TLDR: I’m in the UK I don’t know how to find any of this out. I don’t remember his birthday or the know the date and cause of death. I only have his name and address. No one will tell me anything and it’s making my grieving process so so much harder I don’t know what to do.
The relationship with my Dad has been frosty. I was being abused by my sisters so I stood my ground with them and refused to attend family functions until they acknowledged their behaviour was abusive. My Dad wasn’t happy with this and felt I should retain my place as the family scapegoat. He stopped talking to me meaning I couldn’t easily retain contact with my Uncle as we live far away. He was sick and a boomer so didn’t use social media. I lost his phone number. Now it’s too late.
The last time I saw him we were supposed to hang out after my Grandads funeral but again - my sisters were being abusive, fighting screaming. I ended up leaving in tears without keeping my promise to him. His face lighting up when I asked him to come with me is the thing I remember.
My Dad answerd the phone to me for the first time in years. We had a conversation like o was a normal human. I said I wanted to grieve and go pay my respects at his home with him as someone hid my uncles death and has stolen his remains. My Dad agreed to see me for the first time in years. Me - a moron I messaged my sisters to ask if they were coming? Suddenly my Dad won’t answer the phone to me. My sisters are telling me I’m “interfering” and I’m not welcome and specifically told me I’m not allowed to know anything that’s happening. I sent my Father a text letting him know I’m still coming to visit him and the grandchildren. I asked when is a good time? After a week of ignoring me his tone suddenly changed back to being aggressive and nasty. He told me I’m not to come see him nor am I allowed see any of my family. I said again - I’m very upset about the death of my uncle, I also had an old friend die too and I’d already booked my (expensive) travel tickets and accommodation to visit. He’s ignoring me again. I feel like it’s only me & Dad that cared about my Uncle at all. They didn’t care at my grandparents funeral and used it as another opportunity for abuse. I’m upset on so many levels right now and have to grieve for him alone.
I’ve been looking for funeral and obituary announcements in his local newspaper and can’t find anything. I know he had friends and a girlfriend but they’re all kinda addicts so - I don’t know how he was treated while he was sick? what cancer killed him? did he know? Did he have a funeral? My uncle and grandparents were the only adults in my life I have happy memories of. They’re the only ones who treated me as a normal kid and not a scapegoat. My sisters were put on a pedestal so don’t appear to really care about them as they weren’t a big part of their life but they meant everything to me and I’m deeply cut up my Uncle died suffering, neglected and alone.
I’m partly writing this just to get it out. I don’t know anyone else that can understand how I feel right now. Also - if anyone knows how can I find out something by myself without any help please let me know. I live about 12 hours away but I’m thinking of going and knocking door to door asking about him to try and find out what happened. I can’t even find a photo of him. I looked on Ancestry.com and couldn’t find anything. All the people who would’ve been able to help me now are dead. I just want some closure.

My husband grandmother passed away this winter & the internment is today. Husband & I are currently NC with JNMIL because she is a raging alcoholic & has drank shamelessly around our baby. She has held him while drunk & doesn’t see any issue with that. Mil is furious with us because “you are bullies for not bringing my grandson to see me” & “hes a baby, he doesnt know im drinking” & “its pretty mean to tell me to change my ways to see the baby, you should love me the way i am.” So we havent seen/spoken to Mil for almost 2 months. She texted my husband the funeral details & he didnt respond to her. We decided it would be best for me to stay home with the baby so she cannot have access to him as we are certain she will be drinking today. On his way to the funeral my husband called his brother to chat & his brother told him MIL was bragging about “stealing” our baby from us today & shes gonna do whatever she wants with him, totally ignore us/ boundaries we have & get in her time with her grandson. She apparently had several family members in on her little plan to “keep us occupied”. I wish I could see the look on her face when she realizes the baby isn’t there… good luck with your plan Mil 🤣
ETA: boundaries we have are ask before you hold baby, dont pass him around, dont kiss him & dont feed him anything.

Nestled in northern Lawrence County, Indiana, just six miles from Bedford, lies Ramsey Ridge Road. Just under three miles in length, the rural pathway once referred to as “Skin Ridge'' winds through the sparsely populated area’s dense woods atop a hill overlooking Little Salt Creek and nearby Bartlettsville. In the 1970’s, two completely unrelated deaths occurred within the confines of a modest green house that once stood along the ridge. Referred to by locals as “The Mysteries of Skin Ridge,” this is the story of the unusual deaths of Dennis McArthur, and Gerry Lee.
Dennis McArthur
On April 11, 1976, 44-year-old Pearl McArthur returned home after a lengthy stay at Madison State Hospital. Pearl, who would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia, had committed herself to the hospital in early December, leaving her 18-year-old son, Dennis, to care for the house in her absence. Accompanied by her 23-year-old daughter, April, who lived in nearby Bedford with her husband Gary, Pearl made her way inside the small two-story farmhouse.
Inside, Pearl and April found the home in complete disarray. Trash laid strewed about, lamps and furniture were overturned, and the stove was caved in, its exhaust pipe torn from the wall. It was unusually cold inside as though no heat had been recently used, and a strange smell permeated the air.
Alarmed, Pearl and April began to frantically search for Dennis. As they made their way over to a small couch located in a bedroom on the second floor, they noticed a pile of blankets lying on the sofa. As Pearl peeled back the layer of quilts, she was met with a horrific scene; Dennis’s decomposed body lay beneath the bedding. They immediately summoned police.
Dennis was found in a fetal position on the couch, facing inwards. Although covered by quilts, he was nude from the waist down. The coroner estimated he had died one to two months prior, however the cold weather had, in part, delayed the decomposition process making it difficult to give an exact time of death. During an autopsy, it was discovered that Dennis was severely emaciated, to the point of starvation. No evidence of external or internal injuries were found.
Police discovered several bottles of pills in the home; vitamins used for energy, an antidepressant, and a drug used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. All of the pills were prescribed to Pearl, and were still relatively full. A toxicology test was conducted and proved negative, however the state pathologist who performed the test admitted that the test was incapable of detecting substances such as LSD. He also explained due to the amount of time that had passed since his death, the tests might not be one hundred percent accurate. Dennis’ cause of death was listed as malnutrition and exposure.
Investigators found several clues at the scene that struck them as odd. Although the cabin appeared ransacked, nothing seemed to be missing, including a small amount of money that was found within the disheveled home. Along with money, a small amount of, now spoiled, food was found in the cabinets and refrigerator. An upstairs window was found to be broken from the inside. Also upstairs, investigators discovered several large pools of blood, including one beside the couch where Dennis’ body was found. They also found blood on the backside of the couch, on a rug, and on the kitchen door frame, along with splatter on a wall. Testing confirmed the blood to be human.
Dennis was well known to both police and the county’s social workers. His mother, Pearl, was frequently in and out of mental institutions leaving Dennis and his two siblings to fend for themselves. The children’s father, Walter, had abandoned the family and moved to Georgia years prior. In 1972, Dennis was arrested for theft and truancy. That same year, he was expelled from school and never returned.
He was again arrested in 1973, this time for driving without a license, fleeing from police, possession of alcohol, and curfew violation. After his release, Dennis was sent to live with a man named Al Hagopian, a case worker for the Youth Services Bureau. Al was quoted as saying; “Finding him a place to stay was hard. The house where he had been staying was pretty grubby, and the state thought he was too young to live alone. His mother was in and out of hospitals a lot and he worried about her constantly. He didn’t want to return home, but said he had to go back to help care for his mother.”
Al discovered that Dennis “read and wrote backwards,” and was “practically illiterate.” After reviewing Dennis’ school records, he found multiple instances where teachers labeled Dennis as having disciplinary problems when it came to schoolwork, however not once did they mention he had a clear learning disability. Al further explained that attempts to secure employment for Dennis were nearly never successful. Aside from being unable to read or write, he had no vehicle. He also had no stable address or phone number and was oftentimes dirty and dressed in near rags.
Dennis’ unfair hand he had been dealt did not stop him from trying to act like an average kid most of the time, Al added. He explained that Dennis had an interest in cars, enjoyed hanging out with his friends, and was always chasing girls. He had also told Al he wanted to someday save up enough money for a new guitar, as he loved to play music. Al admitted that Dennis was also into the “street scene” and had dabbled in drugs and alcohol. Dennis returned home after two months of living with Al.
In 1974, after another arrest and his subsequent release from a youth detention center, Dennis went to live with his father for a short time. Dennis’ arrest had made headlines when it was learned the young man had been kept with adult men for a long period before being transferred to the youth detention center. Dennis and Walter reportedly couldn’t get along, however, and Dennis ran away to Florida. He lived there for a few months, washing cars to make money, before returning to the home on Ramsey Ridge in Indiana in 1975. He was again arrested, this time in Bloomington, Indiana for carrying a concealed weapon, alcohol consumption, and curfew violation. At the time of Dennis’ death, the charges against him were still pending.
According to his sister, April, she had gone to visit Dennis at the home on Ramsey Ridge on Christmas Eve. April said Dennis was sitting on the couch, playing his guitar. He also showed her a new rug he had purchased for the home. According to her, he seemed his usual self and the home was clean. April offered him some money, however Dennis refused claiming he had enough to get by.
Lucy Lively, an aunt of Dennis’ who lived “within hollering distance,” claimed she entered the home on February 1st to turn off a lamp that had been left burning. While she did not see Dennis, she claimed the home's interior was in normal order. Joe McArthur, Dennis’ paternal grandfather who also lived nearby, said it was not unusual for Dennis to disappear for long periods, so he thought nothing of the youths' absence as of late.
When Walter, Dennis’ father, was informed of his son's death, he informed police that Dennis, along with two male friends, had come to visit him in Georgia in mid December. He gave a description of the two teens and told police they had been introduced to him as “John Boy'' and “Blonde John.”
Police were able to track down “Blonde John” who was identified as 18-year-old John Fonk of Bloomington, Indiana. John told investigators that he and Dennis had driven to Florida together in October, not December, as Walter had stated. John explained they had stopped by Walter’s home in Georgia on their way back home. He was confident in the date as he had joined the Air Force in December. He also explained that “John Boy” had been a hitchhiker they had picked up along the way. According to John, “John Boy” rode back to Indiana with the pair, but he had not seen him, or Dennis since. He described him as being in his mid 20’s. After learning of the discrepancy in Walter’s story, police again tried to contact him, however phone calls and letters went unanswered. Unfortunately, they were never able to identify “John Boy.”
Further questioning of social services showed that Pearl had filled several grocery orders provided by state services, however the orders ceased when she had been again hospitalized. Eventually the Lawrence County Welfare Office had taken control and promised to look in on Dennis, however they could provide no evidence they had followed up on the case. They suggested that Dennis, overwhelmed with his impoverished lifestyle, had simply starved himself to the point of being comatose, before succumbing to the harsh cold of winter. They were quoted as saying “We were aware of him of course, but he never came to us. We don’t go looking for people if they don’t come to us for help. Now if he had, we would have done something.”
The local sheriff as well as members of Dennis’ family were unsatisfied with Dennis’ listed cause of death and continued to pursue the investigation for several months. Unfortunately due to a lack of funds, more elaborate tests that may have presented some clue as to how Dennis died could not be conducted. Sheriff Robbins was quoted as saying, “This is a very disturbing mystery, because even if someone confessed to killing him, I doubt we would have the evidence to prove it. But it sure is hard to believe he could kill himself like that, by just laying down and dying. We aren’t closing the case, it will remain open. But until we have something more to go on, there’s not much more we can do at this point.”
Dennis was laid to rest at Heltonville’s Gilgal Cemetery. Few attended the modest closed casket funeral and subsequent burial. One journalist gave a last description of Dennis’ final resting place,
“The dogwood trees are in full bloom on the hillsides of Gilgal Cemetery, and though Dennis’ body now rests peacefully beneath a carpet of fallen petals, his soul will surely never rest until the reasons behind his death are discovered.”
Pearl, Dennis’ mother, passed away in 2000 at the age of 67. Walter, Dennis’ father, died in 1988. His sister, April, passed away suddenly in 2006 at the age of 53. Dennis also had an older brother, Gordon, who passed away in 1994 at the age of 42.
Gerry Lee
On the evening of May 28, 1978, police were again summoned to the little green house on Ramsey Ridge. The home was now occupied by 27-year-old Gerry Lee, a divorced self employed carpenter, and his roommate, 25-year-old Michael Davis. When police arrived, Michael informed them that Gerry had committed suicide.
Gerry was found hanging from a maple tree located 20 feet from the home's front porch. The rope had been tied off to a branch approximately 10 feet above the ground and fashioned into a noose. His feet were found to be touching the ground, and his knees were bent. Blood was discovered on Gerry’s hands and pants, despite having suffered no visible wounds. An autopsy would reveal that Gerry had died of asphyxiation as a result of a fracture to his cricoid cartilage located at the base of his larynx. The coroner stated this was not an injury normally associated with suicidal hangings, but instead blunt force trauma to the throat. Inside, more blood was found on a television set, the phone, and on the kitchen floor. A window on the home's back door had been broken from the outside, leaving shards of glass lying on the kitchen floor.
When questioned, Michael gave an explanation for the unusual findings. He claimed that he, Gerry, and two other friends, Mike Oakly and Roberta Chandler, had spent the day in nearby Bedford before the foursome returned to the home on Ramsey Ridge. There, Michael told police that he and Gerry got into a “friendly scuffle” that resulted in Michael falling into the window in the kitchen. He suffered a deep laceration to his forehead that left him bleeding profusely.
According to Michael, Roberta and Mike accompanied him to seek medical treatment in Bedford, while Gerry stayed behind at home. Michael returned home alone from the hospital, having left Roberta and Mike in town. It was then he discovered Gerry’s body and summoned police. He added that that evening Gerry had threatened to shoot himself multiple times with one of the loaded guns kept in the home.
When Roberta and Mike were taken in for questioning, they gave similar accounts of the night's events. Both were released. Aside from having a visible wound, medical staff confirmed Michael had been to the hospital that evening, having sought treatment for a laceration to his forehead.
Still, both the prosecutor and the county coroner stated they were not entirely satisfied with a verdict of suicide. The coroner stated “Some things have not fallen into place like they should with a suicide case. Although it looks as though it could be a suicide, there are so many angles that do not fit in with the suicide verdict.” The prosecutor agreed, “I’m not satisfied with how the investigation was handled,” he said, “and there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Several months later, Gerry’s case was brought before a grand jury who ultimately returned a verdict of “probable suicide.”
Gerry was laid to rest in Bedford’s Breckenridge Cemetery. Despite his death being declared a suicide, many locals, including Gerry’s friends and neighbors, continued to believe that something more sinister may have happened that evening, and the suicide was in fact staged. The community’s more superstitious elders shared a similar belief, however adding that a “strange ethereal force” inhabited the room where Gerry once slept, and where two years prior the body of Dennis had been discovered.
Whatever your opinion may be, it seems for some the books will never fully be closed on “The Mysteries of Skin Ridge.”
Sources
Newspaper Clippings, Death Certificates, Photos- https://imgur.com/a/4kQ3rEl
Find a Grave Dennis- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/63100083/dennis-scott-mcarthur
Find a Grave Pearl- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/254365281/pearl-m-mcarthur?createdMemorial=Yes
Find a Grave Walter- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80652726/walter-rufus-mcarthur
Find a Grave Gerry- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/47074796/gerry-wayne-lee
National Library of Medicine- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22442828/#:~:text=Overall%2C%20neck%20structures%20fractures%20were,the%20cricoid%20cartilage%20of%2020.6%25.

