I'm still here folks. I was put into physical therapy for a few weeks. Had to relearn walking, moving my arms, even breathing normally. And after I got home? Well no excuse really. Just been kind of avoiding the computer. I have lots of excuses for why I've been avoiding this blog. I'm still weak, I'm tired, I'm too mentally fragile still to talk about things. All of which are bullshit. In the end I think I'm just afraid to face what broke me. So I'll take it easy and go backwards, start with when I went under instead of what happened beforehand.

When I read about how someone had decided to rescue Morningstar just hours after Melly died, I couldn't breathe. And no I am not going to link those people's blog posts here like I normally would. Also I will let it be known now that if they try to comment on this or any other post, it will be deleted immediately. Anything less would be an insult to the memory of a woman that Morningstar took advantage of, broke, and destroyed. If they hadn't decided to "rescue" him, he might have been captured by the police eventually. The fact that he is dead does not make the things he did to her forgivable. Melly will never have justice because of what they did and they will never be welcome here or forgiven.

Back to my point, when I read that I couldn't breathe. All I could see was the faces of the people that have died because of me. Melly, the kids, even Tom. I tried to close my eyes and the faces were still there, and then all started speaking at the same time, blaming me for their pain, asking why I killed them. I was trying to draw in a breath, just one, but nothing came.

I'm not sure exactly what happened next. I don't know if I passed out, or if maybe my mind just snapped, but I wasn't in my home anymore. I wasn't anywhere. It was murky and foggy. There must have been a light coming from somewhere because I could see a little bit, but I couldn't pinpoint the source. Everything seemed washed out. The only colors were grey. But the sounds were less dreary and more terrifying.

There were screams coming from somewhere in the fog. And I knew the voices. My godchildren. Melly. All of them screaming in pain. Someone was torturing them. I started to run towards them and no matter how long and fast I ran I didn't get closer. The screams stayed far away, growing more frantic, more terrorized.

I'm not sure how long I ran for. I know that Ryan had to take care of me for a few weeks. But time felt different when I was living it. It felt like I might have been gone for a day at the most. And when I say gone I don't mean I was somewhere else. My body never left the house according to Ryan. It didn't feel like it did when Zero's tree came after me, when I was somehow taken some place else. I know that whatever this was it was all in my head. But to quote J.K Rowling, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

I eventually had to rest. I sat down on the ground with the damp fog surrounding me and started to cry. I had failed at everything. I had saved no one. Here I was lost and alone again, the damsel in distress only this time no one was coming to save me. I was weak and worthless just like Tom had always said. And as if by thinking about him I had somehow summoned him. He was there in front of me, reaching out and grabbing me around my waist with one arm and stroking my face tenderly with his other hand.

He smiled as he touched my cheeks, hands so tender and loving as he crooned the vilest words at me. Telling me all the things that haunted my dreams, everything I had fucked up, every bad name I had ever thought of myself, everyone I had let down. His fingers moved down to my neck as he reminded how it was my fault what happened to Maggie and Jake, how much fun we were going to have now that we were together again, and oh gods his fingers started to move lower and whatever had been keeping me frozen in place snapped.

I jumped away from him and we stared at each other. He had this awful half smile on his face as his eyes looked over me. That smile never left his face as he looked at me, looked into me. It felt like he wasn't just looking at me, he was looking inside me, my soul laid bare, my thoughts his to hear. I was ready for him. Ready to fight, to argue, whatever way he was going to attack me.

What I was not ready for however was for him to turn around and walk away. Without even looking at me, he called back that if I wanted to find Melly and the kids, I had better follow him. I didn't have much time to think about it. The fog was thick, he was disappearing quickly, and this point really what did I have to lose?

I followed him through the fog, trying to keep up with his much bigger strides. He didn't look back at me, didn't check to see if I was there. And amazingly he seemed to be telling the truth. As I followed him the screams grew closer and finally we stepped into an area that was still quite foggy, but somehow better lit then the rest.

I'm shaking and feeling more then slightly nauseous. I think I need to take a break from writing this out. I'm determined to finish telling what happened, but I am smart enough at least to know I can't force it all out in one shot.

Awake

It's me guys. Updating from my Blackberry.  Dizzy, weak as hell, and gods damn it how did I even have any weight left to lose? But I'm awake. Ryan's driving me to the hospital so we can make sure I'm not hurt in any ways I don't know about. My whole body feels like it's made out of overcooked spaghetti. It's even hard just pressing the keys on my phone to type this. A lot happened. Things happened in my head to me and things happened to Ryan. But it's way too much to try and explain right now.

We're at the hospital. Oh for the love of the gods, they are getting me a wheelchair. Gotta go for now. 

It's been almost three weeks of Kay being catatonic, semi catatonic? She still swallows if I feed her, but she wouldn't chew so I've had her on smoothies and vegetable juice, stuff like that. I was too scared to bring her to a hospital. The Slender Man has agents everywhere right? So I've been taking care of her here. How much of a triumph would it have been for one of those assholes to off her while she was completely helpless?

And it's good thing I was here. We get attacked almost daily. No one particularly capable. Morons that try to get me to open a door for them mostly. The Slender Man doing his normal loom outside the window. He still hasn't come inside her house. I found a gun sitting in her dresser drawer. Looking back over her blog I guess its the same one that her boyfriend gave her, that Spender guy.

Not much else to report. The only reason I'm even posting right now is to let you proxy assholes know this. She's protected. After everything she has done and everything that those other proxies and bloggers like that Morningstar and Elaine pair did to her, and most of all after what I did to her, I'm making sure that she is safe until she wakes up. And she is going to wake up. She's too damn strong not too.

Oh shit

Ryan again. Brought Kay home from the hospital the day after I posted what happened to us. Kay still won’t talk. Its like the person I’ve gotten to know over the past few weeks just isn’t there anymore. It feels like I’m interacting with a machine. Everything is completely mechanical with her.

Until this morning. God I made a huge mistake. I really thought it would help her, but I should have at least thought to read what was going on. Maybe one of these days I’ll make my own account that way I can look at things beforehand.

I convinced to Kay to go on the computer. Not to post, just to look and see how things were. Try and get her to reconnect with the world a little bit.

Well right now the world seems out to get her. That kid who she was fighting has apparently been “rescued”. Only hours after he was here. I was sitting in the living room, trying to give her some privacy in case she wanted to try and talk to someone. She let out this moan, like a hurt animal and fell out of her chair onto the floor. I ran over and after I got her laying on the couch I took a look at what she was reading that made her do that. Some chick named Elaine. I have no clue who she is, but she was on Kay’s list of blogs.

I think this is really bad. She’s not even being mechanical right now. I think she might be catatonic. Well maybe not that bad. She drank the water I gave her. But she won’t look at anything. She just stared at the ceiling. I think she fell asleep. Her eyes are closed at least.

I’m not sure what to do.

Ryan here. Things are pretty bad right now. We got attacked last night by someone who was supposed to be one of Kay’s closest friends. I didn’t really get to see what happened. We’re both alive. Kay is hurt pretty badly, physically and mentally. I missed out on half the mess and she won’t talk to me about what happened. I’ll give you guys what I know at least.

We’ve started getting along a lot better in the past few weeks. There was a huge hurricane that came through the area. Knocked out the power and internet for over a week. Her basement flooded and a tree came down on her garage. Between wading through water up to our knees and watching her laundry basket float around like a little boat, it gets hard for two people to stay pissed at each other.

We were sitting in her living room enjoying actually having lights and hot food. She was smiling and even laughed a few times, something I haven’t seen her do since the night I took her out to dinner and she found out who I really was. We were suddenly interrupted by a rock smashing through her picture window and into my head. I didn’t knock out immediately, but my vision and my brain went a bit blurry so this where things get kind of woozy.

She ran out the door, shrieking about proxy bastards. I stumbled over to the smashed window just in time to see Kay stop and stare at the woman leaping at her with a knife, shrieking at Kay like some kind of an animal. Apparently this woman was Melly, the mother of her deceased godchildren. At the time all I saw was Kay being attacked and not defending herself.

Melly sliced her across the face. She’s gonna have a pretty nasty scar. The doctors keep making noise at her about plastic surgery and she just stares at them like they’re not speaking English.

Sorry getting ahead of myself here. But I can’t tell you people how hard it has been to watch this pretty vibrant woman just deteriorate over the past few weeks. It seems like there is nothing left of the strong survivor I first read about when Olivia disappeared.

This was the point where I blacked out. I did my best to try to get out to them, but according to the doctors I’ve got a pretty nasty concussion from when that rock wacked me. I was probably only out for a minute or two, but I got up and looked out the window to see a scene that should have been something out of a movie, not real life.

Melly was laying on the ground with some kid standing over her, holding a knife, and laughing his head off. There was blood everywhere and Kay was holding a knife, screaming at the top of her lungs. No words, just this agonized sound. It reminded me of the sound my ex wife made when the police told us Olivia might never be found. She leapt at that kid and let me tell you he was quick. Dodged out of the way of that knife still laughing, screaming about Morningstar’s greatest triumph before stabbing out at her.

I grabbed the phone and called the cops while the two of them circled each other, him trying to stab her and her dodging while that Morningstar kid screamed at her about how she destroyed Melly, how worthless she was. I ran outside just in time for the sirens to start ringing.

The kid looked at us and glared at me before running off into the trees still laughing his head off like he had heard the best joke ever.

Kay won’t talk to me. She won’t tell me what happened while I was out cold. But whatever it was ended up with Melly dead. And I wasn’t sure she could take another emotional blow as it was.

I’ll try to make her talk to me. Or at least update here. She used to say it was good for her to be able to get her pain out on the blog. Maybe I can remind her of that.

Well I'm here. I'm sober. Been sober for a few days actually, but just haven't wanted to even look at a computer. Being drunk was easier. If you really want to know about what your favorite witch was doing while attempting to drink herself into a coma, go read Ryuu's post.

I’m not going to take back anything I said while I was drunk either. A child murdering piece of trash like Mitch gets to live. A mass murdering psychopath like Morningstar gets to keep tearing across the continent. My brother’s evil cunt ex-girlfriend killed his unborn baby and she’s still running around. And all of them get to live another day to hurt someone else.

The monsters live and Cathy is gone. And that’s just the way of it, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. But oh deities it hurts so badly. Somehow I always thought it would be me first. No I didn’t think. I knew it was going to be me first because she had to have her happy ending. She had to get her daughter back and she was going to inherit my house and live happily ever after with her daughter finally safe.

Being wrong has never been so painful in my life. It should have been me, not her. They should be able to have each other. No child should have to lose her mother.

And then I come back online and I see that Nick's gone, kidnapped by some bitch at the demand of his "friend" the Time Lord. And just to top everything off, I got a phone call from the police this morning. Maggie and Jake's mom has gone missing. She snapped really badly after they were killed. They had her in an institution for a while and they let her out under the care of her mother. Apparently she stopped taking her meds and started screaming all the time about haring the kid's voices. When her mother tried to call 911 to have her put away again, Melly picked up a chair and beat her own mother unconscious with it. She's been missing for weeks now, but the police just got the bright idea recently to find out if i had heard from her. It was nice being able to tell the police the truth for once. Why would she come to me? It's my fault her kids are dead. We both know although she only thinks she knows why.

