AmalgamationSage here. We got Kay in the hospital. Everyone's alive and intact. Jumping Jesus Christ on Crutches, how the hell did we pull this off? Well, Hakurei Ryuu is writing up the opening of what happened, and I guess I'll close it. Lord knows I need a minute for my brain to settle. I've seen some messed up things in my time, but this ranks pretty high up there.

The doctor says Kay will be alright. We threw together a crummy story about finding someone working her over in an alleyway. They're not asking any follow-up questions. Why are they not following us up on our obvious load of BS? I am not comfortable with this little scrutiny. I could swear we're being watched. I've worked as a Janitor before. That Janitor was far too well muscled, far too alert for someone whose soul is crushed by monotony, and I know from experience that you can hide a lot of things in a custodial cart. Then again, I might be insane.

We'll be keeping watch.

my name is kaylin marie davies i am thirty years old i hav a youngur brother and a youngur sistr and a mother and a father and i used to hav two bootiful prefect godchildren but theyre ded and its my fault theyre ded and i hav friends i have cathy and amal and haku and my thomas i hate that you hav the same name hate it hate you and i used to hav other friends but i tried to save them by runnin away and i hav a job and a home and a life and i got away from you you cant take that from me tom and your mastur cant take that from me it took them it hurt them just babys so little and so preshus and she just started school and he was supposd to start in the fall  i luvd them so much it tokk them away but you cant take me away i am me i am not your kitten i am me i dont care how much you hurt me i am me and and and and i dont want any mor needels that make me go up and down and no more shiny sharps and red metals and dont touch dont touch me dont dont no no no no no no no you cant you cant you cant

Enough typing now Kitten. We have so many more games to play before time is up.

My godson is dead.

It stood in my backyard holding his head in one of its tentacles. His eyes are still open. Demanding to know why Aunt Kay got him killed.

It disappeared. And then a man wearing a mask stepped out from behind my garage. He was holding my goddaughter's arm with one hand and a knife in the other. She's alive, but doesn't even look like there's still someone behind her eyes. He pointed the knife at her, then at me, and shrugged.

I get it. Me or her. Him and his boss don't really care which.

I'm sorry. I can't let them both die. Not for me. I'm not worth it. I'm just making this post so that someone knows what happened if I don't come back. Amalgamation, I think I'm right. I don't think it can get in my house. Why else would it go to these lengths? Try to use that.

I'm gonna go outside now.

I just got back from my godkids’ house. Their mother is a mess to say the least, but at least she doesn’t know that it’s my fault her babies are gone. I thought I was doing the right thing by cutting them off. That if I stayed away from all of my friends they wouldn’t get infected by this shit. Instead I found out that for the past month the kids have been drawing pictures. Little kid style figures. Of a woman crying and a man in a suit. Whenever their mother asked them about the pictures, they would say it’s Aunt Kay and The Man. She kept trying to call me and ask about it. And I wouldn’t even listen to her voicemails because it was too hard to stay disconnected otherwise.

My munchkins had been seeing it for over a month. And my dumb ass did nothing. And the cops were all over that. Who is this man, is he the one that took the kids, what connection does he have to you? It’s such a clusterfuck. 

The note that was left said midnight with an operator symbol. The cops think that’s when they’ll get some kind of a ransom call. They’re probably right only I don’t think their mother is going to be the one getting the ransom call. And I doubt there is going to be any actual ransom involved either. 

I appreciate all the support guys, I’m a little too wrecked to answer each comment individually right now. Today was just the day to find out how badly I’ve fucked up.  I’m gonna go try and nap for a little bit. I have a feeling I won’t be sleeping much later.

My godchildren are missing.

I cut contact with them and their mother as soon as I realized what was happening to me. Stopped visiting, stopped answering phone calls, I didn’t even send them presents over the holidays. I thought it would be enough to keep this away from them.

Their mother just called me at work. She went to wake them up this morning and they were missing from their beds. There was a note. She told it me all it said was “midnight with some kind of weird hugs and kisses symbol.”

My godchildren are only five and six. And it took them, or one of its toys took them, same difference.

It’s all my fault.

