Ah, the Chinese. Who won't recognise Western fantasy, define "small group" as about 20,000 men, and will, as of this time period, outright refuse to speak the languages of Europe, except for Classical Latin. Sounds like a fun time for these fantasy guys.

It's things like a swimming pool or rec room for an apartment complex. No individual apartment could possibly fit or afford a pool or a billiards table, but if every condo pays five dollars a month toward maintenance of such amenities then everyone gets to enjoy them.

I know about the tercios but never heard of childs fighting

As a spaniard this was a cool surprise haha

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Not really. If the neighborhood has a playground, pool, or sidewalks -- someone has to keep them safe, clean, and mow the grass occasionally.

Oh, there are a whole host of plant defensive toxins that don't merely not work, but have actively made us pursue them. Compounds with fungicidal or insecticidal properties are often quite tasty … or psychoactive.

See, for instance, Transgenic tobacco plants producing caffeine: a potential new strategy for insect pest control

Exactlt

Caffeine, Nicotine, Chocolatine...

Collective property just sounds dumb in general

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The rhythmic drip, drip, drip from the bathtub began my first night after moving in. It’s the sort of thing you don’t notice when apartment hunting. But like a kid with swollen adenoids who snores like a monster, these water droplets hit the porcelain with enough heft to echo through the whole unit. The intervals were inconsistent. Sometimes 10 seconds, sometimes 30 seconds. The longest ever was 5 minutes. Just long enough to get started into something else only to be pulled back to that sound.

3 weeks and just as many plumbers later, the drip drip drip persisted. There was no mechanical explanation. New York City is full of mild tortures you have to put up with to enjoy plenty of other magical parts of the city. I supposed this was a new torture I was subject to endure. I invested in a white noise machine and thought that’s that.

2 months later my best friend, Beck, visited. He’s an engineer and I thought he’d get a kick out of it so I showed him. Also the guest bed was a blow up mattress in the living room adjacent to the bathroom. He also couldn’t find a cause. What he did find was insomnia because the drips kept him up. Funny thing about him - he learns languages as a hobby. Over the course of that restless night, it dawned on him the drip was speaking in Morse code.

The first deciphered messages were haunting. “Get out, Jeffrey.” “Leave while you still have breath.” “The time of your judgement will come.” And so forth.

I’ve never been one for fanciful tales or ghost stories. But the evidence before me was undeniable. When Beck returned home, the bad times began. Communicating with it became my obsession. I longed to understand it. Yet all it did was emit a continuous stream of veiled threats. Soon enough my obsession lost me friendships, the semblance of a love life I once had, any sense of stability, and eventually my job. I had to commune with it! That became my all consuming passion.

My savings had enough to cover rent for almost a full year, but the exorbitant HOA was far beyond my means now. So I quit paying it, only rent.

Sure enough, no eviction notice came. However several strongly worded letters from the building HOA came. I ignored them. Until one day the president of the HOA showed up with a person seemingly from a carnival. This figure of dramatic color, pungent smell, and twisted smile met my gaze. They said, looks like the day of your judgement has come. Suddenly, they pulled a quartz from their leather bag, extended their arm towards me, and uttered an undecipherable incantation. The drip from the tub began violently thudding over and over. I dropped to my knees and pleaded for understanding, any grain of knowledge. My begging was met with a curl of the figures mouth as they cut their incantation to say, “If you really want to know, I can show you. Just give the word.” Without pause, I said, “Yes! Please!”

Everything went black.

I woke up in my bed. The dripping had stopped. When I exited my bedroom, I found the most dismal surprise party in my living room. The front door was not longer there. The place was full of people from ages past through to today. The oldest of the bunch hobbled forward, clasping my shoulder, and said, “we tried to warn you.”

There are some circumstances where a HOA is important. If you're living in a condo complex, for example, you need a HOA to gather the money to repair collective property.

It's insane for nearly anything that doesn't revolve around collective property, though.

