A Chat With Our Host

I don't want to talk about it. After the other night, I ended up sitting down with him and asking the sort of questions I wasn't sure I'd get a chance to ask.
The transcript is here, and the fucker didn't leave /anything/ out. Even the stuff I would've preferred to keep quiet.
I'd be rather pissed, except it's kind of nice having him concerned enough to do this crap.

For those of you concerned enough to wonder, yes I'm still miserable, no I'm not going to do anything drastic, and yes I've got the drinking under control, thank you. Also, despite what it sounds like, I'm not deliberately starving myself, I just have no fucking appetite.

I'm fine, really. Just fine.

Holidays are Fucking Exhauasting

Just posting briefly to say that we've made it to Benjamin's place. The stockings are hung, presents are under the tree, Em's happily asleep in her room after watching Christmas movies till I wanted to scream.

I've never been a big fan of the holidays, but it's nice to see her smiling properly again.

Benjamin's a good host, if you wanna hear about the mundane bullshit, just follow the link to his blog. I'm gonna go fill some stockings, then crash.

Maybe then I won't have to think about everyone that's not here with us.

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.

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.

Back in Town

I'm in NYC, and it's beautiful and huge and bustling, just like I remember. The drive from Texas was hell, but I got here a day early and ended up able to spend yesterday with Spence, taking in the city almost like just another tourist. There was some craziness the previous night, and he came by to check on me, then ended up sticking for a while. He's a good friend. The two of us spent the day talking and remembering.  It was... it was nice. I needed that. It felt like I was finally getting a chance to say goodbye.

This was Cam's home, every time I've been here was with him. There's too much of him everywhere, he loved this city, loved showing it off to me in the hopes of making me smile for real. He's always been very good at that-I guess that's what happens when you've known someone for twenty years. Sure, he wasn't actually able to be physically with me for a lot of it, but he never let me fall out of touch, never let me ditch him. I think most of you thought that I met him when we started rooming together, we tended to encourage that belief, but that was not quite the truth. I never... I never bothered setting the record straight because I didn't think it mattered, but we were kids together, before he moved here. After shit hit the fan with me, he consistently wrecked his own life to be there when I needed him. No matter where I was or what trouble I'd gotten into, he was always there wanting to help. He deserves for you to know that.

The only reason I came here, to this city with all it's pain and memories and beauty, was two people I needed to see. The first, Shrodinger, I picked up rather early this morning. She really is that sweet, even desperate, looking like death, and missing a hand. She put up the request for a rescue a week ago and I got in touch, because like HELL was I leaving her to deal with this Cheshire bastard alone anymore. Didn't want to linger long there, so I just picked her and her stuff up and got the fuck out of there before something could show up and try to stop us.

We then proceeded to Rachael's house. Normally I would not go into the home of a proxy when seeking someplace vaguely resembling safe to rest and plan my next move, but she's a bit of a special case these days, and as much as I feel like a bitch saying so, physically she's not exactly a threat, so if it comes to that, I'm not too worried. She says she's pretty good at dealing with the 'itch' as she calls it and can give us warning if we need to get out, so I'm hoping that I'm just worrying too much.

I don't know what exactly I expected, really, but it wasn't her, in this cheerful, if a little dark and dusty, home. She looks to be in her thirties and absolutely beautiful, though everything about her is sad enough to break your heart. She swooped in and started mothering Shrodinger from the moment we arrived, and I've admittedly done a lot of awkward hovering and trying to help. She is so infinitely kind to us both, it kind of throws any expectations out the window. It's nice, really. I'm hoping our stop here will help Kat a little, and maybe I'll get lucky and it'll help me as well.