Sometimes I think I deserve everything that has happened to me. Bad things happen to everyone I love. And I'm still here.

This is Ryan. I know that most of you have no reason to want to hear from me at all, but Kay isn't doing very good right. She started drinking a few hours ago and hasn't stopped since. If any of you actually know her offline, maybe you should call her or something? Right now she's sitting in the backyard screaming and daring the Slender Man to come and get her. And she may be tiny, but when I tried to pull her inside I got to find out how good her left hook is.

I can't do this anymore. I just can't. This is too much.

Cathy...

Ryan's Story

It’s been a mostly quiet week. No more attacks from proxies, but the faceless bastard has been doing double time staring contests outside my house. I guess because there’s two of us staying here now, it must be some kind of a treat for it.

Yes I said two of us. Ryan is currently taking up residence in my guest bedroom. Which is not fun to say the least. He tries very hard to be kind and I do my best to remember that he is in even worse of a situation then I am, but I just can’t be the kind and compassionate woman that the whole world expects me to be 100% of the time. Sometimes the bitch needs to come out.

I’m getting ahead of myself again. You guys are probably wondering what kind of insanity I have picked up to be letting this guy stay at my place. Allow me to fill in the blanks.

After he made his little announcement about using me to track down the monster, he proceeded to have a nice little bout of hysterics in my passenger seat while I stared at him like an idiot. My brain did not want to process what he had just said. Someone who actually wanted to see it? What the bloody hell was wrong with him?

I had every intention of kicking him out of my car and doing my best to forget about his existence, but it appeared again. Standing in front of my house watching us. He may have been an ass, but I couldn’t throw him out when we were sitting in my driveway only a few steps from my back door. So I grabbed him and dragged him inside. I thought that when it did it’s teleportation to wherever it goes next I would throw him out then.

So I brought him inside and he had finally managed to calm down. He asked if I would let him explain himself. I didn’t want to at first. I called him some rather unpleasant names and threatened to send him out to it after all. But he kept begging and finally I gave in.

His story broke my heart. Ryan is the father of a six year old girl named Olivia. His ex-wife had primary custody but he got to have her with him for most weekends and one or two nights a week. He didn’t date but that was ok by him. He had a very good job that let him give his daughter everything she wanted and she was his whole world.

I think you guys are smart enough that you can tell where this is going to end up. About ten months ago, Olivia started having nightmares, screaming in the middle of the night about the man with no face coming to hurt her. She drew hundreds of pictures of the faceless man in the business suit. Her parents were afraid she was somehow being abused, but nothing came out with the therapist they brought her too. Two months later her mother took her to the park and she disappeared.

The police worked hard at first to try and find her, but Ryan didn’t think they were trying hard enough. He started his own investigation, hired private detectives. While doing some research into Olivia’s bad dreams, he accidentally came across our mutual stalker. He shrugged it off at first, but as more and more time went by and the police’s trail grew colder, he became convinced that his daughter had been the victim of the monster.

Slowly, but surely, he lost everything while trying to find his daughter. He left his job because he needed more time to research and try to track it down. He bought cameras of all types and quality and broke his lease so he could travel around the state trying to find it. By the time he was telling me his story, he was down to less than $500 from what had once been a very prosperous bank account. But no matter what he did, it never showed itself to him.

As to how I got involved, he discovered my blog and recognized part of my story. When the kids were killed and I was kidnapped, it made headlines around here. And when I killed Tom it made headlines again. Ryan lives in the same state as me. He thought that it was perfect, having someone that had survived it for months now that close to him. He became convinced that if he found me I would be able to lead him to it and in turn find his daughter. He went and reread the articles, found out what town I lived in and started haunting local areas like the grocery store and parks, hoping he would run into someone that matched the little bit of description on my blog. To quote him, “I introduced myself to four different women before I finally met you.”

I can’t hate him. I’m still angry and hurt, but I can’t hate him. All he wants is his daughter back. I’m letting him stay here because he has no money to keep staying at hotels and I couldn’t throw him into the street after he showed me Olivia’s pictures. I don’t approve of what he did to me, but I can’t judge him for it either. Who can say one of us wouldn’t have made the same decision if thrust into those circumstances?

How many times can a person be kicked in the teeth before they simply give up? So many of you out there are either Stepford Smiling or just have some kind of a mental block that keeps our existence from getting to you. Sometimes I wonder how many of you are even real. Because there is no reason you should be laughing and smiling. There is nothing left in our lives except for it and its minions and the games that they play with us.

I suppose I should actually explain my current state of bitterness, shouldn’t I? I took Ryuu and Nick’s advice. I went out on a date with Ryan. The plan was simple. Go out, try to have some fun, and then let him down politely. Simple right?

Only not a single thing went the way it was supposed to. I couldn’t relax at all during dinner. The only thing that made me feel even slightly comfortable was being able to reach into my purse and touch the bottle of pepper spray I had in there, or to put my hand under the table and feel the knife I had strapped to my leg under my skirt. I had nothing to talk about. He asked about books and I don’t read books anymore only blogs. He asked about movies and tv shows and all I watch are the vlogs of our fellow stalked. He asked about family and what was I supposed to tell him? A brother on the run from a Cosmic Horror and two dead godchildren?

The whole dinner was awkward and miserable for me. He would ask questions, I would mutter some half assed response, and then go silent until he asked another question. I was so miserable that I couldn’t even enjoy the food and it was a pretty good restaurant, one I used to enjoy before…well before everything. It was a huge relief when the check came. I assumed that I wouldn’t even need to let him down, that I had been such a horrible date he would be dying to get away from me.

Instead he asked me if I wanted to take a walk down the strip. I was surprised to say the least. Maybe I hadn’t wrecked it. Maybe I was still capable of being a worthwhile human being after all, instead of just a paranoid wreck of a woman. It’s not so much that I wanted to be a great date for Ryan. Logically I knew that if I was bad date it would be simpler to get him to stay away from me, from the nightmare that is my life. But well…I do have some pride. What woman wants to be remembered as the worst date ever?

We walked down the main strip. It was a humid night, but not as hot as it’s been. I started talking a bit, and before I knew it I was actually having a real conversation. I told him that I was between jobs at the moment and debating trying my hand as writer. It was about as close as I could come to the truth without getting into far too many details that would be detrimental to him and well, let’s face it, the details of what Tom did to me still fill me with shame. I don’t know if that is something that will ever change.

I was handling things pretty well until we got near the park. I saw the trees and froze with my paranoia back in full force. Did he bring me to the park on purpose? Was he the half assed proxy that has lately taken to making my life annoying? I tried to pull away from Ryan, who was not looking confused. Instead, he looked eager.

I turned and bolted, running as fast as I could. Smart me, I wore a pair of sensible shoes instead of heels. And as always seems to happen in these adrenaline fueled situations, the little details were so clear. The rasp of my breath as I started to breathe heavier, my hair rising off of my shoulders and back by the momentum, and the sound of two pairs of feet slapping against the sidewalk. He was chasing me, I was so stupid, my instincts said don’t do it but I listened to Ryuu instead and now I was going to pay for not trusting myself.

I turned a corner and there was the creature. I barely managed to stop myself from running right into it. I could hear Ryan coming up behind me, I was sandwiched in between the two of them. No matter which one grabbed me first, I was about to pay for my idiocy of actually thinking I could give myself a life.

Ryan rounded the corner and I held my breath waiting for the inevitable. To be attacked or for Ryan to start babbling crazy proxy talk. Because that’s the last thing we all want to hear before we die right? About how their Father or Master or whichever name is the flavor of their crazy will be served and sacrificed to.

But I was wrong. Ryan didn’t start babbling. Instead he started screaming. You know the one. That scream that we all let out the first time we saw it whether out loud or in our heads. The one that begs for it to go away and tries to deny what you are actually seeing. Terror and insanity and denial and pain all mixed into one primal scream of anguish.

It looked at us for a moment before swinging one of its tentacles at Ryan, a forward strike that would have gone straight through his face while he stood there screaming. I ran forward and tackled him as hard as I could. He hit the ground and I heard a dull thud as his head smacked the sidewalk. I pushed myself to my knees and made yet another mistake. I looked up at it.

And again it felt like an eternity that we looked at each other. I could feel the tears running down my cheeks. I am just so tired. I want to give up. I want to rest. I want to walk into its embrace and just let it end me. But Ryan was on the ground next to me whimpering. There’s always something holding me back from peace. Lucien, Ryuu, Nick, Cathy. Always someone preventing me from finally being out of this.

Anyway, Ryan was whimpering and it turned its attention away from me and looked at him instead. I grabbed his arm and dragged him to his feet, screaming at him to run. We ran, me dragging him along until I reached my car. I shoved him into my passenger seat, got into my side and drove off.

When I pulled over I had no idea what I was going to tell him. Apologize? Try to explain what it was? As it turned out I didn’t have to say anything. Ryan sat in the seat next to me and started laughing, high and hysterical.

“I knew it!” he said. “I knew that you were the right one! I knew that if I found you I would find the Slender Man!”

He was never actually interested in any kind of a date. I was a means to an end, in this case finding and seeing the monster.

I can’t do this right now. I’ll finish the story later.

It gets harder and harder to think of myself as being a part of other people. Every time I see it, every day I live like this just makes me feel more and more outside of everything, even the other bloggers. So I have to admit, I was hopeful about going out. That maybe for a little bit I could just feel something again, be a person, not a concept, not an abstract idea on a blog. That maybe Ryuu and Nick were right about still being able to be happy, to have a life that is real.

I was so fucking stupid. And I don't even know why I keep going anymore.

I can't talk about this right now. 

Someone tried to set my house on fire last night. They threw a gods damn Molotov cocktail at my window. I didn’t even know people actually make Molotov cocktails! I thought they were a gods damned movie cliché!

I got lucky. The bottle actually bounced off my window and landed in my lilac bush. Said bush is now a pile of char, but my neighbor saw it burning and called the fire department.

The fire department came and the police weren’t far behind them. After they put out my bush and found the remnants of the glass bottle, they did a sweep of the area and discovered a second one. Under my car. They think that it was supposed to set my car on fire but that for some reason the wick didn’t catch. The police think that I’m being targeted because of what happened with Tom. They’re probably right, but what are they gonna do? They might be able to catch this proxy, but what about the next one? And the next one? And what happens when the faceless one himself shows up?

My current assumption is that whichever proxy called me the other night decided to step up their efforts. But hey if all proxies were as ineffective as this one, we’d all be a hell of a lot safer, right? I mean what have they managed to do? One mildly disturbing phone call and two homemade grenades, one that barely did any damage and the other that did none at all. Let’s all hope that the downgrade in quality is not just a fluke.