First off, I've (31m) never posted anything on Reddit before, I've only ever been a phantom browser (or listener for the few of us who listen to Slash), so if there are formatting errors, or if I've mucked this entire post, forgive me; but that's not what I'm here for so get bent, I'm dying to unload all of this. There's a lot to unpack here, so please bear with, and without further ado:
I'm currently dealing with the loss of my best friend James (27m) who successfully completed suicide a few weeks ago. I'm so unbelievably angry at his loss as he was one of the brightest most intelligent people I've ever known. A person who was too smart for his own good regularly led him down a dark path that I've talked him out of several times in the past. Before we get into the heart of the matter, I'd like to provide some insight to when it all started.
I've known James from our time in the Service together, when we were both assigned to perform military honors for veterans. We met back in 2016, and I'll admit, at first I was standoffish as I am with most new people I meet. After a few weeks we bonded over our disdain for the training regimen and requirements for new Honor Guard(HG) trainees. I wouldn't say we became fast friends, but we deepened our relationship over time with big dreams and even bigger goals. Talking about cars, preferably JDM, guns, technology, games, anime; actually, just everything. This man knew a lot about everything, and we found in eachother kindred spirits. Although he was much better at knowing what the best (in his opinion) of the best was, and what I should focus my efforts or should buy, and I trusted his knowledge. He really was the best.
We maintained a pretty good relationship over the next few years when I left the service in 2018 and moved back home to Ohio and he was left back in Illinois to finish out his service commitment. And during that time, we talked regularly, if not every day, then every other day. With some spotty communication between, we're guys, talking all the time isn't always necessary, and it got to the point of regular check-ins and talks about life and the bullshit going on. Mine being the transition from the military to civilian life, and his, just regular bullshit within the service, and whatever car he was dealing with at the time.
It wasn't until 2019 when things started to unravel, and he decided he wanted to be in a relationship with a woman Brenda (27f) that he'd met at the airport. I'm not sure when he had, but it might've been a few years to a few months prior to the autumn of 2019. The only significance of Brenda was that James had managed to hook up with her AT THE AIRPORT. I dogged on him for being such a smooth talker and having the ability to do that. To my knowledge, it was a one and done thing, but he maintained contact with her, which led to them developing a relationship, and being "official" the autumn of 2019.
After three months, a total of 90 fucking days, this man was smitten. To the point of which he was so torn up about her getting cold feet and breaking up with him. Something I've never seen before from this man who basically had a revolving door with women in the past. I had to talk him off of the figurative ledge because of how much he felt he gave her. Nonetheless, they ended back together, and he moved her into his house to live with him and a long-time roommate Neil (25m). James introduced Neil and I and we've been pretty good friends, but nothing as significant as James and I. Either way we were all pretty close, and both Neil and I advised against staying with Brenda, as she was, as far as we could tell, unbalanced. That was putting it lightly.
This cycle of being together and not being together, and getting angry over petty things, begins to impact the relationship between James and I. To the point where I can't just talk about the bullshit between him and Brenda. So I stopped talking to him for a few months in 2020 and tell him off about how I can't listen to him bitch about his girl anymore.
Either way, we begin talking later on in 2020 and things are friendly as usual, with the exception that we don't really talk too much about Brenda anymore. Which is a nice change of pace. Anyway, from the time I was in the service, my experience translates to driving trucks. So what did I do when I got out? I drove trucks, which sucks, but pays well. So I've always nagged James for what I should do as far as getting out of trucking, and in to computers and IT. I've tried my hand at it in the past when I tried to get my BS in Comp. Sci. in 2019, which I failed miserably.
So back to trucking I went always looking for a way out, as I've got a wife and two sons, it makes it hard to raise a family and be present. So he maintains his relationship with Brenda and keeps it on the backburner for conversations, rarely bringing it up, all the way up into 2022 when he's been out of the service for two years, and has made a name for himself in the IT community. He came out to Ohio in Nov 2022 to buy some big ticket items for his own racing setup. He convinced me (without too much arm pulling) to drive out to St. Louis with him to visit our old digs. During this 6 hour drive we catch up on all the old bullshit and what's going on in his love life. The constant fighting, bickering, and me doing my best to cheer him up and let him know, that outside of what he's failing at in his relationship, he's got a pocket full of spades and is exceptionally successful at every other aspect of his life. I mean, what other person do you know who goes from making less than $40k a year to making over $600k in two years? Nonetheless, we also spent that entire time talking about what he currently does, and he set me on a pathway of learning, specifically books, that he said I should read. After I got back to my daily life, and read them; We talked about them, and he made sure I understood the concepts held within them, and oddly he said he'd get back to me.
This is just the surface stuff, what makes James an outright amazing person, is that he's always looking out for those close to him. He had so much pull at his current company, that he was able to make a special position just for me, as a "loyalty program" to get people to train who otherwise didn't have experience in his career field. The books he had me read were primers to see if I had the aptitude to take on this kind of training. The company signed me on at my current monthly rate (as of Dec. 2022) to come on and train exclusively and meet my commitments by the end of January. From then on, it was daily talks of knowledge this, or what experience you have in that. And daily life in general. I came to find out just how little I knew about how knowledgeable and smart James was, and a new appreciation for our friendship,
Where I was once his mentor in the service, he was now my mentor in the tech world. And he was brilliant. Things that would take a whole team months to do, he was capable of doing within a week. I saw him work magic, and was excited to see how I could graft his knowledge and experience into my own. In March, we had a work requirement to meetup at the work site (because IT is remote, duh) and meet with the team that our company supported. There was a whole fiasco and we got up to some of our old shenanigans, but everything was great with the exception of one thing: her. I hadn't asked the entire trip, and he had mentioned that this was the best he'd felt in years. I just didn't want to ask what the problem was, until the day we left to go back to our respective states. I'd come to find out, that the day before he'd left to come out for our trip, his now wife, had locked him out of the main portion of the house (luckily he has over 5000sq/ft house, so he made do with the "other half" as he called it) and I just listened as he lamented about all the garbage that happened prior to his departure. How he gave up everything; his interests, his desires, just to be around her more. How after everything he's sacrificed, he just wanted it to work. That he'd do anything for her, and all she did was spit in his face and shit all over his effort. This last argument he'd had with her before he'd left was all because of him wanting to go get tacos with some of his local friends. A simple disagreement that turned into a 3-day argument.
So things like this progress and he's talking to all the people he needs advice from. His pastor, his therapist, and they're all telling him to run from this woman. These things I've been telling him for years are all starting to come together, and I feel like I can finally take a breath. From hearing stories of how he's slept under his desk to avoid confrontation with her, how he works endlessly because she won't bother him while he works. I was so excited that divorce was now finally an option for him. Until finally she was moving out, and everything came crashing down.
Friday, May 12, 2023. It was work as usual, and he'd spent a little longer at work, and was talking about going out to play pool with a friend. So I ended up talking to him later that evening asking him how things were going, mostly just because I was bored and wanted someone to talk to. When he replied that he was "big sad" and I asked him what was going on. He told me that he was tricked into going out with his friend by Brenda. That the friend was convinced to ask James out by her, so that she could come by their house and move her things out. Which she had never done before, but was prone to leaving at the drop of a hat and going to her sister's house 1.5 hrs away. I expressed that I was sorry for what he had to go through, as I had also gone through a divorce years prior. That regardless if it was for the best, that it is still a painful process. The last thing he said to me: "Can't be mad about a loss that costs me the wins when I'm the one who made the bet" I replied, "Maybe not, but I can understand the loss still hurts."
That was the last thing I said to him at 0016. I'm so fucking mad, at him, at her, at everything. The entire situation, that I would be out there to help him, I joked about moving my family out there with him in that big ass house. That we'd buy property, hundreds and thousands of acres just to bullshit with, and do "hoodrat things with my friends." I texted him and called him Saturday to check on him, but figured he had a hangover, so I didn't want to bother but let him know that I would call a wellness check on him if I didn't hear back. So I called him a few more times on Sunday, which eventually lead to me calling the wellness check at 1421 on Mother's Day. Two hours later, at 1621 exactly, I get a phone call from a detective asking me questions about James. I thought he was in a snag with the police and was doing 180 on the freeway or something, or pulled some Eminem nonsnense. Did I fail to mention that Brenda claimed to be pregnant, and would use getting an abortion as a way to control James? No? Well it was one of the first things I told the detective after they asked me about him being depressed. I didn't understand why the questions were being asked, but they eventually came to tell me that upon their arrival, he was dead. The world snapped to a startling clarity, and I broke out into a cold sweat. I didn't think it could be possible, and my brain reeled at the rushing reality of it all. The sickening reality of it, that she didn't even care because she had already given up, had pulled her claws out of him. It was done, no new memories, no grand dreams, no future plans to conquer the world. But as we know, this is only just the beginning, the aftermath is where it all hurts more.
So his body had to be transported to his hometown on the other side of the country near the coast, from the OTHER side of the country. 3000 miles just to be put in the ground, all for his parents' sake. Which was nice, and a kind gesture, that Brenda allowed and a relatively beautiful ceremony. We show up the day James shows up, a 10 hour drive with no AC and the windows down. My wife and I both knew and loved James, so we were going to be there no matter what. I meet his dad for the first time, a topic James and I regularly talked about. How his father is the best person he knows, and would do anything for. I can see that now, and James' wife had sent a picture to my wife of one of their conversations, about how I reminded James of his dad. That shit broke my heart, and was hard to see, but I appreciated it. Although I think she reveled in twisting the knife. Anyway, come to find out from his dad, that Brenda allowed him to write the obituary, and as James' dad was finalizing it with his wife and James' sisters, Brenda took it and made changes and deleted the things she didn't like.
James' dad took us all around his hometown, showing us where he went to school, where they lived, and what he liked to do. He also took us out for lunch to a local place James liked. I've never felt so at home while not at home. We even got haircuts at James' dad's favorite barber. I met James' mother and sisters, and found that they share a lot of gestures and nuances that were just uncanny. It was good, although, terrifyingly sad. I'm so fucking glad Neil was there, dude was a rock.
The day of the funeral and memorial We got to say our final goodbyes, and there was a line of James' next of kin. Starting with his mother, and ending with his youngest sister. His wife sat separately and was laughing and joking before people started showing up. She adopted a somber and sorrowful set, when we locked eyes, I saw the poison, vitriol, and hate she had for me, and anyone else who cared about James. Her eyes looked like that of Bellatrix Lestrange. She didn't cry, once. It hurt to see someone James cared about so much, not care one lick at his loss. She didn't plan anything for this funeral, didn't appoint pallbearers, nothing. Fortunately, me, Neil, another roommate James had--Jesse, and some other close relatives of James, we raised him one last time. Everything was executed by his parents and was done wonderfully. At his burial site, he was given military honors, which he and I would joke as being terribly done, but for the masses, was acceptable. For military ceremonies like this, the next of kin gets the flag. And unfortunately, they were still married at the time of death. Which she received and treated like nothing so much as a burden. James' parents knew how vile she was and STILL invited her to attend a remembrance party in Honor of James. To which she ran off and never attended. This, this is still the easiest part of the entire process.
James parents are trying to file an injunction, but Brenda hasn't even filed the proper paperwork to begin the probate process. So there isn't even anything to file an injunction against! They want to be able to handle his estate, but can't. There's nothing to do, no memories to take. We fear that everything will be repossessed, foreclosed, and she will laugh her way to the bank to cash in on James' demise. I wish he'd had a will, or started the divorce process. I wish even more, that he was still here. For anyone out there who thinks you won't be missed, you will. For those who think no one will notice them gone, you will be noticed. I would rather talk to you for hours, than be at your grave. Please, reach out, ask for help, or just to talk. I'm sorry things get tough, but you have love and support here if you need it. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, or talk you out of it. I love you man. Til Valhalla.