Explanation

For those of you that haven't been following, Reach came to a very painful realization. Jean provided some very convincing evidence and Reach's returned memories seem to back it up. His life and mind ripped to shreds just because the monster wanted a toy. That was enough to have me depressed and raging.

And then came the next part.

I managed to solve Remnant's latest riddle. And he posted the rest of the story. What happened to Zero and Amelia. This is the story the best that I can tell from the final images.

It mindfucked them. It separated them from each other and then took over their minds. Zero saw the monster and charged it. Stabbed it with his katana. Amelia watched it stab her with one of its tentacles.

And then just before she died, it gave them their minds back. It hadn't been where either of them thought it was. Instead Amelia had been impaled by Zero's katana. It tricked him into killing her.

IT TRICKED HIM INTO DOING ITS FUCKING DIRTY WORK FOR IT!

I don't think words have even been invented for the amount of rage that I feel right now. And every time I look at those pictures I can't stop crying.

So apparently I do still have the ability to feel something besides numb and terrified. I am so heartbroken. That this thing would, could…what it did to Reach and to Amelia and Zero…

People try to claim this thing has blue and orange morality?

FUCK BLUE AND ORANGE MORALITY!

I’m crying again. I’ll try to do this in a less emotional way later.

Doing better

Nobody wants to be a hero. Not a real one. The more I read these blogs, the more I realize how many people here are or were heroes and I think that every single one of them would trade it in a heartbeat to get back what taken from them.

I don’t mean “The Hero” that everyone was hoping would appear and save us all. I mean on smaller levels. Damien O’Connor saving that kid at the supermarket, Zero willing to sacrifice himself on the Solstice to weaken it, Cathy walking into the woods by herself to try and get her child back, Zeke Strahm going to that warehouse knowing it would probably kill him, and so many other examples that to try and list them all would need to be a post by itself.

My point is that so many of us have done things that can be considered heroic. And it breaks us down just as strongly as it does. Maybe that’s part of what it wants? Maybe it wants us to fight back. Some hunters need the thrill of the chase more then the kill itself. It takes so much from us our loves, our minds, and finally our lives.  But some of us it kills immediately. Some of us it stalks for months. And some people manage to keep going for years.

That shows me that we are capable of beating it. Which leads me to my next bit of thought.

I’ve been thinking about what Cheska told everyone. How the cure is no longer working and that she believes it is because Jeff died and his blood was a key component. And right now, contemplating the implications of that theory has me ecstatic. No, the fact that the cure no longer works is not what made me ecstatic. The fact that this is probably the closest confirmation I will ever get to some kind of magic working on this thing is what has me bouncing like a child. If Jeff’s blood had continued to work after his death, it would be more scientific in nature. But he died and whatever immunity he had disappeared. That screams blood magic to me.

I personally have never practiced blood magic, preferring to enjoy a more nature and energy based way of existing. But one of my dearest friends before all this began was a practitioner of that sort and I have nothing but respect as well as a bit of healthy fear for it.

A few other things have managed to switch on light bulbs in my brain in the past few days. Thank you Amalgamation Sage for being not only a voice of encouragement, but a source of my current inspiration.

I might have something solid to start working with again, key word being might. The biggest problem is that this is something I won’t be able to experiment with. When the time comes it will either work or it won’t. And I’m not going to reveal much right now. I’m sorry for being secretive, but I’ve always maintained that talking about what I’m planning to do ahead of time will probably ruin any chances I have of it working. The Quislings are out and about after all.

No major updates to report on my personal stalking. I’m still just as paranoid, but I haven’t actually had any sightings of it for a little over a week now. Every shadow I jump at turns out to be nothing.  The trees really are just trees. No more threatening phone calls either.

Remnant, I don’t know if you saw or even if you’ll see this post either, but I changed my answer to your riddle. I do hope you'll talk with me at some point.

Damn it!

This has got to stop I can’t keep doing this why does there have be so much happening at the same time it’s like a bloody cliché out of a bad fanfiction! My brother and faceless and my ex but I don’t even know if it’s my ex I just want to sleep and not be scared and not see it make it go away please someone make it go away and it’s too much damn it how is anyone supposed to take this much at once? I’m just a bookkeeper, not an Amazonian heroine or a Valkyrie warrior I’m not a fighter I’m barely a survivor I am nothing I am nobody so why is this happening to me why won’t it stop?

