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.”