There are a surprising number of places in the US that have freshwater jellyfish!

I’ve only ever seen them in lake Pomme De Terre (AKA “Apple of the Earth”, AKA French for “potato”), but they’re in like 44 states!

I second that I thought it was Sydney- been through two confirmed tornadoes, one possible. Have seen frosts so thick they were ice, and that’s not even up in the Mountains!

Quick! Describe the flavour before you die!

Twenty years, twenty damn years of war followed by ten years of peace; and they were about to ruin it. I bought this house fresh out of college. Was it entirely too good of a deal? Absolutely! Did I question it as a broke college kid just getting started? …Not at all. I should have known better, should have asked more questions; but, I was young, naive, and desperate to start out on my own.

It was the perfect home: close to my new job, small enough to take care of on my own but large enough to allow me to start a family; and, most importantly, it was DIRT CHEAP. I paid almost exactly half of what a comparable house would normally cost. I wasn’t thrilled about being in an HOA; but, the board at the time was chill as long as you didn’t let things go off the rails.

Things started off well. For the first couple of months, everything seemed normal. Little did I know that Abaddon was just biding her time and gathering intel. The war started soon after. It began with little things: feeling like I was being watched at random moments, keys going missing just as I was about to leave for work, etc. I don’t think she realized I had ADD yet and that those things were “normal” for me.

Hell, it took me six months to realize that something was “off” about the house. By that point, she had tried all the typical “ghostly stuff” like rattling pans, flickering lights, etc. I either wrote it off as something to look into later or couldn’t be bothered to notice. It wasn’t until she started manifesting just outside my line of sight and vanishing when I looked over that I began to wonder what was going on.

I started doing some research into the paranormal but I didn’t take it too seriously until the one year anniversary of buying the house. I was walking through the house, nose buried in a book, and literally walked through her. I think the part that really enraged her that I didn’t even notice until after it happened. The war started in earnest after that.

I tried all the typical things. I called a priest and woke up the next day with scratch marks all down arms. I tried a shaman and nearly caught a flying butcher knife to the dome. I called a psychic and he ran screaming from the house. At this point, a normal person would have followed the psychic and put the house up for sale. Not me though. I’ll be damned if some spooky bitch was going to chase me away from the steal of a lifetime.

And so began a twenty year long psychological war of attrition. She scratched me up, I bought a cat. She stained the drywall with blood, I went gothic with lots of blacks and reds. She tried to set the house on fire, I installed a sprinkler system. Round and round we went for two god damn decades. Twenty years of her trying to scare me away. Twenty years of me pretending that everything was fine and there was a logical reason for whatever happened.

Apparently, even the Queen of Hell herself has a breaking point and two decades of psy-ops was it. Honestly, if she hadn’t caved, I would have. My personal life was a shamble. This crusade had been my entire life. I hadn’t dated, never had the chance to start a family. Hell, I hadn’t even gotten laid since I graduated. The financial toll of my personal campaign had left me deep in debt and nearly at the end of my means.

As our twentieth anniversary drew near, I braced myself for something… spectacular. Every year on our anniversary, she liked to do something extra special, especially when in marked another decade. Year three had been the bloodstains. Year ten lead to me installing the sprinkler system. By this point, my boss just automatically gave me the day off for “damage control.”

I was not prepared for what I found when I woke up that fateful morning. I was awoken to the sounds of pots rattling in the kitchen and my mixer running full tilt. I remember thinking “kinda mild for her but I’ll take it.” It wasn’t until I walked into the kitchen that I noticed the smell of bacon… I found myself staring the Queen of Hell, in corporeal form, in the face… and she was cooking breakfast.

“Sit mortal. We have much to discuss.” There are not words to describe the amount of disdain in her voice. I could tell that this was physically painful for her; but, when Abaddon tells you to sit, you sit. We spent the next several hours hashing out an armistice agreement. By the end, we agreed I would continue to live in the house and she would leave me alone for the most part. In return, I would acknowledge her existence and at least pretend to be irritated when she made the lights flicker or rattled pots in the kitchen.

