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Cake day: April 16th, 2025

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  • Like that 1969 Ray Bradbury story, “Night Call, Collect”, where a man stranded on Mars spends 60 years setting up pre-recorded messages for himself that one day spring into action and eventually start talking to each other.

    Spoiler

    A relay snapped somewhere. The two phone voices were connected, one to the other.
    “Hello, Barton?”
    “Yes, Barton?”
    “Aged twenty-four.”
    “I’m twenty-six. We’re both young. What’s happened?”
    “I don’t know. Listen.”
    The silent room. The old man did not stir on the floor. The wind blew in the broken window. The air was cool.
    “Congratulate me, Barton, this is my twenty-sixth birthday!”
    “Congratulations!”
    The voices sang together, about birthdays, and the singing blew out the window, faintly, faintly, into the dead city.














  • My dad treated me like a boxing bag for the slightest transgression.
    I once squatted for an entire night. Squatted. Because at dusk, I was gaming in the middle of a room with a very creaky floor and then darkness fell. I was expected to be in my own room, and now I was trapped. Had to turn off the console as to not make any noise or quick movement.
    Had my parents found out, they’d have flat out killed me, and that’s not an exaggeration.
    Oh, and apart from the constant physical and mental abuse, I was never allowed to leave the house except for going to school, and couldn’t make any phone call exceeding one minute.
    I got out of it eventually, but it took a lot of healing. My siblings’ lives are still completely ruined, though.