Going Through the Motions

Showing Emily Buffy the Vampire Slayer may not have been my absolutely best idea to keep her occupied. She's fallen in love with it, and has seriously asked me if anyone's tried staking slendershit. 'Just in case'.
At least she's smart enough to understand it's just fiction, I was half worried she'd start trying to convince me to call a Slayer to take care of him.
Not that that surprises me, the kid is a fucking genius. I don't just mean she's kind of bright, I mean she's six years old and she's already gotten past the point where my fourth grade educated ass can actually help her with her work.
It's interesting. I can't help but wonder what she would've been if she'd had a chance to grow up normally, go to school and all. She's fucking ridiculously smart, she would've been a damn rocket scientist or grown up to cure fucking cancer or something. And now she'll be lucky if she lives past her next birthday.

In other news, Spencer came by today. For... about half an hour. It was good seeing him, wish he could've stayed longer, pretty much all the same shit I've said the other couple times he's made it out to see me.

Also, heading off to see another friend, I'll tell you more about that when it's happened.

So, we've left Benjamin's place. It was nice to stay in one place for a bit, but it's a bit of a relief to be on the move. Means I'm less likely to bring doom down upon poor Benjamin, at least. Em's got a bunch of new books, courtesy of our former host, and so she's pretty pleased, even if she did do everything but burst into tears in an attempt to get us to stay.

But travel is essential, considering we're high priority targets. So we keep going.

And we keep going. And I try to cut back on the drinking some, now that we're moving and Emily can't be so easily kept in the dark.

At least I have good news tonight, right?

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.

Happy Birthday to Me?

I'm not entirely sure how, but August found out that yesterday was my birthday. I'm twenty four. I didn't much feel like celebrating.

I'd honestly hoped I could get by without people knowing. The only people other than me who should have known were Cam and Jake, and they're not exactly around to tell people about it. I don't... Cam always made a big deal about it. Every year, no matter where I was, where he was, he'd make sure to do everything he could to make my birthday special. Even when he didn't know where I was, he'd call me and keep me on the phone for hours, talking to me and trying to brighten my day. I... My birthday was always the day I spent with him. So, I kind of hoped to forget it this year.

But. August threw a party. And it was all of us here at the house, and there was enough food to feed a family for a week and he was just so pleased with it. I couldn't say no. And it... it almost felt nice. Even with Doc drinking two feet from me and making me ache with the need for a glass. Because it almost felt like being part of a family again.

Of course, it didn't last. We hadn't even gotten past August's appetizers when Spencer bolted. I followed. We both saw something. I... I don't want to talk about it.

August, I'm sorry we ruined your dinner. It was delicious, I just...
I need to be alone for a while. You know where to find me if you need me.

The Wing

Apparently I've hit the time limit on being allowed to relax, though I guess some of this, at least, is my fault. 

To start with the first thing, I guess, I woke up way early this morning to go try something I've been wanting to attempt since I first started making plans to come to the house. It was potentially life threatening, reckless, stupid, and insane, but since when has that ever stopped me?

So I woke up and slipped through a certain set of doors into the East Wing in the early morning hours. For those of you who don't read their blog, it has been described as a nightmare zone with twisting, changing corridors and apparently some kind of supernatural effect on people even outside of it. Now, Slendershit aside, I'm not exactly a big believer in the supernatural, but I figured there had to be something.

I don't know what I expected, after the crazy stories that have been told about it. What I definitely didn't expect was what I found. A couple of long, dusty corridors. A lot of empty rooms. Nothing at all of interest. I don't fucking get it.

The place is supposed to be nightmare inducing... not sneeze inducing. I kept looking, I checked every fucking room, looking for something that would explain it. I didn't find anything, but Spencer found me. He seemed amused, which pissed me right the fuck off. By the time he showed up, I'd worked myself up about it, I guess, because for a moment I thought I actually saw something. But it went away quickly and upon reflection it wasn't even the same sort of hallucination that people tend to associate with the Wing.