Calling our truce uneasy would be the understatement of the century. It started out as more of a “honored adversary” type of situation. However, over the course of the next ten years, we moved from that to a begrudging respect and then to genuine friendship. Being friends with the literal Queen of Hell is definitely a unique situation. It was certainly entertaining to have her fuck with my buddies when they came over.

Today, I march back into battle. Last month, was our annual HOA board elections. The old guard has finally all retired and a new regime came to power headed by “Susan.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say Susan was after Abaddon’s throne. The fines started rolling out the next day. One of my neighbors got $100 fine for their trash cans being on the curb past noon. The other neighbor was fined $200 for their grass being 1/8” too long. I watched Susan literally break out a ruler on that one.

This morning, I woke up to find a notice taped to my door. The HOA (aka Susan) thinks that my gothic motif is “detrimental to property values” and expect me to pay a $500 fine and repaint my house. I closed the door, turned around, and nearly pissed myself.

Abaddon had been standing right behind me. “God Damnit, how many times do I have to tell you to quit doing that?!” She just laughed and reminded me that “per our agreement” she was allowed to do exactly that three times a month.

I rolled my eyes, huffed, and handed her the notice. Her ears were quite literally smoking by the time she finished reading it. I quirked an eyebrow at her “Well are you ready to go back to war?” The Queen of Hell smiled, “Let’s fuck their shit up!”

Edit: typos and clarity.

Edit 2: more typos/autocorrect

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Thanks for the response. It was depressing in a good way.

"What does it feel to say goodbye?" asked John as he gasped for a shallow breath.

"You get used to it, darling," Jackie responded after a good few seconds. "There's an end to everything."

"Have you ever wondered what it's like to leave everything behind? Bringing nothing with you at the very end?"

"I sure did. But I stopped asking myself that," Jackie answered. "There's no use for such questions."

"Why?"

"You get used to it."

"It's funny how you always say that," responded John with a meek smile.

"Because that's the truth. Things come and go, and no matter how hard I tried there are simply things I cannot change."

"So why bother?" she continued. "Enjoy the present. Accept the things they are ... Remember that time when I bought you your first guitar?"

"Sure. I gave it to Tommy. Funny how time just flies by and before you know it, he's a grown man and he grew up just like me."

"But do you remember that one time you brought Tommy to Disneyland for his eighth birthday?"

"Sure."

"And I remember that guitar, and the first song I played for you," said Jackie. "And how happy you were. I tend not to ask too many questions and focus on the good things. Things that matter."

"But surely it's difficult to say goodbye to people you care about? What about dad?"

"Of course I miss him dearly. I still do. But I know that he left peacefully — and happily, knowing that he lived a life well-lived."

"Focus on the good things, yea?"

"Yes, darling. Remember the things that brought you joy, things that gave you purpose. Don't think about things you couldn't change. You know I am always proud of you." said Jackie as she placed her hands on John's, now weak and trembling.

John gave out a weak smile.

"I know that you will always be with me, and you know that I will always love you dearly," continued Jackie, a tear slowly making its way down her cheek. "It's always difficult to say goodbye, but we find reassurance in moments we shared."

"I am afraid," said John after a long pause. "I am afraid there's nothing on the other side."

"Don't be, darling," Jackie held John in her arms, "this is not the end; there's Tommy, and he has Delphine ... things will go on, whether we are here or not. But the times we had for each other — the moments we shared — will live on."

John went on smiling, slowly closing his eyes.

"Puff the magic dragon, lived by the sea ..." Jackie began humming softly and gently, stroking John on the head, his hair white and few, as he fell asleep one last time.

Fantastic. Thanks for the response!

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This has to be the most interesting, plausible one out of all! Nice one

Right?! I want more and I don't really care what media format it's in.