Rough Night

I woke up around seven last night. Normal wake up time. After the past few months, I don’t sleep for more than two or three hours at a time so I just nap whenever I’m tired as opposed to a nightly bedtime. I stopped hearing that music even when it shows up to play peek a boo so I can’t say that’s what wakes me up these days. I think maybe it gave up on that aspect of torturing me, around the same time that I got kidnapped by Tom actually. Anyway, I don’t wake up hearing it anymore, but my body is still trained at this point to wake up at the slightest noise or just feeling that something might be off.

Last night it was that off feeling. I wish I could explain it better. There was no goose bumps, hairs standing up on the back of my neck, none of those little signs that the horror novels like to use. All I had was a feeling that things had gotten worse. And considering how badly things have gone in the past few months, this was not a welcome feeling.

I got out of bed and grabbed the knife that I’ve started keeping with me. For the info of any its pets that might be reading this blog, I keep all kinds of toys around my house lately that would be detrimental to your health if you decide to try and break in.

I took the knife and started flicking on lights, trying to find out what had caused me to wake up. Didn’t see anything until I got downstairs where my favorite stalker stood in front of my picture window, watching, waiting for whatever it is that it waits for.

I watched it and it watched me, and it put one of its not hands on my window. And I’m not sure what made me think I should but I stepped forward and placed my hand against the window.

Time often seems to go wrong when it’s involved. It moves too fast or it moves too quickly. Even when you’re not being trapped you’re in another dimension, or hallucinating that you’re in one, whatever you want to believe about the places I’ve seen, the point is that even in the most mundane of settings, my own home, the time doesn’t move right when it’s around.

I don’t know how long we stood there, nothing but a sheet of glass separating me from it. And it was just so tempting. No music in my head, no voices, just my own tiredness. How nice it would be for all of this to be over. To not have to fight anymore, not have to worry, not have to care. I just want to be able to sleep. To not be scared anymore.

But I knew that if I did that it would hurt too many people. I can’t really bring myself to care that much about myself anymore, but I couldn’t stop loving my family and friends if I tried. Even the ones I walked away from to try and keep them safe when I started this nightmare. Especially them.

So I pulled my hand away from the glass and walked backwards, keeping my eyes on it until the moment that my cell phone rang and scared me so badly I tripped and fell on the floor. When I glanced back up at the window it was gone. Wish I had teleport at will abilities, don’t you?

My phone was still ringing. Unknown number at…was it really only 7:39? Like I said, time goes strange when our stalker shows up. I could have sworn we had been staring at each other for hours. I normally don’t answer calls from unknowns, but I thought that perhaps I could repay whoever it was for interrupting my staring contest by at least answering.

That turned out to be a mistake. I am assuming that one of its pets had somehow tracked down my cell phone number because the voice whispering to me on the line was disturbing and mad. Not angry mad. Insane mad. Whoever it was whispered the whole time, making it impossible for me to try and memorize the voice or see if I recognized someone else from my past. Thanks the gods there is no one else like Tom for me to worry about, but still. You never know who will become a target because of me.

The voice whispered vile things about what happened to me when Tom kidnapped me, told me that my suffering would continue, how I would pay for what I did. Of course the voice neglected to tell what exactly I did. I assume it is the same crime as always, refusing to lie down and let any of the monsters that have been part of my life kill me.

After a minute of being frozen in horror, I pulled my wits together and hung up the phone. I should have hung up sooner, but having one’s torture used as an opening subject isn’t something that is easy to ignore. Of course moments after I hung up, it rang again. And again. And again.

I managed to last about ten minutes before I finally couldn’t take it anymore and answered the phone, screaming “Fuck off!” as my greeting. Everything was silent for a moment before a very confused voice spoke.

“Do I have the right number? I was trying to reach Kay, I met her at the grocery store the other day.” said a distinctly not whispering male voice. I probably should have checked my caller id first instead of just assuming it was still whispering loon. Instead it was Ryan. I am on a total roll with this guy, aren’t I?

I apologized; gave him a bullshit story about getting harassed by some kids in the neighborhood. It makes me sad how good I’ve gotten at lying. My mother used to say that she could catch me whenever I lied because I was incapable of disguising my voice and face. Well I must at least be better with my voice because he accepted my story pretty easily, was all kinds of sympathetic about it. He then offered to call me today instead which again left me completely flustered. What is wrong with him? When I met him I attacked him and he asked for my phone number. He called me, I cursed him off, and he offered to call me back.

I guess my reaction to this situation is just another way I fail. Can’t do much of anything right lately. Can’t do right in a normal life, can’t do right in an abnormal one. It just all feels the same.

What happened to me? I wasn’t the most well-adjusted woman in the world when I started this blog, but when did I become a stuttering social reject? This is just ridiculous, if I can fight monsters and survive parallel dimensions, why can’t I talk to another person like a human being?

Amal Sage and Ryuu have made noises about coming over this week so I decided to run out to the grocery store. It’s nice to have an excuse to buy fancy ingredients for yummy food that I wouldn’t normally make when I’m by myself. A normal simple trip to the grocery store. It shouldn’t be anything special right?

Except that I never leave the house anymore. Deities, I don’t even feel like a person anymore. I went outside to collect my mail the other day and my neighbor was outside. She tried to start up a conversation about her garden. I just stared at her. A garden? How could I talk about something as simple as a garden? There is no simple anymore. It’s all crazed murderers and cosmic horrors, broken hearts and tragic deaths.

There is no such thing as a simple trip to the grocery store. It involves a couple of hours of going back and forth, arguing with myself. Telling myself that I can spend the extra money to shop online and have it delivered, that I don’t need to go out and deal with a world that doesn’t make sense to me anymore. And then reminding myself that I only have a few months left on my severance package and I need to save every penny I’ve got. After I get the finances argument out of the way I then have to spend at least an hour dragging my feet about getting in the shower, doing something with the bird’s nest that sits on top of my head. I may not be a very pretty woman, but I do have some vanity. All in all, my morning trip to the grocery ended up waiting until the early evening.

The trip itself should have been uneventful. Except for me cringing as I drove past the shadows the ever so artfully placed trees on the main strip cast. Except for me driving around the parking lot three different times as I again argued with myself about whether or not I really needed to go inside. After a bit I just got so damn mad at myself that I parked the car and grabbed a cart.

Everything seemed to be going alright at first. I did what any person does, went down the aisles with my shopping list and picked up the things I needed. About as normal as anyone could ask for right? Or at least it was until someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I jumped and amazingly did not shriek for once. Instead I spun around and aimed a kick for my would be attacker’s leg. And to my utter shock it landed and he jumped backwards, yelping in pain. He looked at me, raised his hands in surrender, and said “Shit I’m sorry!”

The first thing I noticed was that he wearing a business suit. I used to actually like the way business suits looked on men. Now I think I might prefer the sweats and t-shirt look. The second thing I noticed was that he was holding my wallet above his head.

My hands went to my purse and the guy grinned at me sheepishly. “It fell out of your bag. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Feeling like a complete idiot, I began apologizing profusely for attacking him. And instead of being outraged like he should have been he smiled at me.

“Well honestly I was kind of following you.” I stiffened and got ready to swing my purse at him.

“I spent the past ten minutes trying to figure out how to say hello to you and maybe convince you to talk to me long enough to give me your phone number. The wallet falling on the ground seemed like a perfect opportunity. I’m Ryan. And you are?”

So what did the confident intelligent female that I am supposed to be do? I stared at him like he had grown a second head. And he just smiled at me. He wasn’t seeing a woman that needed to be protected or a pet to abuse or a tool that had something he needed. For the first time in a very long time I was just being looked at as a woman. And I had no idea what to do.

“So how about it?” he asked, still smiling.

“How about what?” I asked, blinking in confusion.

“Your name. And maybe your phone number if I haven’t completely scared you off,” he said, still smiling at me as if he was talking to someone that had a working brain. He reached out, offering me my wallet with one hand and pulled out a cell phone with his other.

“Please? I’m a decent guy. I know I must look fairly pretentious dressed like this, but I just got out of work, hence the monkey suit. I swear I don’t always dress up just to go the grocery store. “

Faceless Eldritch Abomination? Easy. Giant tree with blood pouring from its eyes making my skull explode? Been there done that! Man asks me for my phone number and I couldn’t think of anything to do besides stand there and stutter like a moron.

So I gave him my phone number. I couldn’t think of anything else to do that would let me get on the checkout line and out of the grocery store without causing any worse of a scene then I already had by attacking him. Which yes, giving him my info was pretty dumb. I mean it’s not as if I’m actually going to go out with him. I can’t have that kind of life, not even before the cosmic horror. I’m just not meant for that. Never was. How many of the men in my life end up dead or just disappear never to be seen again?

I would make a great date wouldn’t I? Want to see my scars from where I was tortured? Let me tell you about the time I vacationed in another dimension where I was chased by giant leeches. Let me introduce you to my chaperone, the faceless wonder.

Somehow I don’t think it would go over well.

A few words of warning

Remember how I said I’m taking a blogging break to pull myself back together? Well then can you imagine how pissed I must be right now to be typing out this post? But some things simply have to be said and they need to be said now, not when I’m feeling better.

Guys. Stop being dumb. No, seriously. Stop being dumb. I’m not naming any names. I’m not calling anyone in particular out. But I am seeing certain behaviors lately that make me very scared for some of you.

The proxies are not our friends. Let me repeat that. The homicidal people that work for the faceless Eldritch Abomination that is trying to drive us out of our minds and kill us painfully are NOT our friends.

Look I get it. Maurice is funny and amusing. The Messenger is trying to show us the sympathetic side of working for the Eldritch Abomination. Morningstar…actually I have no idea why most of you argue with Morningstar. But whatever the reasons, stop giving them what they want!

Do you realize what’s going to happen if you keep giving in to what Maurice and the Messenger are telling us? The stories they tell about the poor proxies that don’t have a choice about what they are trying to do to us? The more you sympathize with them, the more you pity them, the less you will be able to fight back when they inevitably come to try and kill you. And if you can’t fight back, you’re dead. It’s that simple.

I’m not saying you need to be able to kill the ones coming for you. Hell I’m the one who came up with super pepper spray because I would rather blind someone then have to use potentially lethal weapons like knives or hammers. But there’s a reason that armies are taught to dehumanize their enemies. If you sympathize with your enemy you’ll hesitate. And if you hesitate for even a second, that’s all they’ll need, Just one second where your guard is down. Yes they are still humans. They’re not animals. But guess what guys? They won’t hesitate to torture you. In ways that you don’t even want to imagine. And then if you’re lucky, at the end, they’ll kill you. If you’re not lucky, they’ll give you to their boss. I am speaking from experience here folks. Still don’t believe me? Why don’t you go ask Tony what he did to people when he was working for it?

Don’t you guys get it? They want us to hesitate. They want us dead. Someone like the Messenger is more dangerous than all the Rikas and Eulogies combined. In fact he is probably the most dangerous of the faceless bastard’s minions that are currently among the living. He’s making you feel for them. And the more you feel for them, the more you’ll hesitate.