Mental note. Pounding one’s fist into one’s desk until it bleeds should be done after I leave work for the day, not before I go in. My hand hurts like crazy, but it’s my lunch break now and I want to get this down before the details start to fade.

I woke up at about five am. My phone was ringing which set off emergency alarms in my head. After all who calls at five in the morning if it’s not an emergency, right? So I picked it up. Kind of glanced at the caller id, but it must have been on the fritz because it was just a jumble of letters and symbols.  

I picked up the phone and at first there was just silence. I said hello several times with no response. Just before I was going to hang up, a voice started to speak. A very harsh croaking whisper. And it was chanting my name. My full first name not my nickname. Kaylin. Over and over, Kaylin, Kaylin, Kaylin. And then a second voice joined the chanting. But it was the same voice. I don’t know how but it the same voice speaking at the same time saying two different things. And this one was chanting Kitten. Which was what my ex always called me. Kaylin Kitten. His Kitten. But it wasn’t his voice. This voice was…the only word I can think of that describes it decently is demonic.  

A third voice joined the chanting. Same as the other two and how does that happen three people can’t have the exact same voice it had to be one person but how can one person say three different things at one time and I just want this to stop!

My break is almost over, so I need to hurry this up. The third voice didn’t use a name, proper or otherwise. Instead it chanted the word die. The three of them chanting Kaylin Kitten Die the words chasing each other overlapping and then all three voices chanting die. Over and over die, die, die. And then somehow it wasn’t three voices anymore it was one voice and it was still the same voice and it was still telling me to die and how was it the same voice?

Damn it’s going to take way too much time to go back and retype the hysterical parts but I will make these last paragraphs coherent if it kills me.

The call ended. It went silent and then dial tone. I’m not sure why I didn’t hang up before then. I should have. But I felt frozen. Not anything metaphysical. I just couldn’t make myself move.

Forever ago when I was a little girl, my parents made me go to bible study. While I no longer hold to that system of belief, I haven’t forgotten most of it. And the one thing that keeps coming back to my mind when I’m thinking about those voices is this quote: "My name is Legion: for we are many.”

Obsession as therapy

So I currently have an obsession with Zero’s drawings. Better to be obsessed with someone else’s drawings then to be making my own, right? A friend once told me that I tend to focus on the problems of people around me in order to avoid dealing with my own. However in this case, I feel like having something else to focus on is a good thing. Focus on my job, focus on the pictures, focus on blogging. Anything to try and keep my increasingly growing breakdowns at bay.

Especially focus on blogging. When I’m writing these things down, it makes them seem less horrible. As if committing them to the page makes the terror less surreal and if it becomes more comprehensible, it becomes easier to face. Most of the time I exist on two settings: terrified and numb. Numb comes in handy for while I'm at work and need to pretend to be ok, but terrified sets back in the second I don't have something else to focus on. It can literally take me four hours to type one paragraph because I’ll type out long incoherent sentences that while some of you may be able to empathize with, I doubt they actually make sense intellectually. My backspace key gets so much use it has a permanent groove in it.

But after I sit down and type out what’s happening, it’s as if there’s a switch in my brain that turns normal people thoughts and feelings back on. And for a little while I feel almost normal again.  I am so grateful for you guys. I do a lot of complaining and crying and babbling about everything and nothing, but you listen and you respond and you care.  And it keeps me going. When it’s late at night and I start thinking about just giving up, even though I’ve never heard most of your voices, I can still hear exactly what you would say. And I thank you guys for that.

Ending sentimental tangent time, back to the point of this post. Like I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, I am obsessing a bit about Zero’s pictures. In the album titled that night, they’re labeled numerically. If you view them in their correct numerical order, they are definitely telling a story. A very cryptic hard to understand story, but a story none the less.

