I made a detour

I was going to go straight for Fracture's loop. Pick up Em, see my boyfriend, have a serious conversation with a pre teen psychopath. But I found myself in Ohio.

I grew up there.

Not that I knew it was Ohio at the time. I didn't get out much. Which in this context means 'I was locked in a basement'. But every once in a while, that basement calls me home.

I can't tell you why I do this. I went through so much pain when I was there. But part of it will always be, I don't know. Home I guess.

Except I noticed something this time. On the top floors and at the basement entrance there are markings. They are faint, hard to spot. I only noticed at all because I had been staring at the door for a very long time (please don't ask).

I don't know if I'm being paranoid, but I think I'm going to look into them.

I had always thought that Dubois was just a nutcase. But maybe there was something else going on.

I don't know if that would make it better or worse.

The Elephant in the room

Has anyone ever wondered how that phrase started?

Did someone actually put an elephant in a room or something? I admit, I'd pay to see that.

But I mentioned that I have left Em and Ryan and started traveling on my own. No one's asked about it, in which I'm grateful. But I imagine some of you have been wondering why. And while I have contemplated whether or not I wanted to tell anyone, I have decided to come out with it.

I'm being haunted.

All right, so that's a fairly melodramatic way of putting it. But it's sort of what's going on. A few days after Ryan was once again Lost, I woke up to see a familiar figure in my bed. I figured it was just one of those trick dreams. The kind where you think you're awake even though you're not. But I didn't wake up again, and the figure spoke.

"Hello Darling. Did you miss me?"

Nightscream stood there, the bladed gauntlet on his hand making tapping noises against a nearby nightstand. He looked just like I remembered him. Well, how I remembered him before Redlight got inside his head and brought low the strongest of all of us.

No one is immune to this world.

At this point, I really did think I was dreaming. I told the figure of Nightscream as much, and proceeded to try and ignore him until I would finally snap out of it. But everything felt too real. Dreams never get sensations quite right. It always feels like an approximation of a sense. But I could hear the wind blow through the flimsy window. I had to squint my eyes due to the low light. And when Nightscream used his gauntlet to raise my chin and lock our eyes I could feel the cold hard steel just as well as everything else.

Nightscream did have the courtesy to explain it to me. He wasn't a dream. More like a hallucination. A "gift" from the Slender Man. Although as time has dragged on, a hallucination is perhaps not the right word for it. He is in my head, and only I can see, hear, feel him.

But he is not Nightscream as only I would see him. He has not been drawn merely from my own head but from so many sources that it is almost a perfect copy. He is Nightscream. And he is alive.

I have spent... months. With him by my side. It is terrifying how much I long for good conversation and the simple warmth of being near another human being.

That is what I am being offered. An eternal companion. Someone who cannot die, who will not leave. A challenge and an equal and a chance to make right one of my greatest mistakes.

All I had to do was come back. Stop running and serve Him once more.

I have yet to make a decision. Even now Nightscream sits by my side, chiding me gently. Trying to hide his fear.

Believe me, as nontraditional as it may be, this Nightscream is alive. And if I refuse this offer... I will once again be responsible for his death.

You know, when I first left the Slender Man, I had always intended on coming back. I just needed to figure out who I was. Find a new reason to serve.

But I still haven't found it. Often I find reasons to oppose him, even when he offers such tempting rewards with such devastating consequences of refusal.

But I can't stay in limbo any more. As pleasant as it is.

I'm sorry Nightscream.

Some of you may have noticed

That I've been dating someone.

Fracture, specifically.

Our history has been long and complicated, and included several death threats on my part and a fairly impressive bounty demanding that I only be brought in dead on his.

Not that any of that was really personal. When we first met, we were enemies and he was after my granddaughter. Even then, I'd like to think there was some professional respect on both sides.

Of course then he started yelling at me and dredging up vey personal things and naming me a sage.


and.... that made me like him more?

I suppose I understand why some people consider me confusing.

Despite all this he understands me more than anyone else living. And I'm happier than I have been since my husband died.

So I suppose that's worth something.

Ryan isn't like me

He's a good guy. And I respect that. I don't really know when morality became something I considered anything other than a weakness, but here I am.

The truth is, this sort of life warps you. Good takes on an entirely different meaning to the point that even those that go against great evil are only 'good enough'. It is a way to drain Light, I suppose. Create decisions in which there are no clean answers. Watch your enemies damn themselves with their own choices.

It has gotten to the point that I don't even know how to relate to decent people.

I should have seen it coming. Ryan was lucid, and stayed such after we got Em away from Jess. But there was a look in his eye, something just beneath the surface that told me he was thinking of something.

He finally did tell me. He objected to my behavior in rescuing Em. He objected to my use of Maggot as a distraction. He objected to my association with Jess in the first place, and what I did to her bodyguard.

There was a lot of objecting is what I'm getting at.

After a long and arduous conversation, he looked up at me with these big hopeless eyes.

"You're not a good person are you?"

"No. But I'm trying. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Not as much as you'd think."

He stood up then, and grabbed his suitcase. We move so often I didn't even find it strange he had it with him.

He had barely made it out the door before he collapsed.

I went to check on him, and he was gone again. Mind blank, barely breathing.

I guess someone didn't want him to leave.

It's been a while

And too much has happened to include in one post.


I am on my own again, for the moment. Em is safe. Being cared for by people she trusts. Ryan is with them. I do plan on returning, but there are some issues I have to figure out first.

I shall tell you all what has happened. But spending more than an hour at a time stationary in a place with public wifi can be dangerous. So this will be spread over more than one post. I do not know what is in store for me right now. So when these come out is not something I can say. But I will do my best.

I figure the best place to start is Em.

Em is stable, and she's adjusting to life in a wheelchair very well. Physically at least. Emotionally, she is beginning to go down a road that is very familiar to me. One I don't want her to go down.

There are few things more dangerous than someone who feels helpless. They will do almost anything to get their power back.

I've been confiscating her guns, talking to her, doing what I can. But... I'm kind of shitty at this. And I don't know how to help her.

It's difficult. Watching her light drain. Protecting it is supposed to be my job.

I'm shitty at a lot of things.