FRIDAY

• First Friday, Downtown, Raleigh
• Durham Bulls vs. Jacksonville, DBAP, Durham
• UNC Health Championship presented by STITCH, Raleigh Country Club, Raleigh
• Smooth Nights, KBA, Cary
• BANDS, BITES, AND BOATS, Bond Park, Cary
• PLAYlist Concert Series: Raíces, Rutas, y Ritmos, Durham Central Park, Durham
• 1776, DPAC, Durham
• Leslie Jones: Live, Carolina Theatre, Durham
• DeRay Davis: Too Much?!, Raleigh Improv, Cary
• Pride Plaza Party, Exchange/Market Plazas, Raleigh
• Tacarra Williams, ROOM 861 AT GOODNIGHTS, Raleigh
• The Soccer Tournament, WakeMed Soccer Park, Raleigh
• Music in the Park Celebrates Pride, Healthy Food Hub, Morrisville
• BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (PG13), The Cary, Cary
• Spider-man Movie Premiere with Dell Technologies and Presidio, Cinemark Raleigh Grande, Raleigh
• Durham Pride Silent Disco, Hi-Wire, Durham
• Techstars Startup Weekend: Health & Wellness, Duke University, Durham
• Halocene, Motorco Music Hall, Durham
• Mamis & The Papis and Party Illegal Present: Moodboard, Rubies on Five Points, Durham
• An Evening with North Mississippi Allstars, Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh
• Apex Peakway 155, Wake County Speedway, Raleigh
• Freight Farms Pop Up Event, Nanue's Farm, Raleigh
• Hands on a Hardbody, Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh
• Jessica Kirson, Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh
• Oak City Gliders vs Reidsville Luckies, Optimist Park, Raleigh
• Our Prism, The Raleigh Night Market, Raleigh
• Pride First Friday: Sip + Shop, Curate Raleigh, Raleigh
• Urban Soil, The Pour House Music Hall & Record Shop, Raleigh
• BUTNER SUMMER FESTIVAL, Butner Gazebo Park, Butner

​
SATURDAY

• Durham Bulls vs. Jacksonville, DBAP, Durham
• Family Fun Fest, North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh
• Raleigh's International Food Festival, City Plaza, Raleigh
• Bubbles & Brisket, Smoky Hollow, Raleigh
• Ever After: Fairytales, Food, and Flowers, Fred Fletcher Park, Raleigh
• UNC Health Championship presented by STITCH, Raleigh Country Club, Raleigh
• Summerfest: The Music of Whitney Houston, North Carolina Symphony, Cary
• Mid-Town Square Spring Festival 2023, Bond Brothers Beer Company, Cary
• NC Summertime Beer Fest, Clouds Brewing Taproom, Raleigh
• NCAA Division II Baseball Championship, USA Baseball National Training Complex, Cary
• North State Bank’s Summer Salute for Transitions LifeCare, North Ridge Country Club, Raleigh
• Run For Love 5k, Dorothea Dix Park, Raleigh
• Dermot Kennedy The Sonder Tour, Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh
• Hands on History: Butter-making, Natural Dyes, and Flower Pressing, Borden Building, Raleigh
• International Children’s Day, City of Raleigh Museum (COR Museum), Raleigh
• Jessica Kirson, Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh
• Jubilant! A Juneteenth Experience, CAM Raleigh, Raleigh
• Matt Maeson, The Ritz, Raleigh
• Tacarra Williams, ROOM 861 AT GOODNIGHTS, Raleigh
• DeRay Davis: Too Much?!, Raleigh Improv, Cary
• Summer Sol - Vinyasa Flow, Raleigh Municipal Rose Garden, Raleigh
• The Soccer Tournament, WakeMed Soccer Park, Raleigh
• UNC Children's For The Kids Concert Featuring: Cooper Alan, Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh
• Hands on a Hardbody, Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh
• MAKRS, Durham Central Park, Durham
• Gimme Gimme Disco, Motorco Music Hall, Durham
• Paradox: A 90s Rave Experience, The Fruit, Durham
• Cygnus X-2, The Pour House Music Hall & Record Shop, Raleigh
• Techstars Startup Weekend: Health & Wellness, Duke University, Durham
• Running of the Bulls 8K, Historic Durham Athletic Park, Durham
• Boxyard Turns 2 Celebration, Boxyard RTP, Durham
• Nasher Community Celebration, Nasher Museum of Art, Durham
• Record Show, Durty Bull, Durham
• Bimbé Celebration, Rock Quarry Park, Durham
• Beaver Queen Pageant — Once Upon a Wetland..., Duke Park, Durham
• Mother Tongues: Louise Toppin, soprano, with Stephen Jaffe & John O’Brien, pianists, Nelson Music Room, East Duke Building, Duke University, Durham
• Old North State Antique Gun & Military Show, North Carolina State Fairgrounds, Raleigh
• Propagation Workshop: Advanced Softwood Cuttings, JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University, Raleigh