Out of the things that I believe I do understand, one thing that stands out to me very strongly is that there are no pictures showing Zero vs. it, or even Zero seeing it and running. It seems to me that Zero never fought it that night, possibly never even saw it. He saw the bodies of Basroil Squad, but not how they were killed.

The PTC did get back to me and they were extremely helpful. At this point I have confirmation that Nightcrawler did NOT see Zero get killed. And none of the other members of Basroil Squad made that claim during debriefing. All we have is that Nightcrawler heard him scream. While the implications of that are not pleasant for Zero’s sake, it makes me even more convinced that he is not dead.

We also have a post from Frap admitting that he has been in contact with Remnant since shortly after the Solstice and he figured out weeks ago that Remnant is Zero. I am not yet quite ready to throw away the theory that it’s an imposter, but the evidence is clearly leaning in the direction of Zero not only being alive, but having taken on the identity of Remnant.

And Remnant himself found his way here. He left me a riddle and I gave him my answer. I expect no other responses from him until he tells me whether I was correct or not, but I’ll say this anyway.

Remnant, whether you are the remnant of Zero or the remnant of someone else, I’ve looked at some of your comments in different places and you seem to be someone who has been through quite a bit. Do you need help? Obviously at this point I can’t work miracles like making sure it never bothers you again, but is there anything I can do for you?

On the personal end, I have an odd theory right now. I have had proxies break into my home. I have had it stand in front of my windows, in my backyard, and across the street from my house. I have gone walking or worse in my sleep, and I have woken up in the middle of the night knowing that it was trying to force me to do things while I was asleep. It has projected its desires into my head, and all around stalked, harassed, and done a pretty good job of trying to kill me.

But as far as I can tell, it has never ever once been in my home itself. And I currently have a lot of trouble maintaining my ability to believe in coincidence. Trying to figure out why may take a while though. It could be any one item I keep in the house, it could be a random ritual I did years ago that had a completely different purpose at the time it was invoked. Or it could be some combination of different things.

Or it could be just wishful thinking.

Why the bloody hell hasn't anyone else noticed this?

Sorry for spamming your reading list with a second post today guys, but this struck me as something that should not wait.

I don't think Zero is dead

A week or two ago I was rereading his last post because sometimes we need all need a hero and he's one of mine. For the hell of it I started scrolling through the comments, looking at all the people wishing him luck or mourning his loss. An individual named Remnant that I've seen making comments here and there posted that link.

I looked at the pictures, shuddered a bit at how disturbing they are, and left it alone. Assumed Zero had drawn them before the Solstice, his way of adding to the story he asked everyone to create.

I looked again a little while ago just more of a curiosity thing then anything else. Wanting to know what was going through his head before his final days. Well now I don't think it was taking place before the Solstice. I think these pictures were drawn after the Solstice.

More pictures have been added since the first time I looked. And I think they're telling a story. If you go to the album called that night, well the title should be rather self explanatory. I'm not going to pretend to understand what is going in the album called a long time ago. I think I'm going go back and read his blog again, maybe that will help me figure it out.

Does anyone here talk to Remnant? Does anyone even know who he is?  He made two comments on that post. One dropping this link saying it reveals interesting things. Which yeah it does. But his other comment said "this post doesn't make any sense."

And you know what? I think he was right. I'm going to see if I can catch him. Leave a comment on Zero's blog, or try to talk to him if he comments on one of the other blogs I follow.

One quick question. Can anyone recall Remnant being around before the Solstice?

I've only come up with two theories about this. Either someone is using Zero's photobucket account for his own sick fun and games or Zero is alive.  And honestly I'm going with option two, not just because I want to believe that Zero is alive. I'm going with it because those pictures are so fucked up that I can't believe they're fake.

ETA 9:36 PM: Shortly after I posted this, four more pictures were added to the a long time ago album. The order seems to be kind of random,  but from what I can tell, it shows Zero with a companion, plotting to go after it. And reading back on his blog entries there's only one person that it makes sense to be.

I think he's trying to tell us what happened to Amelia.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going mad. It hasn’t been waking me up as often, but in exchange, I’m starting to see it everywhere I go. Just tiny glimpses out of the corner of my eye, little jumps that make me wonder did I really see it or am I just becoming so paranoid that a street lamp or shadow can convince to me run in the opposite direction?