Spence wouldn't tell me shit, and so when he left I went to talk to August. The kid tried his best to be helpful, and it's clear he really believed what he was telling me, but... that shit doesn't just happen. I'm finding it more likely that there was a gas leak or something that Spencer fixed recently. Because hallways don't just move around. So that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. Sorry guys. I know you all believe this, but... you realize how insane it is, right?

In other news, it turns out my security measures for Shrody didn't even last a full day. I'm... I'm going to try and find her, try and save her, but she was taken from an airport. She could be anywhere by now... By the time I find her it may be too late, and I unfortunately have a promise to keep that means if I haven't found her within the next few days I may not be able to.

More on that promise when it's safe to discuss.

I should head out again, I think I may have offended August a little by not believing him, I should go apologize...

Hopefully This Works

Shrody's gone. I put her on a plane this morning. I took some time last night to get her an apartment and a bank account somewhere far away from me and New York and anyone who knows to wish her harm. I don't expect that alone to keep her safe forever, but it should buy her some time in safety. If proxies come calling, she knows how to reach me, and I'll get her out of there.

For now... I'm about to attempt something insanely dangerous and probably pretty stupid. I'd prefer to keep the people I put at risk here to a minimum.

I realize that's perhaps a little ironic since I'm staying in a place with more people in it than I've interacted with since the wedding. But the point stands. Even though I will miss her and Frank both.

Also. MrStumblr died. He didn't exactly have a whole lot of people he talked to, but we've interacted a lot. I... I wasn't exactly easy on him, he had done some bad shit, but apparently he thought I hated him. 

He... He left Spence a delivery request. The bastard thought he was about to die, and what are the two things he tries to do? Leave his girlfriend his money and send me a fucking apology bouquet.

I am starting to think I may be even more of a cunt than I previously thought.

On a happier note, the worst of the withdrawals is done. I'm back in business, bitches!

Also, the House is great. Shrody found it unsettling, but for whatever reason I'm really comfortable here. Not entirely certain if that's a good thing or not...

In any event. I'm going to finally catch back up on my sleep, I think. Expect me to be perhaps a little scarce over the next couple days. 

The House

So, we've arrived here at the House, as of a few hours ago. It's... interesting. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. It's... fucking huge, for one thing. And it feels very... I dunno, empty. Maybe it's because the wing they've got me in is almost completely empty, but it just feels too quiet for a house with seven people living in it.

In any event, we arrived... late this morning, after getting horribly lost. I wish I remembered more of the approach but I fell asleep in the car. I woke up inside, in a bed. Took me a minute to figure out what had happened, but Spence was waiting for me outside.

He showed me around, got me some food, told me a bit more about the House. It all felt so... I dunno, peaceful. Nice to have something so domestic and comfortable in the middle of this. It's... I dunno, it's looking like I may honestly have some time to sit back and digest and plan my next move.

Also. Spencer gave me a key. He says he doesn't know what it opens, and I certainly don't, but he's given me free reign to find out. Which is in fact why I am cutting this post short. I've got exploring to do. And hopefully meeting at least some of the rest of the couriers in the process. It feels strange being in their House without having ever met them.

More Travel and Page Theory

Shrody and I left Ro's house this morning. We were both kind of sad to go, Ro's been very nice to us, but I think the situation with David had all of us on edge, and we'll all be breathing easier now that we've left.
All the same, I'll miss him. We had some great late night conversations, and Frank really adored him.

In any event, nothing much to report there. The big reason for this post is that I promised you lot a review of Page Theory, and while recent events have conspired to delay it a little while, I'm putting it up today.

Here's the original write-up.

The theory attempts to explain several things: the way the Path of Black Leaves works, the reason slendershit can be in several places at once, the reason slendershit seems to work differently for different people, and the existence of loops-or labyrinths as they were once commonly known.