Don’t be a murderer. Don’t just randomly kill as many proxies as you can because you can. It’s not living anymore if you forget to be a human yourself. But never forget that they are NOT our friends. Some of them can become our allies like Reach did. But never stop defending yourself because you feel bad that the other side is hurting or scared. Aren’t we hurting and scared too? They are the ones coming after us! Stop forgetting that!

We want to think that they are all like Reach. That they can be saved, brought back to the light. But we can’t try to bring them back at the cost of our own lives. Hell Maurice wished me happy birthday a few weeks ago. But just a few entries before that he was doing his best to troll me, to create doubt and discord. And because he is funny and sometimes sympathetic, you guys are listening to what he says when he condemns us for defending ourselves when attacked.

And finally there are trolls like Morningstar and the deceased Rikas. They don’t pretend to be sympathetic. They do everything possible to hurt us physically, mentally, emotionally. So why the hell are you people still arguing with them? Stop giving them what they want! They want you to get mad, yell, scream. And the more attention you give them, the happier they are. As a wise man once said, don’t feed the trolls!

None of us are soldiers. We haven’t been trained to view the people trying to maim and kill us as things instead of people nor should we. This isn’t about making them less then what they are. It’s about keeping ourselves safe. It’s hard enough to fight back and stay alive without becoming more sympathetic towards them then we already are.

ETA: I put this as a comment, but I think I need to have in a more obvious spot on this post as well.

You guys are missing the point. I never said don't talk to them. I said stop letting your guard down. Don't give them trust. Don't let them get inside your head. You want to try and save them? Rock on. Reach can't be the only one that can be saved. But try to save them at the cost of your own safety? That's dumb. And dumb gets you killed.

Hey folks. Sorry I’ve been so silent lately. I’ve been doing a lot of deep thinking about the things that I’ve done. The people I’ve hurt.

My brother is hurt. And while I’m not the person who did it, it’s still my fault. I was the one who introduced him to all this. So that’s seven people that I have either directly or indirectly harmed since all this began. Although if you think about it, the number might be even more. I killed Tom, and because of that his family who loved him suffers. My godchildren were killed and their mother is destroyed. I heard that she had to be sent to the hospital because she wasn’t eating. Who knows who else has been hurt by the things I’ve done?

And before I get scolded by my loving and worried friends, I do understand that the things I did were not done with a wicked intent. But it doesn’t make my heart feel less pained.

I believe in karma, that what we do comes back to us, even if it wasn’t ill meant at the time. It’s the butterfly effect, everything we do effects numerous other situations. I’ve made so many mistakes in the past few months.

I think I need a blogging break. If anything important happens I’ll post about it, and if anyone needs me just leave a comment or send an email. And I’ll probably still be keeping an eye on all the blogs I normally watch, commenting when and if I have something intelligent to say. I just…

I need some time off. Well the closest I can come to having time off when our favorite stalker still makes random appearances. It frightens me more to see it in the sunlight you know. There’s a quality of realism that can’t be denied in the light the way you can sometimes try to deny what you see in the dark.

But even with the ever present threat that chases us, I, no we cannot give in to despair. We have to keep going. I’m still alive. I’m still sane. Don’t give up hope no matter how hard it hurts. If you’re a runner, keep moving, if you’re a fighter, keep looking for ways to strike back. I should be dead, so many of us should be dead. And in honor of the ones that are dead, we need to keep going. I am still here and my home is still open to any of you that need it. And maybe while I take this break I'll be able to come up with something that lets me get back into the fight.

Another year

I’m thirty one today. This is rather unexpected. I really didn’t think I was going to survive this long, but here I am. For the first time I’m feeling grateful to have grown another year older.

You’ll have to pardon my silence for the past few days. While I did escape the tree alive, I didn’t escape it completely unharmed. Mentally, it's been a little rough. It's hard to stay asleep when the squirrels running across my roof make me jump awake thinking its the leeches. And not a single night has gone that I haven't dreamt of the trees eyes staring into me. Physically, things have been a little bit off.

I was a rather disturbing sight when I got home and actually saw myself in the mirror. There were trails of dried blood coming from my eyes, ears, and nose. When I washed it all off, I didn’t see any wounds, so I can only assume that I had actually bled from those areas at some point during my journey through the wanna be Silent Hill. My best guess would be that it happened when I saw the tree. That pressure that I felt building inside my head would probably explain that kind of bleeding. I didn’t really think about it once I finished cleaning myself up. I did my best to put it out of my head until I had a couple of dizzy spells. Almost falling over while trying to repaint a living room wall is not very fun. Took me forever to get the paint out of my hair and it still smells like olive oil.

So happy birthday to me, I went to the doctor this morning. So very glad that I bargained keeping my insurance as part of my severance package. She couldn’t find anything wrong with me which was quite a relief. She wants me to go get a couple of tests just to be safe, but she told me not to stress too hard about it. Actually since I couldn’t really tell her about being trapped in another world with a tree of evil covered in giant leeches, I ended up going with the explanation of well I’m out of work and I only have this many months left on my severance and I’m just not getting enough sleep. She believes that my dizziness is caused by nothing more then good old fashioned stress, which let’s face it folks, that could easily be true. Deities know that I have plenty of it in my life.

She took around half the blood out of my body today, and I’ll be going for one or two more tests during the next week, but again, she’s not worried, so I’m not going to worry either. Well I’ll try at least. I’m just getting awfully tired of tired of doctors. I’ve seen them way too much in the past few months.

And tonight I get to have a lovely distraction. Ryuu and Sage are still here, so I’m baking a cake and making my birthday dinner for the three of us. I’ve had so much company lately; I’m actually not sure how well I’m going to cope when the house is empty again.

Oh well, cross that bridge when we come to it, right? For now, I’ve been informed that “I am still young and need to have a birthday party damn it” although I’m a little confused about how it’s going to be a party with just three of us. Considering that one of the three is Amalgamation Sage however, maybe I should be more worried then confused.

Be it ever so humble

 It’s nice having people in my house, even if it’s only going to be for another day or so. Sometimes with everything that’s happening, I forget what it’s like to just enjoy cooking a meal and watching other people enjoy it. But last night I got to make pot roast and sit in my dining room with my friends, instead of alone on the couch in the living room.

So yes I am home, I am as safe as I can get when I look out the window and see the faceless wonder staring at me, and I am nowhere near as damaged as I was the last time I disappeared. I’m still a little…I guess dazed would be a good word. I’m really not sure I understand everything that happened on Friday, but I’ll do my best to explain what I remember.

I sat in the little clearing for a few hours. Sage had said he was sending his astral form after me. I know I normally don’t believe in things like astral projection, but considering the fact that I had apparently been warped into Silent Hill, I was willing to suspend a lot of disbelief at that point. And I was expecting to see something come over to me and hopefully not be threatening.

What I was not expecting however was the slightly glowing blue woman that came floating up to me.Yup, Sage is apparently a woman when he runs around saving the world by existing in another world. He actually was not aware of this and was more then a little shocked when I mentioned it after everything was over.

So Girl!Sage guided me back to my house. Well the version of my house in this other place...you know what I don't a hundred percent understand it, so I'm just gonna stop trying to explain it. So we got back to the house. It was a mostly uneventful trip, just some of the leeches along the way. And when we got back even though it still in icky black fog land, I was just so damn grateful to see that my house was still there I could have cried. I was half convinced that it would have already been torn apart by the leeches.

Now that I was back it was time to get me out. Sage can explain what went on a little better then I can. All I know is that I had been told to focus on Ryuu with everything I had. Ok fine, visualization, I can work with that. That part was the easy part. Sage said I needed to focus my will on pulling myself towards her. It may be a few generations removed, but I've got Irish stubbornness going for me.

Everything seemed to be going fine until Girl!Sage turned to me and handed me a sword. A katana with a light blue glow to be precise. I tried to ask what the hell I was supposed to do with the damn thing but Girl!Sage had gone and disappeared!

I stood in the middle of my living room, doing my best to focus on Ryuu when the walls started crumbling around me. The fog started pouring into my house. And so did the leeches. Not in the amounts that I saw at the tree, but still enough to be a challenge. At that point I was assuming Sage had seen them coming and gave me the sword since it had better reach then the hedge clippers. Of course I had no idea how to even hold the damn thing correctly! A swordswoman I am not. I gripped it in both hands and missed almost as much as I hit the damn things, but at least the range kept them from getting close enough to bite me.

As I made my attempts at stabbing the leeches, I realized that there was a noise coming from behind me. I spun around and saw a shadow coming towards. A really large shadow. And there's no way I could ever fail to recognize that shadow. It was my favorite faceless stalker. Only it wasn’t. It was its shadow, but the shadow wasn’t connected to a body. And the shadow wasn’t a two dimensional flat thing like you normally see. It was fully three dimensional, it had substance, it had weight. And because timing is everything, as the shadow thing swooped towards me, there was an immense cracking sound and the fog around me started to fade. The darkness started to fade and I realized that Sage and Ryuu had made the ritual work and that not only was I about to be to be pulled home, but the shadow thing was about to hitch a bloody ride with me!

This is normally the point where I would begin to panic isn’t it? Well not this time. There was no way I had gotten that damn far just to let a fucking shadow take me down. So I raised the sword as the shadow charged me and screamed as I swung it as hard as I could.

I was probably more shocked than anyone else would have been when I saw that my swing had actually cut the damn thing in half. I stared at the pieces of it on the ground for a moment then lifted my head. And there were Sage and Ryuu, waiting for me. I smiled at them and walked out of one world and into the right one.

Sage asked me keep focusing for a bit longer. Apparently in order to get me out of there, he had broken open a hole in the fabric of time and space. I asked him if he was going to summon the TARDIS for me next, preferably with the Fourth or Eleventh Doctor. He started to glare at me, but then it changed to a grin

“You’re back just in time that we can watch the new episode together tomorrow. Now be quiet and focus so I can finish and we can order pizza.”

I am a little embarrassed to admit that at the mention of pizza, my stomach let out a growl so loud I didn’t even bother trying to pretend it wasn’t me. So I shut up and focused while he did…whatever it is he does. Still not quite sure on the details of that one.

I need to say, even before Maduin decided to grace us with titles, there has always been something right about the three of us together. I felt it when we first started talking together on the blogs, I felt it when we stood in my real living room together Friday night, hell I even felt it when I woke up in the hospital after the two of them saved my life. The three of us have always had the potential to be something together.And we didn't need titles for that potential to become something real.

Zero, I said I forgive you. I meant it at the time. Now I am going to seriously need to fucking reconsider that. That thing, that tree, it…

It still hurts.

I’m alive. Obviously. After all I’m typing. Or who knows, maybe I’m dead and this is a bloody pit stop before I get spun off the wheel for my next turn. But if I am dead, I hardly find it fair that I am this damn sore.

It was real. The Bleeding Tree is real. And it is just as terrible as Zero said. Don’t worry, I’m not about to start trying to help him carve people open for their bones, but I think I have a better idea now of why he’s so desperate. And before he says a bloody word, no murder is still not the right way.