​
SUNDAY

• UNC Health Championship presented by STITCH, Raleigh Country Club, Raleigh
• Durham Bulls vs. Jacksonville, DBAP, Durham
• NCAA Division II Baseball Championship, USA Baseball National Training Complex, Cary
• Esther Povitsky, Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh
• Parlor Pride Party, Heights House Hotel, Raleigh
• Satisfaction, Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh
• DeRay Davis: Too Much?!, Raleigh Improv, Cary
• Bringing it Home: Chamber Music with the Durham Symphony and Friends, Hayti Heritage Center, Durham
• Al Strong Presents Jazz Brunch at Alley Twenty Six, Alley Twenty Six, Durham
• Mike’s Dead, Motorco Music Hall, Durham
• A Celebration of African American Art with Song, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
• LGBTQ+ Pride Ride with the Historic Raleigh Trolley, Mordecai Historic Park, Raleigh
• Old North State Antique Gun & Military Show, North Carolina State Fairgrounds, Raleigh
• Techstars Startup Weekend: Health & Wellness, Duke University, Durham

​
Join the Thingstodo919 email list here for a weekly events newsletter. Doing anything interesting this weekend? Let us know your plans in the comments!

I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.

I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
X

I reached out online about a house I saw listed for rent online (Redfin), and immediately got a call from a man claiming to be an independent property manager of the home. Online, there was no move-in date or pet policy, and when I asked about those things he immediately told me my desired move-in date (August) and pets would work prefect. He sent over the application and told me the application fee, and then called back twice within 10 mintues telling me to fill it out. When I asked him who the owner of the houe was, he told me a name different from who is listed on the Asheville GIS (I found using avlmap.ashevillenc.gov). I asked to set up a time to go see the home and he pressed me to fill out the application.
Also when I googled this manager's (unique sounding) name, nothing comes up except for an obituary and a few other random people across the country.
Obvioulsy I'm not going to send any $, but does this give anyone else big red flags?
It's hard out here y'all!
​
Edit to add: I submitted a report to Redfin, hopefully they take the post down and get better about vetting their listings.
Edit again to add: I'm just gonna lightly dox this redfin listing in the off-chance someone else thinks about applying https://www.redfin.com/NC/Asheville/35-Ferncliff-Dr-28805/unit-N-A/home/185557510

Hi all,
I (34F) just found this subreddit after googling post-grief brain fog and am very much looking forward to reading your stories. My mom (57) passed away unexpectedly last Wednesday and I have been a bit of a wreck. When I first found out, I went into hyper-oldest-daughter mode and made my dad stay with me for a few days to take care of him. He was quite emotional but I was more of a robot than anything. I only cried when no one was around, so mostly in the shower. Since then, I made the appointment with the funeral home, did that meeting and paid for the services, made phone calls to let people know, posted on Facebook, started planning the memorial for late summer, and now I still need to write the obituary.
But I can't write it. I actually can't do anything that involves my brain. After my dad went back home, I dove into anything physical I could get my hands on. Cleaning the house, building some built-in bookshelves, gardening, running, anything really. But now that I'm back at work I find that I can't put a single thought together. I can't make myself do work. I just locked myself in my office with a Do Not Disturb sign up, but I'm just surfing the internet.
When does this get better? I'm a professional that many people rely on. I have no real boss, so I self manage, but I can't manage anything and no one is forcing me to work. I had to drop out of a funding opportunity, and everyone 100% understands, but I'm just beating myself up over this. And the obituary is looming over me. I have to write it. But how? I read articles about how to do it, but those are all about the content, not how you can move past the grief enough to just write. Damn it, I've written a book and a dissertation and I can't push myself to write 2 paragraphs!

