The Candle, the Pumpkin, and Lucifer is a darkly whimsical short story that continues the fable of Lucifer, the tuxedo cat with world-domination in his eyes. When Halloween arrives, Michael ..his ever-devoted but oblivious human…discovers strange pumpkins on his doorstep, eerie gatherings of neighbourhood cats, and rituals flickering in candlelight.
As jack-o’-lanterns whisper, rooftops fill with a feline procession, and fear itself becomes a feast, Lucifer steps fully into his role as sovereign of shadows. Michael, caught between disbelief and dread, must decide whether to finally see his companion for what he truly is …or remain blind as the charming apocalypse curls into his lap, purring like thunder.
A gothic, satirical bedtime story for adults, this Halloween tale blends eerie humour with sinister charm, perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman, Edward Gorey, and Tim Burton
Once upon a time, we built machines to make life easier. Then we taught them to talk. Then we gave them our tone, our rhythm, our wit … our voice and somewhere along the way, we started doubting our own.
At first, it felt like magic. Type a sentence. Press a button. Watch your thoughts return smoother, sharper, smarter.
It wasn’t cheating; it was optimization.
Why wrestle with words when an algorithm could make them sparkle? But something shifted.
Under every thoughtful post, you now see it:
“Sounds AI.”
The new scarlet letter of the internet … three syllables that erase sincerity with a smirk.
We wanted machines to sound like us. Now we accuse each other of being them.
Everyone’s using AI, it’s 2025, that’s the secret nobody admits. Writers, strategists, students, politicians, poets.
We ask it to polish, reframe, clarify. We give it our outlines, then call the final draft “ours”, and so we end up in the strangest paradox of modern life: We all use AI, and we’re all suspicious of everyone else for doing it.
Every post feels immaculate. Every sentence sounds curated. Every human voice hums at the same clean, hollow frequency.
We’ve ironed out the flaws and with them, the fingerprints.
There was a time when layoffs felt like failure. A bruising, reluctant move. A last resort. Now? They’re a business model , a recurring ritual in the quarterly earnings liturgy. A cleansing ceremony to reassure investors that “discipline” still rules.
Millions were laid off “for the greater good.” That “good” turned out to be the balance sheet. When markets rebounded and stock valuations hit record highs, the same companies discovered a new crisis: “overhiring.” The solution? Another wave of layoffs.
Corporate resilience, it seemed, meant the CEO’s yacht stayed afloat.
The list goes on and on. The paradox became routine: profits up, payroll down. Somewhere, HR pressed send on another “Exciting Changes Ahead” email.
Growth, it turns out, is only good news for shareholders.
The AI Renaissance “Efficiency Will Set You Free”
2025 brought a shiny new excuse: artificial intelligence. Executives announced “transformative investments in AI,” often right before announcing job cuts.
IBM, Dell, and Google cited “AI-driven efficiencies” across multiple reports. But in practice, AI wasn’t replacing tasks … it was replacing justification. PowerPoints got smarter; human beings, redundant.
As one HR chief joked at an investor meeting, “We’re not downsizing … we’re future-sizing.”
The Circle of Corporate Life
Bad economy? Layoffs. Booming economy? Layoffs. AI revolution? Layoffs. Solar eclipse? Pending.
Corporate America doesn’t need a crisis anymore. It just needs a quarter.
Corporate Enlightenment
The language evolved. Layoffs became “rightsizing.” Cuts became “strategic agility.” Suffering became “efficiency gains.”
Executives now speak with Zen minimalism about “optimizing workforce alignment,” as if people were spreadsheet cells misbehaving. They talk about “doing more with less.” Mostly, the less is us.
The Forgotten Equation
Somewhere along the way, we lost basic math:
People are the economy. Consumers need income. Income comes from jobs … the ones being systematically deleted.
You can’t fire your way to prosperity. You can’t automate empathy. And you definitely can’t build a thriving society by erasing its workforce one “optimization” at a time.
Still, somewhere at sea, a CEO raises a glass aboard his yacht … Synergy II ….smiling as he tells investors, “We’re doing great things with less.” He’s not wrong. They’re doing great things. With less of us.
This isn’t just an economic statistic. It’s a confession. A collective whisper that says: “We don’t trust what’s above us anymore.”
The Mirage of Prosperity
To the world, Greece still looks golden …. the light, the islands, the endless blue. But step past the postcard and you’ll find something far less photogenic: people juggling bills, small businesses strangled by bureaucracy, young graduates working three jobs just to stay afloat.
It’s not the lack of money that breaks you here. It’s the feeling that effort doesn’t matter. That corruption … not competence … decides who rises. That justice bends quietly for those who can afford its time.
Corruption as a Culture
Greece’s real poverty is not financial …. it’s moral. Corruption here doesn’t arrive in dramatic scandals. It seeps. Through tenders, approvals, contracts, friendships. It becomes habit …. a kind of cultural smog we’ve learned to breathe.
When the elite treat the state as a wallet, when public office is seen as inheritance, when honesty is punished as naïveté the entire social fabric decays.
You can’t measure that in euros, but you can feel it in the pulse of every exhausted worker, every cynical voter, every young person buying a one-way ticket abroad.
The Exodus of Faith
Faith is a nation’s invisible currency. It builds trust, fuels ambition, keeps people believing that tomorrow is worth trying for. And yet, in Greece, that currency has collapsed.
When 66.8% of citizens say they can’t make ends meet .. in a country within the world’s largest economic bloc … that is not poverty. That is betrayal.
The EU average shows progress. Greece shows fatigue. A fatigue so deep it’s become identity.
We talk about brain drain — but what’s leaving Greece isn’t just talent. It’s hope.
The Real Rebuild
You can’t repair this with subsidies or slogans. You repair it by cleaning the rot. By building institutions that act, not perform. By ending the mafia of mediocrity that keeps excellence out of power.
The next Greek renaissance won’t come from more tourism campaigns or foreign investments. It will come from transparency, merit, and trust — the three words every corrupt system fears most.
Because when a country as blessed as Greece feels this poor, the problem isn’t the people. It’s the parasitic class that feeds on them.
The Fire Under the Ash
Greece doesn’t need pity. It needs accountability. The same courage that once birthed philosophy and democracy must now birth integrity.
This isn’t about left or right. It’s about right and wrong. And until that line is redrawn, the numbers will keep lying and the people will keep paying.
Because Greece’s poverty is not measured in income. It’s measured in how much truth a society can bear before it changes.