I know I’m stalling. I don’t want to think about that thing. But since I’ve been gone for…how long have I been gone for? Anyway since I’ve been gone, I want you guys to know it wasn’t on purpose or without a reason.

The fog parted in front of me and I was able to start seeing a little bit. I couldn’t actually see the ground, but whatever was under my feet, was like walking on eggshells. Crackled and smashed with every step I took.

I tried to step backwards without turning around, keeping my eyes on where the fog had parted. It felt like a solid wall. I turned to try and look at it. It still looked like just fog, but it was all rock solid. And then it started pushing me forward into the open area.

As I was pushed forward, I started stumbling and tripping over tree roots. And the noise. There was this droning noise, piercing through my ears, making a bubble of pressure form in my head. And the longer I heard the droning, the stronger the pressure grew, trapped in my ears, behind my eyes, it felt like my head was going to explode.

It appeared so suddenly. Literally in between one footstep and the next. There were bodies in the tree. So many bodies, every branch held a body, stabbed right through the stomachs and chests.

It had eyes. That fucking tree had eyes. And the eyes had blood pouring out of them. I looked into those eyes and I was lost.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I vaguely remember my legs giving out, my knees hitting the tree roots as i stared at it blankly, completely unable to look away. My vision dimmed, everything but the tree started to fade away, to black out. Nothing else mattered, there was nothing but the tree. Its eyes were a world of color and noise, almost like the one time in high school I was talked into doing acid. I felt as if I was pulled inside of it, lights flashing past me as I traveled to the center of the universe my speed picked up, as I was hurtled further, deeper into the color, the light, and the sounds…

And my hand was burning.

I blinked and I could see again. Somehow during my own personal Disney Acid Sequence, I had fallen down to my knees and squeezed the bottle of pepper spray I was holding. Got it all over my hand. And motherfuck did it burn, but it was exactly what I needed to snap me out of that thing’s hold.

I could still hear that droning pushing me, trying to hold me, control me. It was so strong it was almost physical. I tried to get up from my knees, but instead fell down on my ass. And it was still there, trying to make me look again.

So I did what any woman about to die would do it. I spit in its eyes.

Well metaphorically speaking. What I actually did was pitch the bottle of pepper spray into the bastard’s eye socket.

I didn’t think it had any effect at first. No movement, no sounds, and I was ready to kiss my ass goodbye. But then the droning stopped. It was such a bloody relief that at first that it took me a few seconds to realize that I was not alone with my new friend.

What I hadn’t been able to see while the tree and I were playing peek a boo, was that it was covered in those monster leeches. Hundreds of them crawling on it, they were…fuck they were eating the blood that came out of it.

The ground started to shake and the trees branches swayed, waving the bodies around like they were party favors. As if they shared one brain all the leeches turned at the same moment. They stared at me. And then they swarmed at me.

Before I left the house I had grabbed an old shoulder bag of mine and filled it up with as much salt as it could hold. I had it swung across my chest and shoulder so that I would have easy access to it without having to carry a saltshaker around. I reached into the bag and started flinging handfuls of salt at those things. I grabbed Gram’s hedge clippers out of my belt and any leeches that made it past the salt I was flinging everywhere I stabbed in whatever area of their bodies happened to be closest to me.

The fog behind me was still completely solid. I wasn’t being allowed to go backwards and if I stayed where I was the leeches were eventually going to win just from sheer numbers. The tree just sat there, waiting for me to go down. I tried my best not to look at its eyes again, to keep focused on the nasties that were trying to take chunks out of my legs, but as I did my best to keep the tree from hypnotizing me again, I came to one not very happy conclusion.

I was going to have to run towards the tree.

I was starting to run low on salt and the leeches were starting to wear me down. A few of them managed to swipe their claws at my arms and it wasn’t going to be too much longer until they were in biting range. I let myself take one quick glance past the tree and turned myself in the direction I needed to go.

And I closed my eyes and ran like I haven’t run since high school gym.

I may have kept my figure pretty well since then, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am too damn old to be running like that.

Even with my eyes closed, I knew the moment that I was within touching distance of it. I could feel how the air got thicker with moisture from the blood, smell the iron. But I didn’t dare open my eyes, I just kept running. I could hear the leeches behind me, their claws skittering on the ground, the little slurping sounds they made.

I think I ran like that for about two minutes before I let myself open my eyes. The tree was gone. Some of the leeches were still following me, but only five or six, much more manageable. I stopped and dealt with them, and realized that I had arrived in some kind of a clearing.

It’s what looks like the remains of a campsite. Guess it’s safe to assume that I’m not the first person to get stuck in this place. There’s a tent and shreds of cloth. Blue jeans and what used to be a blanket. I was too tired to care. I crawled inside the tent and passed out. Just woke up a little while ago. I don’t even know how long I slept for. I’m clawed up, brain fucked, and have no idea if the tree or the leeches are still gunning for me.

But I’m alive.

Been walking for awhile can’t see more then two or three feet in front of me. Flashlight doesn’t make a dent in this damn fog. Got sick a couple of times from the way it feels on my skin but Ryuu was right eventually your brain just shuts down certain things for survival. The screams can get pretty bad. I’m so tempted to put on my earphones and listen to music but with my luck as soon as I did that would be when I hear something else besides the screams.

How long have I been walking? It feels like days, but it can’t be days, days wouldn’t pass without me hearing from Sage or Ryuu or Lucien. I try not to stop for too long. Just long enough to type out a sentence or two. Want to keep a record of what I see here. I can pretty it up later.

Haven’t seen any of the leeches. There were at least twenty crawling all over my house when I left, but none of them seemed to notice me. That’s fine, they may die easy, but their teeth are wicked sharp and I don’t want to end up trying to throw salt at a swarm of them.

I…fuck the fog just parted. Like fricking Moses and the Red Sea. I am not stupid I am not going that way.

What the fuck! The fog behind me it’s like a wall, its solid! I can’t go backwards I can’t go the sides. It’s pushing me. The ground it feels funny. Like eggshells. There’s some kind of a noise. A droning sou

Ready to Roll

Ok folks. Your favorite friendly neighborhood witch is ready to go. I’ve got my backpack full of survival stuff. Food, water, candles, crystals, and salt. Lots and lots of salt.

Things are starting to get bad in here. The walls look like they're starting to peel away and I keep hearing whispers. The power died a few hours ago and I don't think its safe to stay here anymore. 

I made a small test run earlier. Went out in the fog to see if it would hurt me. It doesn’t hurt. It feel fucking disgusting, like a tongue that was licking me, tasting my skin. And the smell is even worse when you’re out in it, but at least I know I can move through it. The screams don’t seem to get any louder so that’s a small blessing.

One of the leeches came at me. Deities that thing was even uglier up close. I was surprised at how fast it moved. It was almost on me before I had a chance to react, but I was smart enough to go outside with my weapon of choice and a backup. I decided to try and treat it like it really was a leech and I was right to do so. The salt worked even better than I could have hoped. A small handful thrown in its face and it just melted into a puddle of water. And if that hadn’t worked I had one of my bottles of pepper spray ready to go.

I’m currently feeling pretty confident about dealing with them. I’ve got tons of salt, I’ve got four bottles of pepper spray, and for anything else, I found my grandmother’s hedge clippers that were down in the basement.

I know that I might not be making anymore posts after this one. So while this isn’t a good bye post, I still want to say a few things.

Thank you. Some of you have been with me from the start of this blog, some of you are newer. But no matter how long you’ve been with me, I am eternally grateful for all the love and support I get.

Sage, Ryuu I’ve got my Blackberry, and it’s got a full battery. Comment at me if you come up with anything and I’ll do the same if I find anything that I think you guys should know. I love you two.

Cathy, you are the best friend I could have asked for these past few months. I know you’ll get your baby back. You’re too strong not too. I know you need to look for Tony, but please don't get hurt.  I love you so much.

Lucien for the love of everything will you stop trusting that damn Count? Listening to a proxy is NOT smart!!! If you get yourself killed I will find a way to resurrect you just so I can kick your ass. Love you baby brother.

Zero. I forgive you.

I’m off folks. Wish me luck.

Today's update is brought you to by the letters W, T, and F

Calmer now. Still fucking terrified, but thinking much more clearly. It’s amazing how much fear can help you work some clarity into your thoughts once you've managed to tell the panic attacks to piss off.

So after this conversation between my brother and me yesterday, I came to the realization that things are going to be more difficult then I originally thought. This probably isn't one of those labyrinth things that have happened to some of the other bloggers. As I understand it, the labyrinth is all in your head and I strongly suspect that this is not a hallucination. Not going to completely throw out the idea. There's still a chance that I could have been taken out of my home in my sleep and all this really is a hallucination of some sort, but the simplest explanations are usually the right ones. And for now the simplest explanation is that I really am somewhere else. I'm going to run with the idea that this not a hallucination, that way if it is real I don't do something stupid like not fight hard enough if I get attacked.

I saw one a little while ago. Zero's leech thing. It was crawling on the outside of my picture window. It looked at me. And it looked like it was smiling at me. Pretty fucked up, but still a hell of a lot easier to look at then the faceless wonder.

According to Zero's+ pictures I'm supposed to sit here and wait for those things to come crawling out of my walls and chase me out of the house.

Yeah fuck that. I'm not going to sit here and wait for some prediction made by my friendly neighborhood jade thief to come true. I sat around waiting to die once. Not happening again.

Sage, Ryuu, I'll wait a little longer for the two of you to get to my house...or my house in the real world...or my other house...whatever we're calling all this. Sage I really hope you've got some kind of an explanation about what's happening to me. You're the only person I know that specializes in this kind of a mess.

I'll try and give the two of you the rest of today to get there and start working this out. After that, I'm getting out of here. The electricity was working, but now things are starting to flicker on and off. I don't much fancy the idea of being alone in the dark with the possibility of those things getting in. And if those things find a way in, all bets are off. Besides, if there's a way out of this, I don't think I'm going to find it by hiding in the house. I've got a bag packed just in case Zero was a seer as well as a sage. If I do need to leave, I'll try to say something. At least my Blackberry still seems to be working.

I woke up this morning and the world was gone.

It was a normal enough night. I went to sleep and when I woke up I thought it was still night. Everything was pitch black. It took a minute for my mind to understand what I was seeing.

My house is surrounded by black fog. I think it might be the same black fog that I saw when I was in the Pine Barrens. And other than my house, there is nothing left here. I can’t see the sky, or the street, or the houses next to mine, or even my own backyard.

It looks like fog, but it doesn’t act like fog. It’s not coming in my windows or under the cracks around my doors. I can actually see it hovering over my windows, clinging to my outside walls.

It moves. Like a slug, it’s crawling slowly across my walls.

The more I hear it the more convinced I am it’s the same fog I saw back in February. It makes noise. It’s screaming. I can hear it screaming. And it smells like, oh fuck me, it smells like blood and-

Deities I feel so sick. Can’t use the toilets, got to save the water. Good thing I have the extra buckets I bought the last time my roof was leaking. Got to focus, was trying to talk about the fog, oh shit the smell-

It smells like blood and shit. It smells the way Tom’s body did when he died. And now that I think about it, it looks a lot like that swarm of crows too. Thick and black and never ending.