I had to work late last night. I’ve tried very hard to avoid doing that the past few months in order to not have to be out after dark, but I couldn’t find a way to explain to my boss why I couldn’t stay later to finish my project. When I was finally able to lock up my office, the lights in the hall were out and there was no one else there. Confession time. I never quite outgrew my childhood fear of the dark. I always sleep with the TV or a small lamp on because if I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s completely dark, I panic. The hallway wasn’t pitch black which was actually worse in a way. There was just enough light to make the shadows seem to grow and dance while I crept down towards the stairs.

It was silent. Not just quiet where you can hear sounds that you don’t normally notice, but dead silent, like someone had hit the mute button on the world. The only sounds were the ones I made. My shoes clicking against the tiles, my skirt rustling as it moved around my legs, and the sound of my breathing which grew shakier and harsher as I kept going.

It felt like forever, but in reality it couldn’t have been more then three minutes. I made it to the stairs and the silence just became too much. I started to sing, just to hear something besides my panic. The only thing I could think of was nursery rhymes.

This is how it starts isn’t it? The final run before you lose your mind or become one of its toys. The nursery rhymes. Hey Diddle Diddle, London Bridge, Three Blind Mice. Never The Crooked Man though. Never ever him.

I made it to my car and got home with no problems. It didn’t even show up at the window last night. So how much of that was it and how much was just me?

I never actually considered the possibility that I would lose my mind or turn into one of its pets. I’ve been so focused on the fact that I will be killed that I forgot about the parts that aren’t as merciful. Maybe I forgot on purpose.

Screw you. You will not do that to me. You’re going to kill me eventually. I know this, I’ve known this from the moment you showed back up in my life. But I will not be yours. My mind belongs to me. Zeke Strahm once told us that it’s not better to end ourselves, to make it work for its food. But I think our madness becomes part of its food. And if it comes down to that, I think the gun that Mr. Spender left me will come in handy after all. At the end of this mess, I am almost certainly a dead woman. But I refuse to become a mad woman as well.

And in that vein of thought, I went to see my lawyer this week. We dealt with several different issues, such as the minor non otherworldly related harassment currently happening. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do at the moment since I have no proof about this being my ex’s handiwork. The bastard’s smart if nothing else. And then there was the other much more important item.

We started drawing up my will. My savings, a few small investments, but most importantly, the house.

Cathy. We may not have started talking until after your life fell apart, but I know what happened to your house. So I’m leaving mine to you. You can keep it and live here or you can sell it and find a new home wherever you want. I want you and your girl to have somewhere to go when this is all over. You’ve become so dear to me in these past few weeks. I don’t have the right words to express how much your friendship means to me and if I’m going out, I want to know that you and Cynthia have a home. There is one small catch though. If you keep this house, as long as Tony is still homeless, he is allowed to use the spare bedroom. I wouldn’t feel right giving you and Cynthia a home without making sure that her father didn’t have to sleep in an alley.

That being said, I’m still holding on to that dream of you and I and Cynthia having dinner together. Although at this point I think we need to add Thage and Mr. Spender into that picture. It’s nice to have dreams to keep us going.

Back to Reality

An emotional attachment shouldn’t form this quickly. I suppose it can be excused under the circumstances. After all, intense situations tend to cause more intense emotional reactions.  Of course normally emotions grown under those kinds of circumstances tend to crash and burn rather hard, but I don’t think I need to worry too much about it. We don’t have that kind of time.

Back to my original point, despite the speed of it and just the shock of it happening at all, I did form an attachment to him. I never expected to be able to care for someone like this again without being afraid of them. I didn’t plan this and neither did he. Although when a man says he wants to come to your home to see if he can help you be safer and then shows up with a dozen red roses, it does tend to throw the idea that he wasn’t looking for anything out the window.  I’m not giving him enough credit, though. He’s probably the loneliest man I have ever met. The flowers were his way of saying thank you for letting him come here and not be alone for a little bit. Everything else that happened was just an added blessing.

