Fucker Means Business

This past weekend I met up with Ember. We've been emailing constantly since. Well, for a while now. And in light of recent events, Salome told Ember to get out and relax. So we decided to meet.

The first day he was here I made sure Emily and Elliott were safe and far away from us, just in case, but it turned out to be entirely unnecessary. Ember is just as sweet in person as on the internet, and we had a lot of fun the first few days.

Today, however, I got another note with breakfast.
It was a picture of Emily and Elliott, asleep in their room, which was right next to and connected to ours. The caption on it read 'You're getting sloppy. If I wanted them dead, they would be.'

Ember got a call from Salome not long after. The three of us, meanwhile, are on the move again, and we'll be sleeping in shifts from this point onward.

I've been putting this off long enough

Some of you observant folks might remember that Cam left behind a notebook and that I've been promising to post it for a while. The wait is over, everyone. Here it is. But don't say I didn't warn you.

It's... strange. A lot of nerd references, a lot of him writing with his off hand (I guess to disguise the writing some?). And. Then, these two things.

This tells me a couple of things:

First and most obvious. He knew he was going to die. He knew how he was going to die. He chose not to fight it, to let it happen.

Second, he thought his death would 'free' me. This probably goes back to when I was a kid, during that big chunk of time I just don't remember. But... I have no idea. Why would he think that? Why would him dying ever be a good thing?
I just don't know.
I need more info. I'm looking through Cam's notes. He's got... a lot of random papers, assorted journals, looks like, from random times starting from when he was a kid and spanning to his death.
I'm going through them but... I'll admit, it's slow going. This is fucking hard. He... he was my best friend. He was all I had for most of my life, and this... I'm finding out how little I really knew him.
Because that was always just how he was. He put everyone and everything before himself. He didn't matter. The rest of the world was more important.
I was more important.
I wish I'd taken the time to try and talk to him more about him.

Holy Fuck, Please No

I'm still in the hospital. Recovering. They're talking about letting me out soon. Which is nice, and I'll be glad for that.

But. Priorities.

Mitch has Star. Mitch has Star and she's going to kill him and I'm stuck in a hospital bed unable to do anything but beg. I'm. I'm begging you for help. Anyone who can see this. Nick? TMV? She likes you, she listens to you. Please, just... anyone who might be able to get through to her, please. Say something. Talk to her. Help me help him. Please. He's gone mad but there's no saying he'll never be able to come back. Please.

He's just a kid, guys. Please help me help him.

Mitch, if you're reading this. I'm begging you, please. Don't do this.

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Rescue

Some of you may remember a certain showdown I had with a certain proxy back when I was still in Austin. I told you all at the time that I taunted him about his brother, and that it was a berserk button reaction. That's true. What I failed to mention was that we got in contact afterward. 

I'm still not quite sure what inspired me to send that first email. But we got in touch. We started fighting via email, and then we started bantering, and then we just started talking. And somehow we became friends.

I learned the truth of  his story, and I told him the truth of mine.

When I was being held captive by the police, he came and rescued me. Yes, that's right. The big kidnapping plot? It was a farce. A necessary one, if he were to do it without being killed. He came to get me away from the cops, he made sure they didn't hurt me, he made sure Terminator found a stash of drugs so I could get away cleanly that morning. He's all but stopped trolling me-in fact only doing so when it actually helps me. We've gotten insanely good at pretending to hate each other while sounding encouraging.

The fact is, I've been begging him for the past month and change to defect. This is going to be hard to swallow, but he's a remarkably good person past all the rage and fear and slendy-control. He's risked life and limb to help me multiple times over our short friendship, perhaps most notably when he actually risked coming into my 'cell' when he had me 'kidnapped' because I needed a friend and a shoulder to cry on. It was so stupidly reckless and and selfless and utterly /good/.

I find it impossible to dislike someone who's willing to risk life and limb JUST TO HOLD ME WHILE I CRIED.

Do you remember around a month ago, when Valtiel showed up to torture him out of the blue? It was because he was considering defecting, though he obviously couldn't say that in public. The big problem was that he's at least partially hallowed. He's undergone the process repeatedly, and while it doesn't seem to stick forever, it means that he doesn't have complete control over himself or his actions. Yes, that's right, folks. The proxy everyone loved to hate was oftentimes more or less a puppet on a string. Which has led to some rather unfortunate and spectacular tragedies over the past few weeks as we've been preparing for him to do the actual defecting.

Again. Yes, that's right, folks, he /agreed/ to defect. In his words, specifically so he could do a better job of keeping an eye on me-the first real friend he's ever had in his life.