I’m so fucking scared right now. Nothing seems to be coming in, but I’m not sure how long I can hole up in here. I have some food left from when Cathy went shopping, but there’s not a lot of liquids. I have no running water, so once whatever is in my fridge and the toilets is gone, I’m screwed.

I don’t even know if posting this will work.

I…I think I just heard something on my roof.

Say something guys? Anything? Please tell me I’m not alone.

My packages arrived. Definitely worth paying the extra money for overnight shipping. I spent the morning experimenting with a few different recipes and came up with a lovely little toy.

What does a metal spray bottle, rubbing alcohol, baby oil, and ghost peppers create when combined in just the right proportions?

Some of the nastiest pepper spray ever created. The recipe calls for cayenne. I figure that cayenne isn't guarnateed to work, especially if your attacker happen to enjoy spicy foods, might have a tolerance. But ghost peppers are the hottest naturally grown peppers in the world. They're used to keep elephants away! Tolerance or not, if you're getting past pepper spray made from those babies, I probably wasn't strong enough to get past you to begin with. All I needed was a chance to see how it worked.

And unfortunately I got that chance last night.

He wasn't the smartest as far as proxies go. He actually jumped up in front of my kitchen window screen and yelled boo. Sadly for him, ever since Maduin's announcement the other night, I've been waiting for something like this and I had my new toy ready. And well to be honest, when he screamed boo, I shrieked and used the spray without even thinking. Maybe that means my survival instincts are getting stronger?

I sprayed him through the screen in the eye holes of his mask twice before the effect hit him. His scream was...not pleasant as he tore the mask off his face, rubbing helplessly at his eyes.

I kept the bottle held up as I listened to him scream in pain. I somehow managed to keep from dropping it and running outside to see if he was alright. Instead when he disappeared from the view of my kitchen window I ran into the living room to watch him from the windows there.

He ran off down my street, screaming about "the Master will have the bitch." The bitch I assume meaning me. That's fine. To quote one of my favorite authors, "Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold on to." 

And then he ran into a car. A parked cop car. The cop got out of his car and while I couldn't quite make out what was being said, it was sufficient enough for the officer to cuff my would be attacker and drive away with him in the back of the car. It was a bit of a relief actually. I don't want to have to deal with attackers and police anymore. There's only so many times a woman can be a victim in the space of three months before they're going to start looking more closely into why the woman is being attacked that often.

He looked so young.  Or maybe I'm just getting old. I don't even know anymore. I doubt he even had his driver's license yet.

I am so relieved this stuff worked. Having to fight with a kid? It's been bad enough dealing with the hollowed adults. A kid is too much to even contemplate. So I think I'll drop that particular line of thought and instead celebrate my creation of a very nasty weapon that I can not only use from a distance, but unless the person has an allergy, should be completely effective as well as nonlethal. 

Fighting without killing. It can be done folks. You just need to get creative.

A Resourceful Sorceress?

When all this started, I made myself a promise that I wouldn't get drunk until this was over. After all, being drunk is not an optimal way to survive a Cosmic Horror story. Last night I came damn close to breaking that promise.

Sage? Me? Deities, even if I still believed that Core Theory worked I would have trouble with this one. I'm just an average woman trying to live through this mess. I think the only thing that sets me apart from any other Fighter or Runner is that I'm older then your average stalked. Other then that, I've had to live the same way everyone else has, fighting for my life, teetering on the edge of sanity.

Core Theory didn't work, doesn't work. We all know that. Robert is completely out of his mind, even more now then he was when he first created it. Insanity isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially for those of us that have seen the faceless wonder, but he's so far gone there is nothing left for him. If he were to ask me to follow him I would politely decline and then run as fast I could in the other direction. If I were to simply go by whether or not I trust in the person who created those titles to begin with, this wouldn’t be an issue.

But Robert isn't the one I need to care about. He's not the one who wants me to be this, is he?

Instead, I need to think the same things about Maduin. Is he insane? Oh yes, but in the right ways, the ways that you need to survive this mess without becoming a villain or if you’ll pardon my wording, a bad joke. Would I follow him? Well maybe not follow, but I would work with him in a bloody heartbeat. There's not so much of a difference between my balloons filled with rosemary water and his balloons filled with paint. Do I trust him? About as much as I can trust someone I've never met.

Which leads me back to square one. Sage? Me? I just don’t know. Maduin picked the three of us for a reason, so I’m not going to disrespect that by saying no, but I’m not going to let it get to me the way Zero did. No martyrdom here folks. I’m in this for the long haul.

If I have any words of wisdom, it’s because of what I’ve lived through, not because of a title. I’m the same woman that I was 24 hours ago. If people ask for advice I’ll give it. If people don’t want to talk to me that’s fine too. I can’t speak for them, but I suspect my newly appointed fellow sages (oh deities am I really saying this?) will agree. The only thing that this changes is that we can officially call ourselves a Power Trio now.

I know that it sounds silly to invoke another trope, but damn it I will use anything and everything to try and get me and mine out of this alive and sane.

So yes I accept this although I don’t see how it actually changes anything. I’m going to fight, but that’s something that I’ve been doing. In fact I actually ordered a few packages online yesterday that are going to make for a fun nonmagical experiment in self defense. I suppose that the bull’s eye that was already on my back got a nice coating of 80’s style neon color after last night, which means I’ll be testing it all out soon enough.

Long, tall, and faceless made his first appearance last night since the night I killed Tom. Staring at me from my picture window. But it’s not the same anymore. Yes it’s still sickening and terrifying to watch those too long limbs, that blank space where its face should be. I don’t think I will ever be able to look at it without shaking and feeling sick. Anyone that claims they can is a sociopath, an asshole, or a liar.

But its not the same kind of terror. Before I always felt hopeless and lost, like a child being overwhelmed by the dark. But I’ve faced the dark. I was dragged down into the dark, I was pulled out of it by my friends, and then I faced it down by myself and came out on the other side.

By hollowing Tom and sending him after me it tried to break me. And I will not be broken. The worst thing that it can do to me is kill me. And while I fully intend on sticking around for as long as possible, knowing that I won’t break makes the idea of dying while doing my damn best to take it down doesn’t scare me.

I’m still me. Kaylin Marie Davies, almost thirty one years old. I’m a woman and a witch. A godmother and a survivor. I’ve been stalked and hunted, tortured and abused.

And I guess now I’m a Sage as well.

Wait.

What?

I...think I need a stiff drink.

I think it’s time to get back on track. Cathy and Tony left and as far as I know the only stalker I have left is the supernatural one. And I think it’s time to start working on dealing with that again. I originally wanted to try something during Beltane, but it fell while I was at the hotel recovering from having fought Tom. And then there was Zero, and honestly I didn’t even celebrate Beltane properly much less try to do something about the faceless wonder.

So it’s time to start over. It’s time to live damn it because I am tired of waiting to die. I have too much to live for. Strange isn’t it? I haven’t had much to live for in the past few years. Just me and my computer, and sometimes I would go see the god kids. Now I don’t have the god kids anymore, but I still feel like I have more to live for then I have in a very long time.

Slice…I wish you were still here, but I want you to be at peace even more. Both you and your brother. I just wish we could have had the chance to meet, to talk in person. I know how mad you would be if you knew how guilty I feel right now. So instead I’ll just do my best to honor your life. Make your next life be much happier than this one was.

And Thomas. My sweet Thomas, my Mr. Spender. It’s been weeks since I heard from you or the people you were traveling with. At this point I know I need to assume the worst. It wasn’t love. We both knew that. But now we won’t know if it could have been. I hope that we’ll see each other again, in this life or the next. And I hope that we’ll have a chance to see whether or not it could have been love.

I’m ready to move forward. Let’s go.

I am very mentally drained right now guys. Tony and I had a situation today and it wasn’t very pleasant. I debated for awhile about whether or not I should post this, but if nothing else  it should be documented in case Tony gets his memories wiped again. He says he doesn’t care if I post it, and I can understand why he’s not going to post it himself.

For anyone who’s not familiar with the situation, Tony has no memories of his life before he married Cathy. Bits and pieces of his childhood have been slowly coming back and a very nasty one came back for him today.

Cathy had decided to go out grocery shopping for me. She said it was to give me a break, but I think part of it was her needing some alone time doing something normal. It’s been so good spending time with each other, but its hurt a bit as well, especially when she started talking about Cynthia and I started talking about Maggie and Jake. So she went out to grocery store while I went to go take a shower. I had just finished getting dressed when I heard Tony start screaming. I ran down the stairs just in time to see him pick up one of my lamps and start smashing it into my coffee table.

He kept wrecking my living room, smashing things left and right, carving his hands up while he destroyed my possessions. Lucky for me I didn’t have too much valuable left in there, most of it got trashed during the crow storm. I didn’t want to get hurt or have to hurt him so I did my best to just stay out of his way until he tried to leave.

I may not be a shrink, but I think that I am more then qualified to recognize the look of a man that wants to hurt someone. And with that look on his face, there was no way I was letting him walk out that door. So I blocked the doorway, got in face, told him he wasn’t walking out until he calmed his ass down.

He raised a blood covered fist, but it didn’t scare me. He’s nowhere near as frightening as Tom was. I glared at him instead. "Go ahead and fucking hit me Tony. I already told you multiple times, I can take a hit and keep going."

He stared at me for a moment and turned around, stomping away from me to sit on my couch. "Why the hell would I hit you? S’not worth it and my hands are fuckin’ bleeding everywhere."

Yeah they were. He bled all over my poor couch. I’ve got some of my grandmother’s afghans on there now to cover up the stains. He covered his face with his hands, streaking it all over, making him look like a survivor of a horror movie. I suppose he was trying to ignore me, but I still wasn’t convinced he was ok to be left alone. So I sat down in my recliner. Didn’t talk to him that way he could have his space, but wasn’t going to let him out of my sight either. Which he didn’t like very much at all.

He got up again, so I got up and followed him. He flipped out again, screaming at me to leave him alone, that it was none of my business, why the fuck did I care? And I told him that it didn’t matter why I cared. I just did.

It was almost like me saying that flicked a switch that turned all that anger off because he just sat down in the middle of the floor and started staring at the wall. So I sat down next to him again not saying anything. And I guess it was the right thing to do because after a little while of silence, he started talking like a floodgate had been opened.

T: Hehe, I'm some grumpy old sociopath who can't even keep his eleven year old daughter from turning into himself. What have I done to help? Bitch some retards out? I don't do anything. Hell, I try to push people away. I'm not safe. And for some reason they keep coming back. And they say it's understandable that I would be like this. No one gets it, Kay. I'm bad. I'm wrong. There is somethin' inside of me that is sick and twisted and that thing has changed me into somethin' else. I'm not an Uncle figure for little lost teens or a loving husband who just wants the best for his family. I'm fuckin' selfish and depraved and I wanna hurt people so much. They don't get that I would, if I had the chance. I don't need a reason, I just need a cue. But 'oh Tony that's okay. You're alright. You're good ol' Tony still. Hehe, I haven't been Tony for eleven years. Hell I dunno if I even was Tony. Maybe the kid my parents wanted never even had the chance to live.

