and I've quite the open mind for exploring so I hope you are up for an adventure. If you feel that spark for the nerdy Milo Thatch come say hello, though I'll be honest getting a hug from Joshua Sweet and those big oh Dr arms... Woof. Makes a man want to work out just to get some quality cuddle times.
2023.05.27 22:43 Greco1974 Nature's Hollow, Sugar-Free Maple Flavored Syrup, Non GMO, Keto Friendly, Vegan and Gluten Free - 10 Ounce
submitted by Greco1974 to u/Greco1974 [link] [comments]
2023.05.27 21:51 Cheesecake_Vast Flat lay for eras tour today ✨💜🥳
 | Gotta add some sparkle for ms swift today ✨ hopefully the makeup lasts 🙏🏼 submitted by Cheesecake_Vast to makeupflatlays [link] [comments] |
2023.05.27 21:09 kavyaorganicfarm 13 Best Health Benefits of Chia Seeds
 | submitted by kavyaorganicfarm to u/kavyaorganicfarm [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/5malne3p8f2b1.jpg?width=1070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=50b5f413832343dc2173f7ae07fa7804f9f4e15a
The specific nutrients found in chia seeds, such as omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, and antioxidants, provide several benefits. Omega-3 fatty acids support heart health, reduce inflammation, and promote brain function. The high fiber content aids in digestion, supports bowel regularity, and helps control blood sugar levels. Antioxidants help protect the body against free radicals and oxidative stress, reducing the risk of chronic diseases. While chia seeds' nutritional profile is certainly impressive, it's important to note that no single food can provide all the necessary nutrients for optimal health. A balanced diet consisting of a variety of nutrient-rich foods is key. Nonetheless, incorporating chia seeds into your diet can be a valuable addition to enhance overall nutrition and well-being.
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2023.05.27 21:06 Trash_Tia Camp Redwood are running out of counsellors! These children ARE NOT CHILDREN.
In hindsight, I should have listened to the kill-bill alarm bells in my head when eight-year-old Cassie announced she and her cabin mates were going to skip out on camp activities and play Operation instead.
Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks behind his copy of some pretentious novel I didn’t know of. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to lepe his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!
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Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks behind his copy of some pretentious novel I didn’t know of. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to lepe his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!
2023.05.27 19:51 No_Competition4897 [HIRING] 25 Jobs in TN Hiring Now!
2023.05.27 19:36 No_Competition4897 [HIRING] 25 Jobs in TN Hiring Now!
2023.05.27 18:18 Maleficent-Half8752 Fast growing sugar maple
 | I'm pretty excited about my baby sugar maple. I planted this guy last July (10 months ago) and it has grown this much. No fertilizers, just compost added to soil when I planted it. I thought Sugar Maples were supposed to be slow-moderate growers. submitted by Maleficent-Half8752 to OrganicGardening [link] [comments] |
2023.05.27 17:04 Mia0900 Baked maple pecan banana oatmeal, with brown sugar and syrup
 | submitted by Mia0900 to BreakfastFood [link] [comments] |
2023.05.27 15:29 seannestor This Week in Toledo 5/27/23
 | submitted by seannestor to toledo [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/32d43h3c3f2b1.png?width=780&format=png&auto=webp&s=91e4b6f7ca7c261a16baaa4f3b310171c726174c • On Monday, 525 striking workers at the Clarios battery plant in Spencer Township voted to reject a contract struck between management and their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). The workers have been on strike since May 8. • On Tuesday, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the Toledo Lucas County Public Library a distinguished National Medal for Museum and Library Service for demonstrating excellence in service to the community. • Also on Tuesday, Mayor Kapszukiewicz announced that he had hired Malcolm Cunningham to be director of a newly established Department of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. Mr. Cunningham, who previously worked for ProMedica's Ebeid Neighborhood Promise program, will be paid a salary and benefits totaling $162,508. • In further Tuesday news, the Lucas County Commissioners voted to contract with WGTE to produce a series of podcasts on the state of criminal justice in Lucas County. WGTE will be paid $100,000 from a grant totaling $480,000 from the MacArthur foundation's Safety & Justice Challenge. • On Wednesday, First Solar filed a federal lawsuit against Toledo Solar, alleging that they misrepresented modified First Solar solar panels installed at the Ohio Governor's Mansion as being made by Toledo Solar. • On Thursday, acting finance director for the City of Toledo Melanie Campbell told members of Toledo City Council that the city had collected $59.2 million in income taxes between January 1 and April 30 - approximately $6 million more than the city collected during the same time period in 2022. Campbell also revealed that the city collected $6.5 million for the dedicated road improvement fund during the same time period, approximately $400,000 more than 2022. • The Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority (TARTA) is partially resuming its "Muddy Shuttle" park-and-ride services for six upcoming Toledo Mud Hens games. For a fare cost of $3, a dedicated bus will take riders from six locations around Lucas County to Fifth Third Field before and after the game. For more information, visit https://tarta.com/muddy/ • This Saturday (May 27) from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Bluff Street Village, a community of tiny homes, will hold an open house at 3557 Monroe Street. For more information, visit https://www.bluffstreetvillage.org/ • Also this Saturday (May 27) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tree Toledo will be distributing free tree seedlings at Ohlman's Farm Market (3901 Hill Ave.) Varieties include Bald Cyprus, Norway Spruce, Paw Paw, Red Maple, Red Oak, Sugar Maple, Swamp White Oak, Sycamore, Tulip Poplar, White Oak, and White Pine. • All six city pools and splash pads will open for the season this Saturday, May 27 through August 19. Admission is $1 for children 12 and under 12 and $2 for those aged 13 and above. Hours are 12pm to 6pm seven days a week. For more information, visit https://toledo.oh.gov/residents/parks/pools • Next Tuesday (May 30) at 12 p.m., registration will open for swimming lessons aimed at children aged 3 to 15 and provided by the City of Toledo. The cost is $5, and lessons will take place in July at city pools between 10 and 11 a.m. For more information, visit https://toledo.oh.gov/residents/parks/pools/swim-lessons. • You can receive This Week in Toledo via e-mail by subscribing at https://toledo.substack.com/subscribe. You can also receive updates on Facebook by liking the official page at https://www.facebook.com/thisweekintoledo. News sources: The Blade, WTOL |