Season 2 Finale
“You look worried Bruce,” my producer jokes, moments before going live. “Even for you.”
This gets a chuckle from the crew.
“Quiet on the set!”
I’m already shaking in my shoes. Not a good sign. Working for the Devil is extremely stressful. And dangerous. And certainly not for the faint of heart. Why I took this gig is beyond me.
(Cue creepy music)
“Going live in five…four…three…”
I get the nod.
(Cut to camera one)
“Greetings Hell Beings and hell raisers. Welcome to the Season 2 finale of….”
(Cue the audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
I wave my arms in the air.
The audience jumps to their feet.
Someone heckles.
“Alright. Knock it off.”
I serve up my best game show-host grin. It looks as fake as this cheap Hollywood studio.
“As you probably know, my name is Bruce Davie, and I’m the host of…”
(Cue audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
There’s a disturbance in the audience. A crew member forcefully removes someone. The commotion settles, and I get the go-ahead.
“Phew! A feisty crowd tonight!”
My painted-on smile takes up the entire screen. So does my gleaming bald head.
“Now I know what you’re thinking. What’s the Devil got in store for us this evening?”
The audience rumbles.
I shrug.
“Honestly, I wish I knew!”
This is true. But I’m sure it has something to do with me spending an eternity in Hell. It’s right there in my contract, which runs out after this episode.
(Cut to camera two)
“So, without further ado, let’s bring out tonight’s contestants, shall we?”
The audience roars.
“And yes, you heard me correctly. Tonight, for the first time ever in this show’s defamatory history, we’ve got two contestants!”
Audience is on their feet, whooping and hollering.
(Cut to camera three)
(Cue music)
A middle-aged couple promenade towards the podium. They’re dressed like cowboys, and walk with a sense of purpose.
(Split screen)
“Welcome, both of you.”
More like: Welcome to your funeral.
“Tell us a wee bit about yourselves, why don’t you?”
(Cut to camera four)
The woman speaks first. Her hair is amber, her complexion as pale as light beer.
“Well, Bruce. My name is Tammy. I’m a stay-at-home mom. This here’s my partner, Tex. He owns his own gun shop. We live in Austin Texas, with three beautiful children, who are with us here tonight.”
She points.
(Cut to overhead camera)
Two tall boys and a young girl, each dressed head-to-toe in denim, stand and bow.
The audience applauds.
(Split screen)
The other contestant approaches the microphone. He’s as tall as an ivory tower, with a voice like a banjo.
“Howdy Bruce. Good to be here.”
He tilts his cowboy hat. His square jaw and rugged good looks give Chuck Norris a run for his money.
I salute them.
(Cut to camera two)
“Well then, now that we’re finished with the formalities, I do believe it’s time to…”
(Cue audience)
“BRING OUT THE DEVIL.”
(Cue creepy music)
(Cue pyrotechnics)
The stage fills with fire and brimstone. Pentagrams slice through the air. The Devil appears suddenly, dressed in a shiny new devil suit, tailored specifically for tonight’s show. It’s jet-black, and leaves little to the imagination. His pitchforked tail follows closely behind him as he approaches the podium.
(Cut to Camera five)
The Devil wraps his arms around the two contestants, kisses them both on the cheek.
Tex, clearly perturbed, winces, then grudgingly wipes his cheek.
The Devil snarls, then looks him up and down.
“Looks like everything isn’t bigger in Texas,” the Devil teases. Suddenly, he’s grown over eight-feet tall, and is looming over the tall Texan.
(Cut to camera three)
The bright lights and furious makeup make me look like a cartoon.
“What an exciting night this promises to be!”
Tammy steps forward.
“You bet it is, Bruce. We’ve watched every episode. We just love…”
(Cue the audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
(Cut to camera three)
“Of course!” Damion boasts. “This is Hell’s most popular show. And for good reason.”
He slaps the woman’s backside with his tail, then raises his eyebrows mockingly.
The cowboy puffs out his chest, fists clenched, daring him to touch his wife again.
“Woah, easy there pardner.”
Damion nudges Tex.
Tammy is flushed. “Don’t mind Tex. He’s the jealous kind.”
“Oh really?”
Damion’s tail is now shaped like a lasso. With it, he snags Tammy and pulls her close. Her face turns tomato-red.
The cowboy grunts, pulling it off with one strong swoop.
The audience boos.
The Devil snickers.
I feel sick. If this is to be my last episode (or final day on Earth), I don’t want it spoiled by this denim-clad dude whose hat is bigger than his brains, or by Damion, who seems extra feisty tonight. Even for him.
(Cut to camera one)
I clear my throat.
“Tell us, Tammy and Tex…no, tell all of Hell…what it is your beating hearts desire?”
The audience is on the edge of their seats.
(Split screen)
The Texans exchange doubtful looks.
The wife takes charge.
“Well Bruce,” Tammy says. “We don’t want anything that might get us killed. Being from Dallas, we were raised with some common sense.”
The audience hisses.
(Cut to camera five)
The husband steps up.
“That’s right, Bruce. Simply put, we want to be famous for a day. That’s it. Then we can write a book and live off the royalties.”
The audience erupts into a frenzy of catcalls.
(Cut to camera three)
The Devil’s eyebrows touch the top of his head. His voice slithers like a snake.
“Is that so?”
My heart plummets. These Texans are flirting with disaster. If they’d stuck to the script, they might be safe. They were supposed to ask for a lifetime’s supply of Super Bowl tickets. Easy-peasy. Who do these cowpokes think they are? Do they really think they can outsmart the Devil?
“Well then,” I say, shakily. “I’m sure Damion can arrange that.”
I raise my arms.
“What does the audience think?”
The audience goes ballistic.
(Cut to camera three)
The Devil, still towering over the Texans, leans into the camera.
“Famous, eh?”
His lips smack against his face. When he touches the dude’s shoulder, the cowboy swipes his arm away.
The audience boos. Someone tosses an egg onto the podium, narrowly missing the contestants.
“Woah! Easy does it!” I spurt out.
All hell breaks loose.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The crew gets busy, disposing of both the egg and the agitator.
(Cut to camera one)
I wipe my sweaty forehead.
“Tough crowd.”
The audience hoots.
The Devil sneers.
“SILENCE!”
Flames flash across the room.
People shriek, including me.
(Close up of Damion)
The Devil, boasting his gambler’s grin, turns to the contestants.
“Yes, yes. You WILL be famous. But just for one day.”
The audience roars their approval.
I shudder. Never in all my years, have I felt so much animosity from an audience. I’ll be lucky to make it out alive.
(Split screen)
“Sounds like the Devil has a plan.”
I try to sound cheerful. But cheerfulness is the opposite of how I feel.
(Cut to camera one)
“Tell us Damion…and all of Hell…what you’ve got cooked up?”
The audience leans in.
(Cut to camera three)
The Devil winks at Tammy.
“Well, I do believe it’s time for those two cowpokes to become famous. Am I correct?”
The audience jumps to their feet, chanting: “FAMOUS.… FAMOUS…. FAMOUS.…”
(Split screen)
Tammy looks pleased. Her partner, on the other hand, is showing concern. His shoulders are tense, he’s swallowed his bottom lip.
Damion dazzles the audience.
“Famous, y’all shall be.”
He snaps his fingers.
BAM.
The studio goes dark.
Someone in the audience screams.
Tammy gasps.
Tex grunts.
(Cut to camera one)
I shrug.
Is this Damion’s latest trick? Or did they finally cut the power? We give the impression that this show is hugely popular; but in truth, outside of Hell, this show is a dud. Cable and internet companies avoid us like the plague.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The contestants vanish under a cloud of fog.
A flaming pentagram floats across the stage.
“Well, isn’t that just dandy!”
The Devil points to the large screen behind the audience.
“Mister and Missus Cowpoke are about to jump the falls!”
He snaps his fingers, then he disappears.
My legs go weak. My heart is beating irregularly again. I still don’t know he does it. How any of this works. Suddenly, I’m alone on stage, shaking in my fine Italian boots, while the audience grows rowdier by the second.
Cameras mounted on drones are pointed at Tammy and Tex, who are trapped inside a large, steel barrel, with Niagara Falls looming below them.
Damion flies across the falls, lands next to Tammy and Tex. He taps the barrel.
“Ain’t she a beauty?”
The audience hurrahs.
The barrel is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Although it’s huge, and probably weighs a ton, it barely contains the two Texans, who are kicking and screaming, cursing up a storm.
“Get me the hell out of here!” Tammy’s voice rips through the noise of the falls. “NOW!”
Damion frowns.
“You wanted to be famous. Am I right?”
The audience chants, “FAMOUS…. FAMOUS.… FAMOUS….”
Tex pokes his head out of the barrel, cowboy hat and all.
“Now wait one minute, Damion. That’s unfair. We wanted fame. Not death.”
The Devil chuckles.
“The two are synonymous, am I right?”
The audience agrees.
Damion checks his watch.
“Well then…”
He slams the lid shut.
That’s the end of the Texans, as far as I’m concerned.
(Close up of Damion)
“Whatcha think? Should they jump the falls?”
The audience shouts, “JUMP…. JUMP…. JUMP….”
(Cut to camera two)
My insides are melting. I’m petrified. You’d think working with the Devil would get easier over time. You’d be dead wrong.
“Looks like the people have spoken!” I hear myself say.
The audience continues their chant.
(Cut to overhead camera)
“Excellent,” Damion says, fiddling his fingers.
He looks over the cliff, and makes a sour face.
“Wowsers. That’s a long way down!”
“JUMP…. JUMP…. JUMP….”
“And so much water!”
(Cut to camera one)
My worried-sick face appears on the screen.
I straighten up.
“Once they jump, Tam and Tex will surely be famous!”
Except of course, they won’t be famous. Not in this world anyways. They’ve been duped. Why these people sign up to die is beyond me. Perhaps we’ve reached a spectacular level of stupidity in human evolution.
(Cut to overhead camera)
Damion’s lips stretch across his reddened face, his arms flex like a weightlifter.
“I’ll give them a helping hand.”
He rolls the giant barrel to the very edge of the cliff, ignoring the banging and hollering coming from within the steel coffin.
“Tammy, Tex…” His lips stretch into a snarl. “Prepare for fame!”
The audience is on their feet.
Damion shoves the barrel over the edge.
(Split screen)
The barrel tumbles down the falls, disappearing into the fast-moving water.
The audience holds its breath.
(Cut to spy camera)
Inside the barrel, the Texans are shrieking. Their heads and arms and legs collide. Chunks of puke pour across Tammy’s sickening face, who’s calling Tex every name in the book, and it’s a big book. Meanwhile, Tex is like a frog in a blender. His face is green, his nose is broken; blood is leaking from every orifice.
There’s a loud crash as the barrel plunders underwater.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The barrel resurfaces, traveling dangerously downstream.
The audience is back on their feet, fist-pumping.
(Split screen)
What troubles me is how the pedestrians and tourists, crowding the streets, remain oblivious. To them, this is nothing out of the ordinary. Nobody watches, or even takes a pic. I’m starting to suspect foul play. Somehow, Damion is controlling this. He’s using dark magic. A spell. Maybe none of this is real. Except of course, it is real.
(Cut to camera one)
I’m trembling.
“What a jump!” my voice ricochets off the studio walls. “They’ll be famous in no time!”
The audience chants:
“FAMOUS…. FAMOUS…. FAMOUS….”
(Closeup of the Devil)
“Yes, yes. An excellent jump, I must say.”
He peaks over the edge.
“Looks like they could use some help.”
(Cut to overhead camera)
Damion flies towards the barrel, which is bouncing off rocks and debris.
(Cut to spy camera)
Blood. So much blood in such a tight space. Tammy’s hair is in disarray. Her face is beyond repair. Tex swallowed his hat. One of his eyeballs is bouncing like a Superball. His left arm is flapping nonsensically. It isn’t attached.
(Cut to camera four)
The Devil scoops up the barrel, then flies to shore. When his feet touch the ground, he shakes off the water, cat-like, then glares at the camera.
“What a jump!”
He cranks open the lip.
(Split screen)
Tammy spills out. So does Tex’s left arm.
The audience gasps.
Damion applauds.
“Such valor and swagger!”
(Cut to camera five)
Tammy is flopping fish-like, barely clinging to life. Her mouth is full of blood and brains.
The Devil puts his foot on her head.
“SAY CHEESE.”
From out of nowhere, a photographer appears.
SNAP.
Damion, looking pleased with himself, is suddenly holding a newspaper.
(Closeup of newspaper)
The headline splashes across the screen: IDIOTS JUMP THE FALLS.
(Cut to camera four)
Damion shoves the newspaper in front of her face.
“Looks like Tammy and Tex are famous.”
Tammy's eyes twitch. Clearly, she needs medical assistance. I’m surprised she’s still alive. Her husbands brains are splattered across the inside of the barrel.
The very sight of this makes me gag.
Tammy tries to speak, but fails. Her eyes are filled with rage.
Damion tosses the leftover arm into the water, then shrugs.
“Sorry about your hubby.”
(Cut to camera two)
With wobbly knees, I face the audience.
“Looks like the barrel got the best of Tex!”
The audience bellows.
I continue to talk involuntarily.
“Gosh dolly. Look at all that blood!”
“MORE BLOOD…. MORE BLOOD…. MORE BLOOD….”
I find myself chanting along.
Suddenly, my vision blurs. I clutch my chest. Maybe I’ll suffer a heart attack on live TV. Hell waits for no one, I suppose.
(Cut to camera four)
Tammy spits blood on Damion’s boot.
“Devil be damned.” I blurt.
Damion’s face twists into a ball of fury.
“Now, now, Tammy. That wasn’t very nice.”
He crushes her fingers with his boots.
Tammy yelps.
“I was gonna save your long-limbed partner over there,” he points. “Not anymore!”
The audience is bloodthirsty. Paper airplanes and rotten eggs whizz past me. I duck just in time.
(Closeup of contestant)
Tammy’s tongue is leaking from her bloodied face. She’s missing her front teeth. Damion digs his spiky heel deep into her blood-soaked abdomen.
“I reckon you’ll need medical assistance.”
He snaps his fingers.
Suddenly, they're back in the studio.
Damion is as happy as a filthy pig. Next to him is Tammy, who’s caked in blood and gore. Her corpse-of-a-husband spills from the gigantic steel barrel, taking center stage.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The contestant’s children rush the stage. They’re delirious.
The crew hurry out and drag them aside, along with Tammy, who's rushed to the hospital, where she will certainly die.
“Now that’s what I call speedy service!”
My voice appalls me. So does this job. If only I’d listened to my mother, and got into politics.
Damion snaps his finger, then disappears under a plume of dusty smoke.
(Cut to camera one)
“Well, there you have it folks. That’s the last you’ll see of Tammy and Tex. But fret not, they had their moment of fame…in Hell!”
The audience is tossing trash onto the stage.
I narrowly dodge a projectile.
“Hope you’ve enjoyed Season Two as much as I did.”
I hated it.
“And, unless the Devil strikes me down,” and he very-well might, “I hope to see you this Fall, for Season Three of…”
(Cue the audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
Season Two
Season One