And guess what guys? There went Kay again, little Florence Nightingale wanna be, just like with Zero. I wasn’t mad anymore about my furniture and my stuff. I just wanted to find a way to help.

K: Well after seeing what you just did to my living room, I won't lie to you and say that I think you're just fine. But you didn't hit me when you could have. Hell I know you wanted to. I know what a man's face looks like when he wants to feel someone's skin break under his hands. And you didn't. You stopped. My opinion may not mean much to you, but that counts for a lot in my book. So maybe there is something wrong inside you. But I don't think its all wrong. I don't think all the good has been taken.

T: *He laughed.* Hopeful words right there, Kay. You don't even really know me, but it's nice of you t'say that.

K: *I shrugged* Just my opinion, you can take it or leave it.

T:....Lemme tell ya' a story. Once upon a time there was a kid named Anthony Delmont. He wasn't cool, he wasn't boring, he was average. That's why even the monster didn't come after him cause' he didn't stand out at all. But the thing with bein' average is that ya' get the attention of other monsters...the kind that are human. So Anthony had this imaginary friend- it was just as cool as the one his friend had, in fact, he thought it was the same one. For years and years he talked to this friend and walked around and played games with the imaginary buddy. None of the other kids ever saw his friend cause' now Anthony was special enough to have him all to hisself. When he turned eleven it wasn't cool to have this friend around anymore. People were calling him crazy and that he was just making it all up cause' his friend was a clever one, hehe, so fuckin' clever. So the next time he met his friend he told him it was over and to take a hike. Thing is...he kept seeing that friend everywhere. Until...one day he wised up...When he followed his friend one day...back to a house...where the friend had a wife and kids. Which should be impossible, right? Cause' his friend is imaginary.

He gave me a smile and I shivered. His grin reminded me of Zero’s eyes. Nothing pleasant and nothing sane.

T: And suddenly it wasn't somethin' in his head, it was a fucked up fairy tale that was reality. Anthony was fifteen when he figured out this man existed and had followed him around since he was eight, made him believe he was something unreal so that he could...play...with him...and Anthony knew he had to do somethin' cause' that's wrong and wrong can't be left unpunished. But he would do this alone because goddamn if this wasn't their secret, just like his 'imaginary friend' had told him.

He went quiet for a second with that grin growing wider.

T: So...Anthony...went to his house at night. Broke in. And then beat the man with a baseball bat until he could hear him squealing like the animal he was. And boy did he squeal like a pig! Anthony felt satisfied as bones broke and teeth cracked and blood spurted, right in front of a screaming wife and kids. The police came and took him away but the man survived. Anthony was sent to juvie while the pedophile got sent to jail with a minimum sentence. And the memory ends with the flashing lights and the noisy courtroom and the disappointed parents, hehe.

He turned and stared at me, and I wanted to cry at the hopelessness in those eyes.

T: I'm not a hero. I'm not someone you can look up to. I'm some man who's been fucked up by both a pedophile and monster.

And he kept staring at me, like he expected me to cringe and look away. But sometimes things just click in your head. And I could see that even though we were reacting to our pain in very different ways, Tony and I were a lot more alike then I ever could have expected.

K: And I'm a woman that was fucked up by an abuser and a monster. I'm not gonna condemn you for what you did Tony.

I pointed towards a window in the next room with shiny new glass.

K: I stood right outside that window and slammed the glass into his neck over and over until my hands were bleeding just like yours are now. I know that if I tell you I'm sorry, I'll get a patented Tony wise ass come back. But you can't stop me from wishing that Anthony could have been saved from what he went through. Either way, no you're not a hero. You're a survivor. Like me.

T: *He gave a weak bitter laugh.* Survivor, huh? I'm tired of bein' the survivor.

K: Yeah me too. But the only other option is letting it win. And I'm not about to let that happen without a fight.

T: I've been fighting it for...I don't even know how long. And y'know what? I know what I left with it. I can put two and two together. That man I killed at the church...it was him. He got outta jail early on good behavior and was changin' his ways or some shit. And by that point I had lost everything, Kay. My house, my friends, my family, my wife, my kid. And he was free and waltzin' around praisin' the Lord's name and thinkin' he was okay. I had been running for four years and he got off with a smack on th' hand. I got so....ANGRY. *He balled his hands into fists.* And I just...had t'punish him. For what he did. When I walked towards him I could hear it whispering in my head and pushin' me on, makin' me feel like a big man. I cornered that motherfucker and killed him in the church parking lot. Snapped his neck with my own hands and spit on his corpse. And I thought...the Lord hasn't looked out for me so far, what's th' point? Might as well become a devil if He isn't gonna help me. *He paused* I’m....bad.

K: No Tony. Not for that. I know you've done some fucked up things, but that is not one of them. He deserved it. Sometimes what goes around comes around. And sometimes you are what comes around.

T: Hehe maybe he did. But all the others didn't. I lost count of how many I tortured and handed over. It should feel wrong...but it doesn't.

K: I'll be honest Tony, I don't know what to say about that. I won't condemn you for something that you did while you were under it's control, but I'm not dumb enough to think that everything is sparkly fluffy bunnies just because you stopped. I get it. You're a sociopath. And I hope that you can come back from that somehow. I still think if there was nothing human left for you, you would have attacked me down there. People want happy endings. All those kids out there on the blogs. That’s why they haven't turned away from you. Cause they're still hoping that a hero will come to save us and we'll all live happily ever after. But you and me, we're old enough to know better.

T: Heh, certainly at that age. I feel older than forty. I feel like I'm old and withered and ready to drop. Cathy has more drive than me. I don't even know I wanna find Cynthia at this point. She's turning into me. It's disgusting to watch.

K: Cynthia is her world. Thage is missing, Reach is dead, and you two won't be here with me for very long. What else does she have to keep going for?

T: Nothin'. It's sad. That's why she's gonna let herself go. I want her t'get better but...it's hard to break free. That thing is like a disease that never leaves. There's always somethin' to pull you back.

K: That’s why I'm either going out fighting, or I'm putting a bullet in my brain.

That grin had slowly vanished from his face while we talked and his voice had lost the angry edge that made me feel like he still needed to be watched. I stood up and offered him a hand.

K: So are you gonna let me help you clean those cuts up?

He looked down at his hands and laughed before reaching up to take mine and pull himself to his feet, smirking at me.

T: You got balls, Kay.

So we went to the bathroom and got his cuts cleaned out and the blood off of his face. And then I made him come help me clean up the wreck he made in my living room. Poor Cathy got back to the house to see my couch covered in blood and my table smashed to pieces. So much for her relaxing alone time.

There isn’t too much else to say about this. I hope that it’ll help Tony not only to finally remember, but to have talked about it too. And I’m sure he’s gonna come bitch at me for posting this even if he did say he didn’t care if I did. Think of it this way, Tony, if you lose your memory again, at least this time there’s a record.

Think Happy Thoughts

Cathy and Tony are here and my heart is so full it helps make up for how angry I was at myself over Zero. I really didn’t think she and I were ever going to actually meet and to have this actually happening is just wonderful.

I wish it was better circumstances. I wish with all my heart that that the two of us were going out to dinner with Cynthia and that my voice didn’t still rasp if I talk too much, but we take what we can get right?

I am calmer then I was. Between Cathy being here and talking with Hakurei on the phone for a while I feel less angry at myself. I did what I felt I needed to do at the time. Was it the right decision? I don’t know. What if I had managed to knock him out? What was I supposed to do? Keep him like a pet? There’s no way I would have been able to give him to the police. I’m sure that branch of the FBI that supposedly exists just to deal with Fighters and Runners would not have anything good in store for me or him. And turning him over to the authorities knowing that would have been just as bad as murdering him myself.

I refuse to believe that anyone can't be saved no matter what they believe of themselves. I may be mad at myself for the way things turned out, but Hakurei is right. I had to try. And I am not going to apologize for refusing to murder a man in cold blood.

Generally hindsight is 20/20 but not in this case. I can’t come up with any other options to take that would have let me keep living with myself. I did the best that I could and that’s all any of us can ever do. That would make a good epitaph wouldn’t it? Here lies Kaylin. She did the best that she could.

I could think of much worse ways to have lived my life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my best friend and I are going to cook breakfast together while her ex-husband glares at us and complains about us laughing too much.

Stupid Me

I’m stupid. Deities I am so stupid. I actually had myself fooled for a bit. Thought that maybe I was somehow making a difference. That my words might actually fucking mean something and that there is something left in this world that isn’t covered in blood.

Right, backtracking a bit so that you guys can understand why I’m such a jackass. As stated in my last entry, there was a knock on my door. This was weird for several reasons. One, if it was someone I knew they wouldn’t have knocked, they would have used their cell phone to call me. Two, no one knocks on doors around here, they ring doorbells. Three, it was almost freaking midnight!

Being at least occasionally intelligent, I went over to one of my front windows, shutting the living room lights off first so that whoever was out there wouldn’t be able to see me very well. Even with that precaution, I made sure to stay far enough away from the screen that someone couldn’t thrust a knife at me through it. I then demanded to know who the hell was at my door this late at night.

And the voice that answered me was...just a normal voice. He sounded utterly exhausted, but calm. “I told you I'd be coming here, Kay.”

It was Zero. Of course it would be Zero. Who the hell else would it be?

There are days that I wish my life was a movie. Not because of happy endings, or super powers, or anything that unrealistic. No I just want to have the ability to always know what to say. If I was a movie heroine, I would have the perfect snarky badass response to the fact that the man who had officially become my third fucking stalker had knocked on my door like he was expecting to be invited in for tea and crumpets. But my mouth opened and instead of something smooth I said, “Oh deities, are you fucking kidding me?"

If he was the slightest bit amused by my inability to process the fact that he was at my door, he didn’t show it. Instead he stood at my door and I stood at my window. I could see the mask that he wore, the same mask from the pictures he posted on his blog, back when he was still a hero and I could see his katana in its sheath strapped to his back. He stood there with his hands in his pockets and we had a conversation through my window.

Z: You have something I need. I ask that you let me in.

K: Yeah, not so much. How dumb do you think I am?

Z: *He laughed softly.* Despite my recent...actions lately, I'm not actually here to hurt you. You asked me a question, I wanted to do my best to answer it.

K: There is no despite your recent actions. Your recent actions are everything! How the hell can I believe that? You still haven't told me how you found out where I live!

Z: *He shrugged.* Not too certain myself, I just...go places nowadays. Look...I'm hoping that maybe helping you helps me as well. Maybe something about these pictures...

K: So you really don't remember sending them to me? You weren't just being an asshole?

Z: Heh...I get frustrated a lot, sure, but I've never sent hate mail to anyone, especially in drawn form...

I’ll admit, that made me laugh. This whole conversation had taken on a surreal aspect, he was making a joke, and it almost felt like by laughing I had admitted a weakness. I tried to pull myself back on track.