But now he’s gone. And it hurts. So I gave myself a day. He left yesterday morning and I let myself have until this morning to grieve the loss. Any emotional loss deserves a mourning period, but I refuse to give it more than that. Not when there are more important things then my feelings at stake. But still…

I know you won’t see this until weeks from now, if you even get to see it at all, but I miss you. Please be safe. Even if I never see you again, just knowing that you’re still in the world makes it a better place for me. 

So my twenty four hours are up and it’s time to get back on track. Back to trying to figure out if my personal practices have any chance of saving our asses. It’s unfair. If this were a movie, I’d all of a sudden discover that I have the power to start shooting fireballs from my fingertips, or summon a bolt of lightning to hit it square in its not face. Instead I have crystals, books, and imagination. If I have to deal with the movie monster, why can't I get the powers as needed as well? 

I know that these three things are not enough to keep me alive, so right now I need a little help from you guys.

Poll: Is it evil?

This seems like a very easy question, but in fact it’s actually very complex. It could be evil, but it could also be like a hurricane. Destructive, but not evil. I don’t want to call it a force of nature, but I don’t want to rule out the possibility yet either.  And there’s always the possibility of Blue and Orange Mentality. There really are a lot of options as to what its nature is.

So for everyone here who has dealt with it, I need your opinions. Facts would be even more helpful, but this is all trial and error.  Therefore the more data I can gather the better. I know what my opinion is, but the more I have to work with, the more likely I can come up with something that at the very least won’t get me killed. 

Have at it folks.

The Good, The Bad, and The Weird

The Good

I actually slept last night and oh deities it was glorious! I slept from 8 last night until 6:30 this morning and I almost feel like I can think again. No sounds in my head waking me up, no staring at that thing through my window, just me, my pillows and mattress, and the arms of a good man around me for the whole night.

It is beyond amazing how absolutely perfect the small things are when you thought you might never have them again.

The Bad

Apparently I was allowed to sleep last night for a reason. I woke up this morning and Sammie was gone. I guess it didn’t want me awake to stop her. She left a note for my brother that I didn’t have time to stay and look at. I’ll try to grab him later and find out what it said. I wish I could have done more for her. She’s still in there. I can’t prove it, I just know that she is.

The Weird

My boss called me into his office this morning. I thought I was gonna get chewed out for taking off yesterday, but apparently having proof that your brother got stabbed not only gets you out of that one, but gets you permission to use a personal day instead of a sick day.  No instead he was actually worried about me.

He asked if I was in trouble, that he had noticed how much I’ve changed these past few months. I tried to keep the topic as professional as possible, asked if there was any problem with my job performance, but the thing about my boss is that he’s one of those rare bosses that actually does care about the person doing the job instead of just the job. So I tried to reassure him that I was fine, but unluckily for me, I am a really bad liar. I’ve been told multiple times that I have one of those faces that shows everything I’m thinking no matter how hard I try to hide things.

He didn’t believe me, but he couldn’t exactly force me to tell him what’s wrong with me. And then came the really disturbing part.

“Kay, there were some men at my house last night. Some gentlemen, and I use the term loosely, wearing suits and flashing badges. And they wanted to know about you. They wouldn’t give any reasons why, so I’m going to ask again. Are you in trouble?”

In a way I got lucky that I do have a face that shows everything because I was completely dumbfounded. And I still am. Boss seemed satisfied at my shock and sent me back to my desk. Now I’m sitting here not even knowing what to think.

Why would there be people with badges asking questions about me?

Musings

It’s a pretty day outside. Very cold, but the sun is shining and it’s nice to look out my window and see it. My brother got here with Sammie and you better believe that I threatened to kick his ass the way I did when we were kids. Way back in the day when I wasn’t a wuss and he was still smaller then me. Promised I’ll beat him once for scaring me that badly and then again if he doesn’t lie down. Dumb ass gets stabbed in the arm and bashed upside the head and thinks I’m not going to make him rest? Damn it if I had to lie down after getting cracked in the head, then so does he. So we came to the compromise that he is laying down in my recliner that way he can still be near Sammie.