To summarize, the actual theory is as follows:
Everyone sees the universe from their own point of view. This makes up THEIR universe, or page. Everyone has their own page, and all of the pages together make up the stack, or the universe at large. Pages can be crossed through, and people from different pages can interact without a problem. The space BETWEEN the pages is where loops form, where the outside edge where all the pages meet is the Path. In addition, Slendy works kind of like... stabbing a pushpin through the pile. He can be present on multiple pages at once.
As far as WHY we're split into pages, Spence has several theories, none of which he seems to have a particular preference for. It could be the presence of slendershit himself, or possibly a direct result of the creation of loops, or possibly it's just a matter of everyone having their own perspective. I tend to think it's the latter-there doesn't seem to be a reason to make it any more complicated.

Generally, I'm extremely hesitant to adopt anyone else's theory on anything regarding our current mess, specifically BECAUSE of the variable nature of slendershit's influence on all of us. Page Theory, however, is perhaps the absolute NEATEST explanation for this phenomenon I've ever had the good fortune to come across.
Page theory has the added bonus of explaining why Spence's team are so damn good at finding people. If everyone has their own slice of reality, it would theoretically be possible to flip through the pages to find the right one. Maybe?
Didn't actually ASK Spence about that one, I'm just guessing...

So, that's Page Theory. And the last of the things Spence gave Cam. Next I'll start putting up Cam's notebook. But. Um. It's...
Well, you'll see. When I can put it up. Right now... I need to think about it some more...

Spencer

When Cam died, he left me half his bank account, a plot of land outside of Austin, his car, his laptop, and two notebooks. One of them is  his, and I haven't quite had the heart to really look through it yet. The other is Spencer's notebook. It's really more a collection of files stuck together in a vague notebook shape, but the terminology doesn't matter.

To be completely honest, I hadn't so much as glanced through the pages past the first one, with the letter to Cam. As I mentioned yesterday, I've been letting myself wallow. I hadn't looked. Spencer kept talking to me, kept telling me stories, and I was putting it off because I didn't want to face the fact that this was what Cam...

Right. Enough of the touchy feely. I started reading Tuesday. There's not a whole lot in terms of volume, but everything here has wider implications that have to be measured against what he's shared with me. I've been prepping this post since I started, since he wants me to share it with everyone.

The contents of the notebook can be split into three sections.

The typewritten pages
The handwritten pages
The random bits

The typewritten pages are old and worn, burnt and smudged and wrinkled. They're journal entries from his life. The six of them range across the better part of a decade and tell a rough story of Spencer's life after he left the slendercult he grew up in. From them, as well as the stories he's told me, I have an outline of his story, though of course some bits are still sketchy. I checked with him, and he's given me the okay to put up what I know.

That story he put up a while back is true. He grew up in a slendercult, without friends or even a name. Slendy was in his head from early on, and he thought that was what life was supposed to be, up until he actually saw Slendy. He was about to hit his fifteenth birthday, where he would be given a title and work for Slendershit.  Instead, he ran. Straight into the desert, of all things. There wasn't much of anywhere else to go, apparently.
Odds are high that he would've gotten himself killed there and then if he hadn't found Matt. Matt was older, and had run away before. He'd stayed long enough to pick up a few tricks, and so when Slendershit found them in the desert, Matt used the Path to get them out. They traveled together for a while until Slenderp caught up to them again. Matt got Spencer to NYC via the path but didn't make it out himself.
The first journal entry was written, so far as I can tell, on his 16th birthday.  I'm not sure exactly what did such damage to it, but it's still mostly legible and reads... well, rather like you'd expect under the circumstances
After that is the second entry, written about three years later. He'd been wandering all around the country. He talks about being in pretty bad shape, but still sounds pretty stable.
Sometime after that, Writer showed up. I'm not entirely sure if Writer was the one who found him or if they just partnered Spence with him, but they worked together for Slendershit. Spence was Teller, and he tricked people into loops(or labyrinths, as a lot of us know them), and Writer went in afterward.
For a while Spence was fooled into being reasonably happy with this, as the third entry shows(though I have a suspicion that it was written by Teller and not Spence at all...).
Somewhere along the line, as seen in the fourth entry, he figured out the truth and set his mind to running. He was more worried about Writer. The only thing in this world Writer loved was Spence, and he didn't seem he'd take kindly to his partner walking away. He didn't, he shoved Spence into a stove. But the worst was yet to come.
A group of proxies ambushed Spence and did... something.
He doesn't remember exactly how he got out, but he did, albeit... changed. More on that later. Right afterward, he writes the fifth entry. He's alive, more or less, and thrilled to be free, and this entry ends with him spotting an old friend. I know from both his stories and the sixth entry that that friend is Lori, also known as Doc, one of the RtS crew. They started the delivery service you're hopefully all familiar with, and that's what he's been doing up till now.