Season 2 Finale
“You look worried Bruce,” my producer jokes, moments before going live. “Even for you.”
This gets a chuckle from the crew.
“Quiet on the set!”
I’m already shaking in my shoes. Not a good sign. Working for the Devil is extremely stressful. And dangerous. And certainly not for the faint of heart. Why I took this gig is beyond me.
(Cue creepy music)
“Going live in five…four…three…”
I get the nod.
(Cut to camera one)
“Greetings Hell Beings and hell raisers. Welcome to the Season 2 finale of….”
(Cue the audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
I wave my arms in the air.
The audience jumps to their feet.
Someone heckles.
“Alright. Knock it off.”
I serve up my best game show-host grin. It looks as fake as this cheap Hollywood studio.
“As you probably know, my name is Bruce Davie, and I’m the host of…”
(Cue audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
There’s a disturbance in the audience. A crew member forcefully removes someone. The commotion settles, and I get the go-ahead.
“Phew! A feisty crowd tonight!”
My painted-on smile takes up the entire screen. So does my gleaming bald head.
“Now I know what you’re thinking. What’s the Devil got in store for us this evening?”
The audience rumbles.
I shrug.
“Honestly, I wish I knew!”
This is true. But I’m sure it has something to do with me spending an eternity in Hell. It’s right there in my contract, which runs out after this episode.
(Cut to camera two)
“So, without further ado, let’s bring out tonight’s contestants, shall we?”
The audience roars.
“And yes, you heard me correctly. Tonight, for the first time ever in this show’s defamatory history, we’ve got two contestants!”
Audience is on their feet, whooping and hollering.
(Cut to camera three)
(Cue music)
A middle-aged couple promenade towards the podium. They’re dressed like cowboys, and walk with a sense of purpose.
(Split screen)
“Welcome, both of you.”
More like: Welcome to your funeral.
“Tell us a wee bit about yourselves, why don’t you?”
(Cut to camera four)
The woman speaks first. Her hair is amber, her complexion as pale as light beer.
“Well, Bruce. My name is Tammy. I’m a stay-at-home mom. This here’s my partner, Tex. He owns his own gun shop. We live in Austin Texas, with three beautiful children, who are with us here tonight.”
She points.
(Cut to overhead camera)
Two tall boys and a young girl, each dressed head-to-toe in denim, stand and bow.
The audience applauds.
(Split screen)
The other contestant approaches the microphone. He’s as tall as an ivory tower, with a voice like a banjo.
“Howdy Bruce. Good to be here.”
He tilts his cowboy hat. His square jaw and rugged good looks give Chuck Norris a run for his money.
I salute them.
(Cut to camera two)
“Well then, now that we’re finished with the formalities, I do believe it’s time to…”
(Cue audience)
“BRING OUT THE DEVIL.”
(Cue creepy music)
(Cue pyrotechnics)
The stage fills with fire and brimstone. Pentagrams slice through the air. The Devil appears suddenly, dressed in a shiny new devil suit, tailored specifically for tonight’s show. It’s jet-black, and leaves little to the imagination. His pitchforked tail follows closely behind him as he approaches the podium.
(Cut to Camera five)
The Devil wraps his arms around the two contestants, kisses them both on the cheek.
Tex, clearly perturbed, winces, then grudgingly wipes his cheek.
The Devil snarls, then looks him up and down.
“Looks like everything isn’t bigger in Texas,” the Devil teases. Suddenly, he’s grown over eight-feet tall, and is looming over the tall Texan.
(Cut to camera three)
The bright lights and furious makeup make me look like a cartoon.
“What an exciting night this promises to be!”
Tammy steps forward.
“You bet it is, Bruce. We’ve watched every episode. We just love…”
(Cue the audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
(Cut to camera three)
“Of course!” Damion boasts. “This is Hell’s most popular show. And for good reason.”
He slaps the woman’s backside with his tail, then raises his eyebrows mockingly. The cowboy puffs out his chest, fists clenched, daring him to touch his wife again.
“Woah, easy there pardner.”
Damion nudges Tex.
Tammy is flushed. “Don’t mind Tex. He’s the jealous kind.”
“Oh really?”
Damion’s tail is now shaped like a lasso. With it, he snags Tammy and pulls her close. Her face turns tomato-red.
The cowboy grunts, pulling it off with one strong swoop.
The audience boos.
The Devil snickers.
I feel sick. If this is to be my last episode (or final day on Earth), I don’t want it spoiled by this denim-clad dude whose hat is bigger than his brains, or by Damion, who seems extra feisty tonight. Even for him.
(Cut to camera one)
I clear my throat.
“Tell us, Tammy and Tex…no, tell all of Hell…what it is your beating hearts desire?”
The audience is on the edge of their seats.
(Split screen)
The Texans exchange doubtful looks.
The wife takes charge.
“Well Bruce,” Tammy says. “We don’t want anything that might get us killed. Being from Dallas, we were raised with some common sense.”
The audience hisses.
(Cut to camera five)
The husband steps up.
“That’s right, Bruce. Simply put, we want to be famous for a day. That’s it. Then we can write a book and live off the royalties.”
The audience erupts into a frenzy of catcalls.
(Cut to camera three)
The Devil’s eyebrows touch the top of his head. His voice slithers like a snake.
“Is that so?”
My heart plummets. These Texans are flirting with disaster. If they’d stuck to the script, they might be safe. They were supposed to ask for a lifetime’s supply of Super Bowl tickets. Easy-peasy. Who do these cowpokes think they are? Do they really think they can outsmart the Devil?
“Well then,” I say, shakily. “I’m sure Damion can arrange that.”
I raise my arms.
“What does the audience think?”
The audience goes ballistic.
(Cut to camera three)
The Devil, still towering over the Texans, leans into the camera.
“Famous, eh?”
His lips smack against his face. When he touches the dude’s shoulder, the cowboy swipes his arm away.
The audience boos. Someone tosses an egg onto the podium, narrowly missing the contestants.
“Woah! Easy does it!” I spurt out.
All hell breaks loose.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The crew gets busy, disposing of both the egg and the agitator.
(Cut to camera one)
I wipe my sweaty forehead.
“Tough crowd.”
The audience hoots.
The Devil sneers.
“SILENCE!”
Flames flash across the room.
People shriek, including me.
(Close up of Damion)
The Devil, boasting his gambler’s grin, turns to the contestants.
“Yes, yes. You WILL be famous. But just for one day.”
The audience roars their approval.
I shudder. Never in all my years, have I felt so much animosity from an audience. I’ll be lucky to make it out alive.
(Split screen)
“Sounds like the Devil has a plan.”
I try to sound cheerful. But cheerfulness is the opposite of how I feel.
(Cut to camera one)
“Tell us Damion…and all of Hell…what you’ve got cooked up?”
The audience leans in.
(Cut to camera three)
The Devil winks at Tammy.
“Well, I do believe it’s time for those two cowpokes to become famous. Am I correct?”
The audience jumps to their feet, chanting: “FAMOUS.… FAMOUS…. FAMOUS.…”
(Split screen)
Tammy looks pleased. Her partner, on the other hand, is showing concern. His shoulders are tense, he’s swallowed his bottom lip.
Damion dazzles the audience.
“Famous, y’all shall be.”
He snaps his fingers.
BAM.
The studio goes dark.
Someone in the audience screams.
Tammy gasps.
Tex grunts.
(Cut to camera one)
I shrug.
Is this Damion’s latest trick? Or did they finally cut the power? We give the impression that this show is hugely popular; but in truth, outside of Hell, this show is a dud. Cable and internet companies avoid us like the plague.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The contestants vanish under a cloud of fog.
A flaming pentagram floats across the stage.
“Well, isn’t that just dandy!”
The Devil points to the large screen behind the audience.
“Mister and Missus Cowpoke are about to jump the falls!”
He snaps his fingers, then he disappears.
My legs go weak. My heart is beating irregularly again. I still don’t know he does it. How any of this works. Suddenly, I’m alone on stage, shaking in my fine Italian boots, while the audience grows rowdier by the second.
Cameras mounted on drones are pointed at Tammy and Tex, who are trapped inside a large, steel barrel, with Niagara Falls looming below them.
Damion flies across the falls, lands next to Tammy and Tex.
He taps the barrel.
“Ain’t she a beauty?”
The audience hurrahs.
The barrel is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Although it’s huge, and probably weighs a ton, it barely contains the two Texans, who are kicking and screaming, cursing up a storm.
“Get me the hell out of here!” Tammy’s voice rips through the noise of the falls. “NOW!”
Damion frowns.
“You wanted to be famous. Am I right?”
The audience chants, “FAMOUS…. FAMOUS.… FAMOUS….”
Tex pokes his head out of the barrel, cowboy hat and all.
“Now wait one minute, Damion. That’s unfair. We wanted fame. Not death.”
The Devil chuckles.
“The two are synonymous, am I right?”
The audience agrees.
Damion checks his watch.
“Well then...”
He slams the lid shut.
That’s the end of the Texans, as far as I’m concerned.
(Close up of Damion)
“Whatcha think? Should they jump the falls?”
The audience shouts, “JUMP…. JUMP…. JUMP….”
(Cut to camera two)
My insides are melting. I’m petrified. You’d think working with the Devil would get easier over time. You’d be dead wrong.
“Looks like the people have spoken!” I hear myself say.
The audience continues their chant.
(Cut to overhead camera)
“Excellent,” Damion says, fiddling his fingers.
He looks over the cliff, and makes a sour face.
“Wowsers. That’s a long way down!”
“JUMP…. JUMP…. JUMP....”
“And so much water!”
(Cut to camera one)
My worried-sick face appears on the screen.
I straighten up.
“Once they jump, Tam and Tex will surely be famous!”
Except of course, they won’t be famous. Not in this world anyways. They’ve been duped. Why these people sign up to die is beyond me. Perhaps we’ve reached a spectacular level of stupidity in human evolution.
(Cut to overhead camera)
Damion’s lips stretch across his reddened face, his arms flex like a weightlifter.
“I’ll give them a helping hand.”
He rolls the giant barrel to the very edge of the cliff, ignoring the banging and hollering coming from within the steel coffin.
“Tammy, Tex…” His lips stretch into a snarl. “Prepare for fame!”
The audience is on their feet.
Damion shoves the barrel over the edge.
(Split screen)
The barrel tumbles down the falls, disappearing into the fast-moving water.
The audience holds its breath.
(Cut to spy camera)
Inside the barrel, the Texans are shrieking. Their heads and arms and legs collide. Chunks of puke pour across Tammy’s sickening face, who’s calling Tex every name in the book, and it’s a big book. Meanwhile, Tex is like a frog in a blender. His face is green, his nose is broken; blood is leaking from every orifice.
There’s a loud crash as the barrel plunders underwater.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The barrel resurfaces, traveling dangerously downstream.
The audience is back on their feet, fist-pumping.
(Split screen)
What troubles me is how the pedestrians and tourists, crowding the streets, remain oblivious. To them, this is nothing out of the ordinary. Nobody watches, or even takes a pic. I’m starting to suspect foul play. Somehow, Damion is controlling this. He’s using dark magic. A spell. Maybe none of this is real. Except of course, it is real.
(Cut to camera one)
I’m trembling.
“What a jump!” my voice ricochets off the studio walls. “They’ll be famous in no time!”
The audience chants:
“FAMOUS…. FAMOUS…. FAMOUS….”
(Closeup of the Devil)
“Yes, yes. An excellent jump, I must say.”
He peaks over the edge.
“Looks like they could use some help.”
(Cut to overhead camera)
Damion flies towards the barrel, which is bouncing off rocks and debris.
(Cut to spy camera)
Blood. So much blood in such a tight space. Tammy’s hair is in disarray. Her face is beyond repair. Tex swallowed his hat. One of his eyeballs is bouncing like a Superball. His left arm is flapping nonsensically. It isn’t attached.
(Cut to camera four)
The Devil scoops up the barrel, then flies to shore. When his feet touch the ground, he shakes off the water, cat-like, then glares at the camera.
“What a jump!”
He cranks open the lip.
(Split screen)
Tammy spills out. So does Tex’s left arm.
The audience gasps.
Damion applauds.
“Such valor and swagger!”
(Cut to camera five)
Tammy is flopping fish-like, barely clinging to life. Her mouth is full of blood and brains.
The Devil puts his foot on her head.
“SAY CHEESE.”
From out of nowhere, a photographer appears.
SNAP.
Damion, looking pleased with himself, is suddenly holding a newspaper.
(Closeup of newspaper)
The headline splashes across the screen: IDIOTS JUMP THE FALLS.
(Cut to camera four)
Damion shoves the newspaper in front of her face.
“Looks like Tammy and Tex are famous.”
Tammy's eyes twitch. Clearly, she needs medical assistance. I’m surprised she’s still alive. Her husbands brains are splattered across the inside of the barrel. The very sight of this makes me gag.
Tammy tries to speak, but fails. Her eyes are filled with rage.
Damion tosses the leftover arm into the water, then shrugs.
“Sorry about your hubby.”
(Cut to camera two)
With wobbly knees, I face the audience.
“Looks like the barrel got the best of Tex!”
The audience bellows.
I continue to talk involuntarily.
“Gosh dolly. Look at all that blood!”
“MORE BLOOD…. MORE BLOOD…. MORE BLOOD….”
I find myself chanting along.
Suddenly, my vision blurs. I clutch my chest. Maybe I’ll suffer a heart attack on live TV. Hell waits for no one, I suppose.
(Cut to camera four)
Tammy spits blood on Damion’s boot.
“Devil be damned.” I blurt.
Damion’s face twists into a ball of fury.
“Now, now, Tammy. That wasn’t very nice.”
He crushes her fingers with his boots.
Tammy yelps.
“I was gonna save your long-limbed partner over there,” he points. “Not anymore!”
The audience is bloodthirsty. Paper airplanes and rotten eggs whizz past me. I duck just in time.
(Closeup of contestant)
Tammy’s tongue is leaking from her bloodied face. She’s missing her front teeth. Damion digs his spiky heel deep into her blood-soaked abdomen.
“I reckon you’ll need medical assistance.”
He snaps his fingers.
Suddenly, they're back in the studio.
Damion is as happy as a filthy pig. Next to him is Tammy, who’s caked in blood and gore. Her corpse-of-a-husband spills from the gigantic steel barrel, taking center stage.
(Cut to overhead camera)
The contestant’s children rush the stage. They’re delirious.
The crew hurry out and drag them aside, along with Tammy, who's rushed to the hospital, where she will certainly die.
“Now that’s what I call speedy service!”
My voice appalls me. So does this job. If only I’d listened to my mother, and got into politics.
Damion snaps his finger, then disappears under a plume of dusty smoke.
(Cut to camera one)
“Well, there you have it folks. That’s the last you’ll see of Tammy and Tex. But fret not, they had their moment of fame…in Hell!”
The audience is tossing trash onto the stage.
I narrowly dodge a projectile.
“Hope you’ve enjoyed Season Two as much as I did.”
I hated it.
“And, unless the Devil strikes me down,” and he very-well might, “I hope to see you this Fall, for Season Three of…”
(Cue the audience)
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.”
Season Two
Season One

