Her Name Was Saly, She Was Five Years Old. She Was Like Any Child, She Probably Liked To Play With Her

Her name was Saly, she was five years old. She was like any child, she probably liked to play with her toys, she was probably learning to read, she probably like to spend time with her family and friends.

Maybe she would have been a doctor, or a farmer, or a engineer. Maybe she would have advanced the field of physics or medicine, written a best seller novel or stared in a major movie production; Or she might have had a quieter life, the world might have never known her name, but her friends and family would have and that might have been enough.

But no one will ever know now because Israel took those lives away from her, the tens of thousands of possibles that lay before each child burning like candle lights in cool summer night sniffed out in an instant. A last story shared by thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.

1

"What about the rumors that you're the most hated person in DoodleCo?" Cortés: In a country full of neanderthals, I wear the fucking badge of honor. "What about the rumors that you got divorced?" Cortés: WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT Like y'all can't convince me that this man didn't get divorced with how he was quick to bring Ellen's lack of husband when she told him that no one loves him.

just imagining Zavier taking after Zane and just not bathing and eating random shit they can find

Zavier seems like the type of guy who would eat bugs

Oh nos... Icyridge is takin so long to release that I've gotten sucked into the Tales of Tanorio fandom. Verdrok save me-

The Ethylene Creator

Fandom: Doodle World (Roblox)

Words: 964

Characters: Cassidy

@flashfictionfridayofficial

Cassidy walked out of Graphite Lodge’s Help Center, holding a card in her hands and rereading the peculiar assignment she had accepted. Whoever left the request hadn’t provided a name, but it was fairly straightforward: a house hadn’t been attended to in weeks by its owner. Check in to make sure everything was alright, and report to the mayor–her father–if it wasn’t, for a handy cash prize. It did raise the question of who involved her father in this without daring to be upfront about it, but she wasn’t one to stray from an opportunity to try and make the world better.

She knocked once on the wooden door to the house, and was greeted by a dimly lit room as it creaked open. “Hello? This place is lived in, right? People have been worrying…” There wasn’t a response.

Cassidy shrugged it off rather apprehensively, stepping upstairs. There was no sign of life, the whole attic was cluttered with boxes and various statuettes on end tables. She recognized them as all being shaped in the image of Louis: a Doodle some speculated was a god taking the form of an inflatable balloon cat one might get at the circus. Evidently whoever lives (lived?) here was a believer in that theory.

She took a mini flashlight from her pocket and flipped it, shining the thin beam of light across the deserted room. Was it her, or were the chiseled gazes of the Louis idols following the light? Maybe it was for the best that no one else was here…

The light landed on an open book, pages slightly yellowed and covered in near-illegible scrawl. Cassidy toed around the boxes and picked up the book, glancing across the page. Evidently it was a diary of sorts, but most of what was written had been scratched out.

— - — - LOVE LOUIS – —---- WAR -- - - - —- —- LOVE —- - - LOVE LOUIS – —-- - — WILL THE —-- — - LOUIS - — LOVE LOUIS — - - - – - - – - - – —-- LOVE - - - - – - DOODLE – - - - – - - - LOUIS LOVE – - - – - - - LOVE – - - - — WE - WIN – – – - – LOVE LOUIS – – - SOMNIERE, — - — —--- - LOVE LOUIS

She turned the page, and it was more of the same. This couldn’t have had anything to do with Alice, could it? That girl was always fond of Louis… but she wasn’t like this, no.

Cassidy took the diary, and underneath it were some scraps of paper, some legible and others not, that looked like they were relaying some sort of key to a puzzle. She hesitated. There was the innate sense that she wasn’t alone in this horror house, but nothing had happened to suggest she would regret her snooping. And, in the end, what was a bit more evidence for whatever ended up coming from this request?

She took the key and went back downstairs.

There was the sense she hadn’t checked everywhere there was to look, though. So she went out to the backyard, the place children throughout Graphite Lodge were told not to go. And, as she could have guessed, there was no sign of anyone alive. But someone had been there recently, she could see footprints that had yet to be cleared away by a gust of wind heading down into what Cassidy always assumed was a priest hole. She wasn’t one to believe much in supernatural religious figures, but it lined up with what she had seen in the house, so… she went down into the hole anyway.

The hole led to a hallway with a stone floor and a wooden door standing ajar at the end. As Cassidy approached it, she saw a torn up version of the key she had found in the house laying on the ground in front of it.

Well. That made her job easier. Cassidy was almost disappointed, she rather liked decoding puzzles. Almost.

She stepped into the room and saw drawing-boards with bright blue threads hooked on pins stabbed into the boards. A hundred different scenarios, all written down in marker and tightly interwoven for scenarios Cassidy would never have dreamed were possible, doodles of keys–the kind you’d use to unlock something–crammed where they could fit. Project Ethylene G, a scenario with the second coming of the Blankists stood out, and the main point was highlighted in red ink:

[SEEK PLAYER’S ALLEGIANCE]

[SEEK PLAYER’S ALLEGIANCE]

[SEEK PLAYER’S ALLEGIANCE]

Cassidy looked across the boards. Each and every possible scenario had this in common. Did they know? They couldn’t know. They were on the other side of the island collecting the keys for DoodleCo— the keys. They have the keys.

She heard a sound from the back of the room and jumped, turning to get as far away from there as possible. She didn’t even realize that the pieces of the key she had found fluttered out behind her, forming a trail as they drifted to the ground. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and she scrambled up the ladder to escape the priest-hole. Clambering over the fence, she staggered to the ground and pulled the diary out from under her arm.

Whatever was in this journal, someone didn’t want people reading it. The only clue was Louis. And yet what she’d found pointed to a war. It didn’t add up.

She had to find them. They could be anywhere now, but she’d be damned if she didn’t at least try. She headed through the gate from Graphite Lodge to the Crossroads and rushed down to Junjie’s Subway, clinging to the diary for dear life, hoping she didn’t look too shaken when she spoke to Junjie.

This wasn’t the kind of adventure she had always imagined when she was young, fantasizing of all the things she could accomplish for her father and her town. But it was undeniably more important, albeit a risk so absurd she could hardly believe it.

And yet she was as ready as she felt she could be to take that risk.