Next, the Handwritten Section.

Spence wrote out his Page Theory, which is very interesting and which I'm going to devote another post to soon. It deserves it's own space. Expect it in a day or two.

Lastly, the other stuff.

A couple notes from Doc, part of a medical report and a microscope picture, with some information about Spence's unusual condition. I'm kind of completely uneducated in the subject of biology, but it looks like bacteria don't grow in his blood?
Didn't exactly need the report for this, but he's also running cold. Really cold.

Also, three clipped sections from what appears to be a novel or a short story. Don't know which one, maybe one of you lot will. Pretty self explanatory.

Last and most worrying, two things that weren't even a part of the actual notebook, but showed up in my suitcase with my files sometime within the past week or so. A key with a note attached and a piece of paper with an altered version of one of Shakespeare's sonnets scribbled onto it crazylike.
'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
In the loops thou art lovely and more temperate
Rough winds keep destroying mature buds of may
And Master's lease has all too short a date'
also, at the very bottom, past the word 'tell' repeated many a time, is 'tell me days of heaven shines'

They were both in a brown paper sack tucked in with the rest of the things. They are from Writer. I don't know when he got into my stuff and put this there-I've been ignoring the files as much as possible, so beyond saying it wasn't there when I packed the suitcase I'm honestly not sure.
But the key worries me the most.
It's mine. MY key.
The first key I had to our apartment. We changed the locks a while back, but I'd kept it.
Once I offered it to Spence as payment for a job. He didn't take it. I hadn't noticed it was gone. Until it showed up in my fucking suitcase with a note from Writer.
'Elaine. This is yours. Thank you for bringing our St(X)ryteller home'
Cute. Real fucking cute. Writer, if you go near Spence I'll gut you myself. Consider this your warning, you sick fuck.


In any case, the Page Theory section will be up soon. I should head out now-looks like Shrody's found someone she recognizes...

Keep Moving

That's the plan, anyway. We left NYC yesterday,after saying a fond farewell to Rachael. It was nice, staying with her, rather peaceful, but the longer we stayed there the more danger we were all in, from her and from all the things chasing me.

So we're off, to visit another friend. Again, not telling you lot where I'm headed, I don't want an unpleasant surprise when I get there, and the person I'm visiting would definitely not thank me for bringing down a storm of proxies on their home. Suffice it to say that I am going to see a friend who's got more information that could be useful.

I'm starting my work back again. I'd been slacking, hadn't really done any research and I've only read one or two new blogs in the past several weeks. Fuck that shit. I've been wallowing too damn long. It's time to start fighting properly again, instead of just getting by.

I have a goal, one that is hard but definitely possible, and I'm doing everything in my fucking power to make sure I achieve it.

In the meantime, I have something Spencer gave Cam that I have the permission to post and discuss. Expect to see that within the next couple days, as soon as we stay someplace with a scanner. I have a couple of other topics that I'm planning research posts on within the next week or so as well.

I'm not going to roll over and fucking die because of all of this. Cam made it pretty clear he wanted me to live.