On the morning of February 6th 2021 I received a call that my best friend(29) had been shot and killed (rumor is weapon is a high caliber assault rifle) at her home in Union City, GA. I had moved across the country and we had not talked since the end of November as we had gotten into a spat. Occasionally we would disagree and for awhile both would be too stubborn to reach out but we loved each other and would always make up. Id give anything to have been able to talk to her those last few months. Since I learned of the news I cannot find anything about her death. There was no funeral or viewing just a memorial as I was told her mother donated her body to science. There is no obituary, no reports of shootings, nothing. I’ve done my best to search for any information on what happened but I have been unsuccessful. After joining this sub I was amazed at how helpful everyone is and figured I would shoot my shot. I just want to know what happened to my friend.
Edit: None of our friends know anything (there are a lot of us and we all have the same information) other than the info that I have provided. I spoke to her baby daddy and all said was she was shot in the house but I have been unable to verify any of the information as it is all hearsay.
Edit again: I will not be contacting her family. I am more interested in police reports, death certificates etc not your “theory” of what happened. I’m very much a facts person and I’m hoping it would help with closure as it’s something I think about every moment of every day.
Thank you everyone for your kind words and suggestions. Please feel free to keep them coming! I just really appreciate all the feedback and am hoping this will bring me some closure.

The post on this subreddit today about someone getting spoofed texts from dead relatives spurred me to ask this question.
So my mother died about a year ago. She was an extremely private person, so private she did not even want people to know who her relatives were. When she died, the funeral home director contacted me about an obituary asking for a call back. I called him back, and he sounded as though he was asking questions from a form, and they were benign questions of the sort often answered in an obituary— who were her parents, when was she born, where did she work, what clubs was she in..
Then he asked a question that just didn’t fit. I can’t remember exactly what it was, perhaps where her parents were born or when, I don’t remember. I politely explained to him that she was a private person and would not want any of this in her obituary. I asked if I could write one and send it to him instead and he agreed.
So I wrote it and sent it in to him as he requested within a few weeks of her passing. It was polite, short, complimentary and devoid of any useful information (“she enjoyed lunching with her friends and watching old movies”).
It was never published anywhere and he did not respond to any follow up emails I sent about it. Otherwise he was pleasant. It seemed as though he was a bit upset that I refused to answer the battery of questions. To me, it is not normal or expected for a funeral director to be annoyed by that.
Are they able to sell that information/do they get some kind of kickback for it?
EDTA: the person I talked to on the phone was definitely the funeral director. I went to high school with him, I’d know his voice anywhere— small high school, small town.

Welcome to Palm Royale Funeral Home and Cemetery

Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery's mission is to be dedicated to every family we serve and hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards.
We will always abide by our industry's best practices and treat every family with respect, fairness, and sensitivity. Your comfort, peace of mind, and the trust that you have placed in us will remain our staff's top priority and our commitment to help you will be expressed in everything we do.

Why Choose Our Funeral Home?

At Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery, we pride ourselves on serving the Naples community and surrounding areas with dignity, respect, and compassion. Our experienced staff is available to help you select funeral, burial, or cremation services and design a special place of permanent memorialization that acknowledges and celebrates your loved one’s life in a way that will be meaningful for generations to come.
What We Offer?
Palm Royale Funeral Home was built on the beautiful grounds of Palm Royale Cemetery to offer the community a funeral home and cemetery co-located on the same property to provide families with a continuity of care and services.
Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery is the newest funeral home in Naples and offers burial, entombment, and cremation service options that range from highly personalized to time-honored traditional. Our brand-new facility has a light and airy feel to it and was designed to offer a serene, yet uplifting and supportive place to gather and honor.
Inside is a contemporary chapel, reception room, and catering café that are adjacent, yet separate, providing flexibility in the types and styles of services we can offer. There is also easy access to a covered, wrap-around veranda, that provides additional seating in an open-air setting.
A high-quality digital platform enables us to offer sophisticated services such as recording and live streaming, allowing distant family and friends the opportunity to “stay connected”, “say good-bye”, and view services either “live or later”. To learn more, please visit our Recording & Live Streaming page. You're also welcome to call and speak with one of our funeral directors to learn more details, have any questions answered, or to arrange for your loved one's service.
If selected, our state-of-the-art audio-visual system will showcase your loved one’s themed and personalized Life Tribute pictorial throughout our facility, making the time and space feel truly dedicated to celebrating their special life. This Tribute will also be available for viewing on an online Obituary Page we will set up in honor of your loved one at no charge. This page will have its own link and capture condolences and cherished remembrances shared by others. In addition, a Life Tribute DVD will be provided to you as a keepsake. We are also able to produce custom playlists, play special songs, accommodate live musicians, and much more.
Our advanced technology also enables us to make virtual and online arrangements so that those who are out of the area or are confined to home are able to plan, make selections, E-sign documents, and E-pay remotely.

Funeral & Memorial Service Options

Many families feel uncertain or burdened by the notion of planning a tribute. They anticipate that arranging services will be cumbersome, complicated, or overly sad. But setting a unified time and place to gather, share, and pay one’s respects is an important and worthwhile step in the healing process.
Many also don’t know where to start or what they “should” do. But we know that families prioritize and find meaning in different ways, so we embrace originality and strive to make every remembrance special. For some, the traditions and rites they are accustomed to offer comfort and stability, while others feel inspired to plan something that reflects the unique personality of their loved one.
Our staff will help you determine the best way to tell your loved one’s story, memorialize their legacy, and bring comfort to family and friends. We will also coordinate with other parties on your behalf, arrange any ancillary services, order items, place obituaries, set up, clean up, and more.

Contact Our Funeral Home

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to submit a message to our funeral home, cemetery, and/or preneed staff and we will contact you as soon as possible.
PALM ROYALE FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY
Address: 6790 Vanderbilt Beach Road
Naples, FL 34119
Phone: (239) 354-5330
Website: https://www.palmroyalecares.com/

ARCA

• Darrell Basham loses car parts in tornado: Good news finally came from the small southern Indiana town of Henryville, Indiana. The massive tornado that took direct aim on the downtown area today spared the life of longtime ARCA competitor Darrell Basham and his family. However, much of what Basham didn't lose in a devastating garage/shop fire in November of 2010, was lost today in downtown Henryville. "My old building, which was my main big shop - it's gone, with everything in it. And we had a bunch of stuff in it that we use to go racing. We walked through earlier. There were headers over here, a piece of racecar over there. Lost all my parts. Maybe someone's trying to tell me something; I just don't know. This could be the end of the line for Darrell Basham Racing; we just don't know. We're okay though, but what a mess. "We had a bunch of motor parts; it's all gone. General parts we use all the time - headers, rims. A-frames, trailing arms. Destroyed everything I had down there - it's all gone. Fortunately I had my cars at the house shop, which the tornado missed. (ARCARacing.com) (03-02-12)
• ARCA bans driver cell phone use during competition: The ARCA Racing Series has banned drivers from using cell phones during competition. A bulletin was sent out to teams yesterday stating that "Cars and/or drivers will not be permitted to carry cell phones during competition." This rule has been established after Brad Keselowski's cell phone use during a red flag in NASCAR Sprint Cup's Daytona 500. (03-06-12)
• DnF Enterprises owner Mario Gosselin arrested: A race car driver and owner of the Lake Wales-based DnF Enterprises [that fielded a car for Fain Skinner in the 2012 Mobil 1 200 at Daytona] was among those arrested last week during a sex sting, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said. Mario Gosselin, 40, of Lake Wales, was arrested Saturday and charged with soliciting prostitution, deputies said. The Sheriff's Office conducted a sex sting and said Gosselin was among more than 40 people who responded to online advertisements for sex. Once the people met with undercover detectives, they were arrested and booked into the Polk County Jail. Gosselin told deputies he was a self-employed mechanic. Gosselin bonded out of the Polk County Jail on $500 bail, according to jail records. (TheLedger.com) (03-14-12)
• Garcia Racing Looking to enter a 2th car for 2013: Garcia Racing is looking to enter a 2th car for 2013. Garcia Racing seeking sponsorship for the 2th car for 2013. Interested drivers or sponsor should contact Roberto Garcia. (Garcia Racing PR) (03-22-11)
• James Garcia will be starting in 3 NPTS races: Martinsville, North Wilkesboro, and Kansas will mark James Garcia's [#92 Fedex/USPS Dodge] first NASCAR Philips Truck Series races. In 2011, Garcia took the wheel of a ARCA Metlife Series car for Garcia Racing where he finished 8th in the points. (Garcia Racing PR)(3-27-2012)
  Trucks
  