K: How can I believe you? You've been bragging about killing people, Fighters and Runners like me.

Z: Bragging? *He sighed* Shit, I hate it more than anything...look, I don't like being out here in the open, but I really don't have any way to promise my intent.

I stared at him for a moment. Maybe he was insane, but he was also very similar to a religious nutcase. The way he talked about that sword on his blog, you could tell that there wasn’t anything he valued higher then it. That he thought it was a holy weapon or something. And I thought I knew exactly how to get rid of him.

K: What about your sword? You can't actually think that I would let even think about letting you in here with a weapon.

Z: Uhm...

He looked at his sword. I could see this almost panicky Iook go across his face and for a moment I thought I had pushed the right nerve, that he was going to leave.

Z: I really don't want to just leave it out here, but maybe you could...hold onto it? Be careful...

And he pulled the sheathed sword off of his back and held it out towards my window, the handle towards me. I stood there just staring for a second before cracking open the screen wide enough to pull it inside. So now I was kind of stuck. If I didn’t let him in now that I had his sword, he would probably go berserk. If I let him in he was probably going to go berserk. Way to go Kay. And I was pissed off enough at myself and him for putting me in this position that I deliberately invoked a nasty little echo from his past.

K: Well you already knocked, so when I open the door make sure you keep your hands where I can see them. I'd make you lay face down, but I suppose you won't be able to look at the pictures too well that way, will you?

He nodded at me.

Z: Just...easy with my sword. It’s all I've got.

I’m too gods damned soft hearted for my own good. He just sounded so weak and afraid once I was holding his sword. I opened the door warning him to keep his hands where I could see them and to keep his distance from me. I put his sword in my closet and let him enter my living room.

The first thing I noticed about him was that he was large. I mean large like my ex fiancé large. The second thing I noticed was how beat to shit he was. He could barely hold himself upright without swaying and he limped like crazy. So I figured that if he did go berserk, being in pretty crappy physical condition would probably balance out the fact that he could probably lift me up one handed. The third thing I noticed was that the mask he wore had eyeholes that were large enough to very clearly let me see his eyes. And they were practically mirrors of my own in how tired they were. But at the same time, if I hadn’t already known I was talking with a madman, one look into those eyes would have been more than enough to let me know what I was dealing with.

He looked around and seemed rather surprised as he saw my crystal collection laying on the tables and windowsills.

Z: Hmmm...crystals.

I remembered the last time he and I had spoken, over Doctor Cairo’s Ustream, where he had accused my research with crystals to be mumbo jumbo and I was quite grateful to feel myself getting mad again. Better to stay mad. He was acting harmless enough at the moment, but it would be easier to fight someone I was mad at rather than someone I was pitying.

K: Oh yes, I forgot. You have issues with my crystals.

Z: I was frustrated with things again...hmm jade *He picked up a piece.* I've actually seen this stuff wither and blacken, probably the only thing I've seen that actually seems consistent.

I then noticed that he was wearing a backpack and nearly smacked myself. I’ve read the damn blog entries, I knew that his sword wasn’t his only weapon.

K: You can lose the backpack or leave.

He set it down by my door without even blinking. Nothing like the emotional reaction he had to handing over his sword. I suppose that he doesn’t love his other knives quite as much. I felt a little bit safer so I thought I would at least be polite while we were discussing my area of expertise.

K: Odd because that's not one of the properties I've ever heard of for it.

I picked up a piece of quartz that I never let far from me anymore. The quartz I used to stab Tom in the eye.

Z: Would you believe I suggested that to Nessa once, that maybe jade could help either cleanse her, or ward off corruption. *He sighed.* I got it from a card game I played...heh....but the next time I saw her, that last time, she showed me a little warped dragon figurine, as black as night...

And there it was again, that pity creeping in. Stupid, stupid Kaylin, who never could resist the call of a hurting soul, who always has to try and take care of people, who always has to try and save them. I shoved my hair out of my face in frustration and tossed the piece of quartz at him, hoping to remind him that he did not want to fuck with me.

K: I'd be more inclined to use this for a cleansing.

I started moving towards my computer room, making sure to move backwards so that I wasn’t turning my back to him. I needed to get him out of there. I had a freaking serial killer standing in my living room making conversation about crystals. What the hell was wrong with me? If he was telling the truth about just wanting to see the pictures that he claimed to not remember drawing, I needed to let him see them and have him get the hell out of my house.

K: So do you want to see these or not?"

He nodded and followed me. I pulled the envelope with the pictures of out the desk and handed them to him, glaring at him as I gave it to him. I guess the power of my glare isn’t much though, he simply sat down in my computer chair and rifled through them while I stood there, waiting for my explanation.

K: Here you go. Proof that you decided to add yourself to the list of people and things that felt a need to stalk me.

Z: I don't remember making pictures of you....these look nothing like you.

K: Pictures of me? Wait, that's supposed to be me?

Z: I think so...and now I've damned you. Now somehow, I've...I've told it about you, I think...and it's going to find you. *He slumped down in my chair.* What have I done to you?

K: Damned me? What the hell are you talking about?

Z: The tree, somehow...I think it's going to come for you. I think I tried to warn you about it.

K: Why would it be coming for me? And how would warning me damn me? And why the hell couldn't you have said something instead of scaring the fuck out of me with the pedo stalker mail?

Z: I don't even remember drawing it! I can't sleep, I have to keep moving every day, I've got people on both sides trying to kill me, because everyone knows I'm crazy...and I'm just trying to end this madness, Kay...I...don’t...know...how I did this.

At this point we both fairly upset. And the last I thing I wanted was to deal with an indignant psychopath while I was so upset I was nearly in tears. I took a deep breath and attempted to calm myself down.

K: Alright fine. Let’s go with you don't remember doing it, even though I still find that far too suspicious. So why do you think you would have needed to warn me?

Z: I wanted to warn you because you were so nice to me, that since I'm responsible for all this, the least I could do is warn you what was coming...

And I swear to you folks, I think I felt something in my brain break a little bit when he said that. I sat down in a chair and stared at him dumbly for a moment before I was able to make my brain connect to my mouth again.

K: Let me get this straight. You somehow found my address, sent me pictures that you don't remember drawing, left cryptic threatening sounding comments on my blog, and show up at my door armed in the middle of the night to talk to me all because I was nice to you?

Z: I guess so. Have you seen the leeches yet? I think they feed on it sometimes. They won't be hard to hurt, they just explode, like water balloons. I didn't see anything that could help me, and I've already hurt you too much. I should go.

He stood up and I watched him sway again. And all those stupid must take care of people instincts just came rushing back to the front of my brain. Before I could even think logically I was standing in front of him, insisting that he sit back down, that he should be in a hospital.

Z: I can manage, I don't have a choice really. I'm on a deadline. Goodbye, Kay. Maybe I'll kill that tree before it comes for you, or before it takes full control of me...

And that was when I started remembering that I was arguing with a serial killer. But I also realized that said serial killer was damaged enough that maybe I could knock him down, tie him up, stop him.

K: You are probably a full foot taller than me as well as at least a hundred pounds heavier than me, but I could probably give you a good hard shove right now and you would keel over. In fact, I should, it would stop you from hurting anyone else!

And oh I swear I think I hurt his pride when I said that! He did that thing where guys straighten their backs and try to make their shoulders look bigger. Kind of the human male equivalent of how a cat puffs itself to look large to an enemy. He looked down at me, assessing me, and started speaking again.

Z: So...you want to kill me then? Hmm, Kay? Death by your hands? Certainly you've had to kill before, certainly you're no stranger to it now. But...you don't get to kill me. No, I still get to atone for my pride and my vanity before I can die. Then you can get in line with everyone else who wants to do me in.

K: Kill you? When the hell did I say kill you? Not everyone is like you, you know. Not all of us think that killing is the only option. I've killed, but I've also incapacitated.

Z: For the wrongs I've done to all, and the wrongs I've done for you, why wouldn't you want to kill me?

His voice trembled when he asked me why I wouldn’t want to kill him and that was when I lost any ability to try and hurt him. The self-loathing, the bitterness in his voice. It was too much. I thought maybe I could help save him. Maybe I could somehow convince him that he could stop this. Stupid, stupid me. How the hell have I been through so much, yet I still remain so idiotically naïve.?

K: Because you can still be saved. I've told you before and I will keep saying it, my heart hurts so much for what you and she went through. But Zero, she would not want you to do this. It's wrong and you know it. You can stop and you can find a better way. You wouldn't be the first person to go down a wrong path and turn back around.

Z: Wouldn't you burn your soul to ash if you could save those you care about? Or in memory of those you failed to save?

K: Not if there is a better way. And murder is never the right way!

Z: And what other ways have worked? Running, dying by its hand, amnesia? This isn't so simple to think that truth and good prevail. I said before that if I had to play a villain to fight this thing, I will...I just…

And then he started to cry and my heart broke. This poor man, standing in my home crying because he just wanted the nightmare to be over. Just like I want. Just like we all want. He rubbed at his mask and kept speaking.

Z: There's no other way for me, for any of us. We can't just wish him away. Not all of us get a happy ending, Kay, not for me anyway.

K: Remnant-

Z: Not Remnant...

His arms fell to away from his face to his sides and looked at me with a pair of pain filled eyes that seemed completely lucid for the first time since he had walked into my home.

Z: Remnant, Zerosage, they're just cover identities, another mask that I wear. I have a real name.

And just like that, he told me his name. I don’t know why. And I won’t tell you guys what it is. It just doesn’t feel right to share that. I put my hands on his shoulders and got him to sit back down in the chair.

K: Alright, [DATA REDACTED]. Why are you so convinced you can't have one? Or at least a better one then what you've decided to do?"

Z: Because I know better. Because I've spilt too much blood. Because...you reached out and touched a viper, and were struck by it. Ame.... Kay...if I don't do this, the tree will kill me. All I can hope for is to leave this world in a better place before I fall. Maybe then everyone can forget all about me.

He was crying even harder now. He honestly believed that he had somehow sent that tree thing after me and I could hear how much he hated himself for it. I reached out and pulled the mask off of his face.

Guys, he’s my age. I had always assumed he was like most of the people that blog. Late teens, early twenties. Some poor kid that spent too much time online and had his life taken away before he even had a chance to start living it. But no, he’s my age, maybe a little bit older. The kind of guy that if I had met him under other circumstances I would have shyly admired him and hoped that maybe he would ask for my phone number. And for some reason that made my heart hurt even more.

K: I won't forget you, not after all this.

And I couldn’t help it. I reached out and I wrapped my arms around him and I held him while he cried and sobbed. And I thought that maybe somehow I really had gotten through to him. That he could be like Reach was and turn himself around.

Pretty dumb of me huh? He fell asleep and I left the room. He proceeded to get his stuff and sneak out of my house. Probably on his merry way to start killing again. I had the chance to stop him but because I was stupid enough to think that he was somehow hearing me, he’s still at large, a danger to all of you.

And the bastard stole my piece of jade.