Sammie is sitting on my couch. She doesn’t move around a lot and she doesn’t speak at all. She hasn’t taken her mask off once since she got here and considering everything the poor girl has been through, I’m not going to try and take it from her. My brother says she’s been Hollowed, but I have my doubts about that. Her demeanor strikes me as more like someone who has been traumatized into a nearly catatonic state rather then had their mind taken over by an evil monstrosity out to kill us all. She ate the food and drank the liquids I gave her, and when I gave her a hug, I think I felt her move a little bit towards me, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. I’m hoping that if she stays here long enough maybe I’ll be able to find the right trick to draw her back out. The right combination of crystals, herbs, and good old fashioned TLC. For the moment I’ve got some nice lavender incense burning to help with all of our nerves and while I can’t tell if she likes it, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t hate it.

Mr. Spender is still here all though only for a few more days. Since his last post was less then subtle, yes I will confirm that there is something happening between the two of us, but neither of us is naïve enough to think that it is going to end with wedding bells and a happily ever after. I’m not going to giggle and say oh I have a new boyfriend. After all we don’t even know each other well enough to have moved into that kind of emotional attachment. But we can make each other happy until he leaves and then we have some lovely memories to use as fuel to survive whatever comes next.

I’m taking the quiet time right now to try and do some research. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it’s been doing to me at night. The music in my head trying to convince me to leave the house. That’s something that has been around in stories for hundreds of years. The sirens of Greece are the first that come to mind. There are also the Lorelei of Germany, the Rusalka of Russia, and other female creatures of death and seduction.

Switching genders, I can also vaguely recall a story of one of the male Sidhe that would play music and it would cause women to pine to death for the sound, but I haven’t been able to find the correct legend yet. Without bringing music into things, there is a rather iconic image of a male vampire standing outside a maiden’s window using the power of his kind to bring her outside to him.  

This brings me to the question of where did these legends come from? Did people see it centuries ago and create different legends across the world? Or did it learn it’s tricks from someone else? What if all those creatures really existed and it was able to learn from them? It has all ready been suggested that it can adapt to the things we use to attack it, so why wouldn’t it be feasible that once upon a time it did battle with creatures of legend and learned to adapt their attacks into it’s own arsenal? Perhaps it was what destroyed the other creatures, eliminating the competition with preying on humanity as the prize? Or deities forbid, is there really a whole race of that thing out there?

Vampires once supposedly roamed the world doing whater they pleased until people started learning about them. Knowledge became strength, strength became familiarity, and eventually familiarity became obsession. The vampire that once caused people to stay awake at night in terror became something to fantasize over. And in a few hundred years, perhaps some twit that thinks they can write will give our monster the ability to sparkle and teenage girls will run screaming that they want to be Hollowed because it’s “so hawt.”

Deities I think I just made myself nauseous with that thought. Moving on.

Recent musings by Thage have made me consider the theory that not only is it genderless like I have always suspected, but that it can make itself seem how ever it wants. If it is somehow connected to other creatures of legend, it makes more sense for a whole race to have won out against another race rather then one creature.

Backtracking a bit, all of the methods used by the legends I discussed before are similar to the way it tries to insert itself in my head. If you look carefully, you can see the same trick being used over and over again on so many other people, just in many different variations.

One of the first that comes to mind is Zeke Strahm, talking about how it just kept telling him over and over to come outside. The mental strength that man has amazes me. Not only did he resist, but he still had enough left in him after mentally fighting back to tell it to fuck off.

Another is Hosozukuri, who constantly has it creating noise in her head, but it’s painful to her, not seductive. Same trick, but a different variation. Torture to get the desired result as opposed to seduction.

And for a final example, I’ll use Zero who woke up standing in front of a mirror, holding a knife with a cut on his wrist. It’s the same principle, insert itself into your head, you’re just not aware of it until you wake up, and sometimes not even then.

As far as I can tell, it never just shows up and kills. It needs or wants to worm its way into your head first. Something about the fear and the paranoia does something for it. But the question is what and why? For fun? For food? Or worst of all, maybe there is no reason. Maybe it’s like the answer the scorpion gave when the fox asked why it stung him.

“It’s my nature.”