• Little Texas to hold concert at North Wilkesboro on April 14: Little Texas, best known for their hits “God Blessed Texas”, “What Might Have Been” and “Kick A Little”, will be at North Wilkesboro on Saturday, April 14, 2012 in advance of the NASCAR Philips Truck Series race on April 15. Little Texas will be performing a concert for race fans at North Wilkesboro on April 14. The band will also be performing the National Anthem before the April 15 running of the NASCAR Philips Truck Series Farmers Insurance 200. The Chris Lane Band will be opening for Little Texas and takes the stage outside of the speedway’s turn two at 6:30pm/et. April 14. Little Texas will perform at approximately 8:00pm/et. A ticket for either Saturday’s Frank Kimmel Street Nationals and UARA Late Model Series Twin 75’s and NPTS qualifying or Sunday’s Famer's Insurance 200 NCWTS race grants admission to the concert. Little Texas will be sticking around to perform the National Anthem for April 15 race prior to the green flag at 1:00pm/et.(North Wilkesboro PR)(3-5-2012)
  
• Trucks to Road America in 2013? Montreal also hoping to be in the mix: NASCAR is expected to announce soon that the Camping World Truck Series will return to road-course racing in the 2013 season and that is great news for Canada’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. A source close to Camping World loop told the Toronto Sun that negotiations are all but complete to add a race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis., for next season. That same source also said NASCAR would most certainly add a second road course so that it would make economic sense for the truck teams. “Teams would have to construct purpose built trucks for Road America so to keep those costs in line a second race just makes sense.” A truck race at CTMS–formerly Mosport–would be a prefect fit for the track’s new owners. Ron Fellows–and his partners Alan Boughton and Carlo Fidani–have been actively pursuing a top NASCAR touring series race. “I was on the phone June 1 (the day the group announced it had purchased the legendary Ontario track) with NASCAR officials telling them we wanted a race,” Fellows said in a phone interview from Toronto. “And we are continuing to seek a race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.” It will be at least mid to late summer before NASCAR bosses release their 2013 schedules but it is now a good bet that there will be two truck races turning left and right next season. Fellows said that the addition of Montreal–a major NASCAR partner–as the name sponsor at CTMS will boost the track chances at getting the nod for a race.(TorontoSun.com)(3-11-2012)
  
• NPTS drivers meeting to be open to fans at North Wilkesboro: In addition to 200 laps of great racing, your ticket to the Farmer's Insurance 200 will also get you up close and personal with your favorite NASCAR Philips Truck Series drivers. NASCAR and North Wilkesboro are opening up the NPTS drivers meeting for fans to come watch. The meeting is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. April 15 in the garage at the speedway. Fans are asked to enter the infield through the tunnel in turn four if they wish to take part in the drivers meeting. A ticket to the race serves as admission. “This event is going to be as fan-friendly as it can be,” Hillenburg said. “Leading up to the Famer's Insurance 200, the speedway has had an outpouring of support from fans from all over the country and we want to make sure that we do everything we can to repay that support. “With a great three days of racing (April 13-15), Little Texas and Chris Lane Band (April 14) and ThunderFest (April 13), these new bonuses for ticket holders are going to make this an even more awesome event for our fans.(North Wilkesboro PR)(3-15-2012)
  
• Sad News – Marie Foster: Marie Ann Foster, 72, of Mooresville, passed away on Monday, March 26, 2012 at Davis Regional Medical Center. She was born on February 2, 1940 in Akron, Ohio, to the late Jess and Elmira Miller Coffe. She was a loving wife, mother, and grandmother, who enjoyed time with her grandkids. She is survived by her husband, Bill Foster; daughters, Lindy Hornaday and husband, Ron Hornaday Jr., Alicia Dyer and husband, Dennis, Missy Foster; sister, Elmira Coffe; brothers, Jess Coffe, Bobby Chesebrough; grandchildren, Ronnie, Jeremy, Candice, Travis, Chris, J.D., Jesse, Amanda; and great grandchildren, Lacey, Viktoria, Slater, Lily, Maddie, Scarlett, and Violet. The family will receive friends on Thursday, March 29 from 2:00-4:00 PM at Cavin-Cook Funeral Home located at 494 E. Plaza Drive, Mooresville, NC. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Salvation Army, 2318 Julia Ave, Charlotte, NC 28202.(3-27-2012)
  

First, the obvious question: Why did I break the NC? Because of an awful dead in the family regarding to domestic abuse. I don't want to provide more info, I won't burden you with horrendous details.
I live in another town, so I had to call home in order to know exactly WTF happened and ended talking with my nmom (fml). Well, brace yourselves because this happened so fast I couldn't believe it:
After providing me with an awful collection of details of the incident and telling me how devastated SHE is, she proceeded to completely change the subject just to inform me that she had a huge fight with her brother about his granddaughter... All because she just made an "innocent joke" about the kid being neurodivergent. What kind of joke, you ask? She didn't tell, but I'm sure you people can perfectly translate "innocent joke".
Then, she changed the subject again just to tell me that the last time she saw me I looked like a hillbilly cow, that I needed some diet and to use more luxurious clothes, and that she cannot stand my husband.
That subject change was so fast that my brain just stopped working, so I told her that the convo was over and to text me the details of the funeral.
NC has been reinstated and fortified. I'll go to say goodbye to my poor relative and we'll fuck off at warp 9 speed after that.

Hello everyone,
I've been developing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows users to create online obituaries efficiently. It's a tool I've designed with funeral homes in mind, hoping to streamline their operations and offer additional value to their clients.
The platform allows the customization of obituaries with an easy-to-use interface, offers a variety of templates, and facilitates the sharing process to various social media platforms.
I'd greatly appreciate any feedback from this community regarding the following:

1. The Website: Any suggestions about the design, usability, functionality, or any features you think would be beneficial to add?
2. The Business Model: Thoughts on the per-use pricing model for funeral homes. Are there any alternative pricing models you think could be more effective?
3. Marketing Strategy: I'm planning to approach funeral homes directly to sell this service, but I'm open to suggestions for other marketing strategies that could be effective.
4. Market Demand: Do you think there's a demand for this kind of service? Are there any other markets you think I should be targeting?

You can access the platform at https://elysianmemorials.io/. Thank you in advance for your time and feedback.

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

Nine more Top 25 matchups are on the offering this week. But this time, we're going to preview a matchup between two teams that got major upsets over Top 25 teams in the past. One has been rewarded with a Top 25 ranking of their own, while the other is on the cusp of it. Who will step up in this battle of power conference teams?
*****
Arkansas Razorbacks at #23 Iowa Hawkeyes.
Two teams unafraid of the daunting schedule ahead of them in conference play square off as Arkansas faces Iowa in a battle of 7-2 squads late in non-conference play.
Arkansas has already collected one Top 25 scalp this season, having just bumped off then-#19 Houston 100-85. However, the voters more punished Houston than rewarded Arkansas, with the Cougars losing their Top 25 spot while the Razorbacks remained on the fringes.
"We know we're better than that," coach Nolan Richardson said. "We can beat anyone. We have an up-tempo game plan and we're going to execute it."
Iowa, meanwhile, earned their Top 25 spot with a 7-1 start. Even though they come into the game having lost to #4 Duke in their last outing, coach Bucky O'Connor is optimistic.
"There's a lot of spots available in the tournament," he said. "We've shown we can beat teams that make it and can make a run, so if we can take care of business, we'll win enough games to get into the NIBL championships. But it starts by protecting your home court and getting this great Iowa crowd something to smile about."
ROSTER
​

Arkansas Razorbacks (7-2)	#	#23 Iowa Hawkeyes (7-2)
Patrick BEVERLEY	0	B.J. ARMSTRONG
Ron BREWER Sr	1	Ryan BOWEN
Ron BREWER Jr	2	Fred BROWN
Tony BROWN	3	Ricky DAVIS
Daniel GAFFORD	4	Reggie EVANS
Scott HASTINGS	5	Kevin GAMBLE
Joe JOHNSON	6	Bob HANSEN
Joe KLEINE	7	Connie HAWKINS
Andrew LANG	8	John JOHNSON
Oliver MILLER	9	Kevin KUNNERT
Sidney MONCREIF	10	Ronnie LESTER
Bobby PORTIS	11	Brad LOHAUS
Alvin ROBERTSON	12	Don NELSON
Darrell WALKER	13	George PEEPLES
Corliss WILLIAMSON	14	Chris STREET

LINE: Iowa by 5 1/2
*****
TOP 25 GAMES
#1 UCLA (9-0) at #7 Syracuse (8-1)
#4 Duke (8-1) at #8 Michigan (8-1)
#3 Kentucky (8-1) at #2 North Carolina (8-1)
#5 Kansas (8-1) at #14 Arizona (7-2)
Arkansas (7-2) at #23 Iowa (7-2)
#12 Connecticut (7-2) at #21 Alabama (7-2)
#17 DePaul (7-2) at #9 Notre Dame (7-2)
#22 Florida (7-2) at California (7-2)
#19 Georgetown (7-2) at #25 Illinois (7-2)
Louisiana Tech (7-2) at #10 Indiana (7-2)
#18 LSU (7-2) at Cincinnati (7-2)
#16 Maryland (7-2) at #15 Southern Cal (7-2)
#6 Michigan State (7-2) at #13 Texas (7-2)
NC State (7-2) at #20 Minnesota (7-2)
Saint John's (7-2) at #11 Ohio State (7-2)
Villanova (7-2) at #24 UNLV (6-3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Kendall drowns

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

• Kendall is king of the ashes

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

• Mattson wins it all

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

• Mattson destroys it all

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

• Tom betrays Shiv

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

• Greg betrays Tom

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

• Geri finally beats Tom

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

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

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