So. We went to New Jersey today. We meaning Spencer and I. We went to Jersey, and... I wish we could have interfered in what went down today. I really do. I don't know exactly how it happened,  though I know that when we found him Melly wasn't with them, and they seemed to be doing a lot of arguing. So I hope that perhaps it went badly for them and well for us. I really, really do. But we couldn't risk interfering and dragging his handler into it, or else we all would have ended up dead. I'm so sorry.

Nonetheless. We've just rescued Morningstar.

Waiting

First thing's first. Spencer wanted me to tell you all that he admits to being the one who changed Jake's Loop to being a life with Cam. He feels guilty about it, but all he wanted to do was give him happiness after the Loop had already broken him. I don't blame him. He doesn't know who put him there or busted him out.

So, after that, I really... I'm not sure what to say. So much of my life has been hiding and fighting my past. It feels fucking weird to have it just... laid out like that. And honestly perhaps a little dangerous? Considering the amount of people that are after me. But with any luck they'll get distracted chasing each other down.

I guess if it had to happen, I'm glad it happened here. August and Spencer have been a huge help.  And the House is good for distractions. I did more exploring. Still looking for the room the key opens.

And I found it. I must've passed that door a hundred times before, but it was kind of in a strange spot and I hadn't noticed it before. Blame the detox or something. But today I saw it and noticed the bronze of the lock matched my key, and gave it a go. It worked.

When I stepped into the room, the first thing I noticed was color, everywhere. The furniture, just a bed, a dresser, and a bookshelf full of art supplies, was all pushed together awkwardly into the middle of the room to leave every inch of wall space free. The walls were covered in art. Hundreds of pictures covering every possible inch of wall space. It was beautiful and somewhat horrifying.

I admit, I just kind of stared for a while. I stepped into the room , to the middle of the floor, next to the bed, and I turned, slowly, and tried to make sense of all of it. And slowly but surely, I did. It was a story.

It started on the far wall from the door, the first one a person would see from the doorway. The pictures were all muted, quiet pastels. It told the story of a kid as she grew up, broken and alone and probably abused, judging by the pictures. The wall is dominated by a large picture of two adults towering outrageously over a child literally something like a tenth of their size, who is crying and holding a doll. There's a dent in the wall over both of the older figure's heads-I'm guessing she liked to throw things at them when frustrated. Over the course of the wall the child grows up, and you can see her bruises and tears and failures, as well as her rare success-most notably a triptych of the girl learning to paint, the happiest picture on the wall. The last panel was an older woman lying in a hospital bed, either asleep or dead. Judging by the rest of the story, I have little doubt it's the latter

It continued to the right, on the next wall. It starts with the girl getting to college, taking classes in art-including a very intricate painting of an entire life drawing class with a model and a room full of students. For the first time people other than the girl-turned-woman are painted in a positive fashion, without the shadows or looming presence. A man figures prominently towards the end of the college days, and there are happy scenes of the two of them together. Dates periodically, then a wedding, and the most prominent picture of the wall, the two of them beaming and holding a baby. At first glance, it seemed perfectly happy, and then I started paying more attention. The picture of the three of them has worn and smudged bits on the face of the man-specifically the lips, and along the outline of the baby. As though someone had been stroking them. Perhaps even kissing them, considering the wear on the lips.
In addtion, after that picture subtle operator symbols show up all over the place. Shaded into shadows, starbursted into reflections, anywhere and everywhere it can be worked in, it is. This wall ends with a painting of an empty crib covered in blood.

The next wall, the wall with the door, told a story we all know too well. Mad, smudged charcoal sketches of  Slendershit and operator symbols intermingle with scenes of horror and dread. The only two colors on this wall are the black of the charcoal and the red of some kind of paint. The pictures depict the woman and her husband running hard and fast, but a third of the way through, the most prominent picture is of slendershit luring the man to him. This picture also has dents, and seems to have been drawn with a hand that's far more shaky than most of the other drawings. He shows up again halfway down wearing a mask. It's clear he's hunting her down.
The wall ends in his bloody corpse on the ground, with her holding a knife, covered in blood and looking horrified.

The last wall has two equally prominent main pictures. The first and the last. The first is a picture of Spencer and Doc talking to the woman. There are various pictures of the House, other couriers-mostly ones I recognize, but a few I didn't. Most of the ones I didn't recognize had a graphic and detailed portrait of their death-though how accurate the portraits are, I can't say. The portraits play through the death and arrival of a lot of couriers-whoever this woman was, she seems to have been here for a while.
She uses more and more color over the course of painting the pictures on this wall, though she never paints herself with color again. Until the last painting on the wall. The other big one. It's her corpse, with slit wrists, sprawled on her bed.
Upon closer inspection, though there's no mattress on the bedframe anymore, there's blood splatter on the frame itself.

This woman painted her life and her death on the walls. I don't even know her name, but my heart aches for her. I wonder if Spence had any idea that the key went to this room...
I just had to get this out of my head. I need to go find Spencer and talk to him.