A quick lesson children. Hitting like a girl doesn't mean the person can't hit. It means they're going to hit you where it matters.

You learn pretty fast, if girls actually fight? They're not the fairest people in the world. And if you've still got some sort of deluded sense of honour about not hitting the "fairer sex", how the everloving fuck aren't you dead already?

Case in point. I'm currently nursing a black eye, among other bruises, scrapes and a rather unpleasant cut across the ribs.

But she's dead, so it's not like I'll be indulging the habit.

I didn't think it would be this easy.

It occurs to me that I've been deliberately vague about where I am and where I'm going.

I'm not a long-term plan sort of guy. Never have been, consequences be damned.
You see, the more you think about something I figure, the more you're going to worry about what happens afterwards. Especially if it goes wrong.

No one will ever let you forget those fuck ups. No one. So you live with them. Wear them like armour.

So what have I been doing? I don't stop driving. Not for more than a few hours at a stretch. I've got a map in case I get lost. I've got the internet. But I wake up and I drive. Not much in the way of a course. Maybe wake up with a direction in mind. "Going east today" maybe. And from there, just roll with it.

Plans go wrong. It's like something made to live in a vacuum, or under extreme pressure. Do you know what happens to things that live under those conditions when they're exposed to the real world? Boom. Messy.

Get to the point.

Right. So, imagine my surprise. I stop for gas somewhere yesterday, and the missing posters... dear god the missing posters.

Seven children, in the past... four months I seem to remember. Bang. Gone, right out of their houses.
Sounds like anyone we know?

My interest was... piqued, for lack of a better word, so I stuck around.

And I found something. What, you might ask? We're talking about Them. It's little busy hands and feet.
Just one, not that you'd expect more. Small town. Statistics... It's touch was everywhere. You could see it... feel it. In that sort of ghost town way. This place is not for the living.
I drove by one of the local schools? Bloody thing drawn in chalk. Operator symbols. Fucking everywhere. Like they were mushrooms, and it had just rained.

Not important.

In any case, I found the bastards. It didn't take too much digging. Imagine their surprise. I'm probably a crappy shot, but a gun is a gun, and pointing one at someone, especially if you've just burst in the door and caught them with their metaphorical pants down, does a lot to put a little menace into what you're about to say.

I found them. Two of them, small building on the outside of town.

The funny thing is, you're also a lot less menacing if you're in the middle of making waffles.


One of them starts to get up, looks like he's scared. About to do something stupid. The other is busy holding a bloody waffle iron. I had to stop myself from laughing a little.
"Sit down."
He doesn't argue.
"You're the brains?"
Waffles nods. "Yeah."

Not much brains in either of them, to be perfectly honest.

"There any more of you?"
Waffles manages to stutter out a: "N-n-no"
Point the gun at him a little more emphatically.
"I don't remember asking you a damn thing."
Scared guy shakes his head.
Now, at this point, Waffles thinks he can talk his way out of it, like it was some kind of misunderstanding.
So I point the gun at him.

Not so much point as slam it into the back of his head.

That shuts him up.
"Did I break your concentration? "No? Guess you were finished then. Let me offer you a reply."

Bang. Waffles is down.
Bang. Scared guy takes one in the gut.

Roll credits, get the hell out of there.

Mr. Kerr

I should be dead.
Instead, I'm not. How does that work? I mean, really.

Let me tell you about Mr. Kerr.
Mr. Kerr runs a small clinic, it's not important where this clinic is. A major city, suffice it to say. High population density.
I've been avoiding them thusfar. Why? Probability says that the more people there are in one place, the better the chances you have of finding a particular subset, if that subset can exist. In this case, the more people there are, the better your chances are of finding Us.

Stalked. Runners, fighters, whatever the fuck you decide to call yourself. Big cities are a breeding ground it seems, so long as there's an internet connection and at least one unlucky bastard. And where you find Us, you find the other guys. Them. You know the ones I'm talking about, Agents, Proxies, Hallowed (god I hate that word). Call them whatever the fuck you like. The Competition.

Into this mix, enters Mr. Kerr. Mr. Kerr is not exactly a doctor. Mr. Kerr was an EMT. You know, ambulance man. And apparently a volunteer with the Red Cross during some disruption of civilized life.
Mr. Kerr is of an indeterminate age, an undisclosed race, weight and height, as none of those are particularly important.

What is important, is that Mr. Kerr is aware of this particular mess. And it is to Mr. Kerr that I owe my continued survival at this particular moment.

You know what can happen, I'm not going to bore you with the fucking details of how it happened. Suffice it to say I was on the receiving end of a particularly deconstructive variety of mask wearing freak. He got the worst of it but I needed something more than improvised first aid. Bullet wounds are like that.

So how does Mr. Kerr enter into the picture? I stumbled into his "clinic". The reason I say "clinic" is because it's not marked like one. In fact, it looks like a drug store. Which admittedly amounts to almost the same thing. Only the staff don't tend to actually practice anything resembling medicine.

I stumble in. While I'm trying to purchase the supplies I intend to try to patch myself up with and trying very hard not to bleed through the bandage and tourniquet, he starts to describe a certain general sort of portrait which might describe any of us.
"Stop me if any of this sounds familiar," he says, "You're a runaway? Some masked guys in hoodies did this? Tall fellow in a suit." I nodded, admittedly I wasn't in any state for more violence. He offered to patch me up. Apparently good samaritans do exist. They're just few and far between. Colour me fucking surprised.

Judging by the way he acted, I'm not the first unlucky bastard to have stumbled in here. Not sure how Mr. Kerr is involved. The way he talks, he's not exactly in the know. I imagine he's taken pains to avoid that. I also think that the rather large gun under the counter isn't just for would-be bandits.
You people love your damned amendment, don't you?

Did a pretty good job of cleaning me up. I'm apparently lucky that the bullet didn't hit anything particularly important but my arm is going to be a little more useless that it was before. That's alright. I've had broken arms before.

Rocked the boat

Someone tried to kill me today.

That feels new, oddly enough. It's not that it's never been a possibility, but this time it was different.
You can kill people lots of ways, we're fragile, breakable little things.  Before it was always a chance that you'd live through being stabbed or bludgeoned. This one had a gun.

Stupid. Was he trying to get himself killed?

Maybe. That's the point of a gun. You can, presumably not kill someone with it, but at the end of the day, it's what it was made for. Killing. Using it another way goes against what it was made for. Against it's... purpose, so to speak.

He's not exactly doing so well.
Bullet wounds will do that.

Gun's mine now. Not doing so well though. But I'm still alive.

The important bit, right?

Right.

Back on the fucking road then.

I don't think my arm should feel numb like this.
Not important. Getting it on with this.

I still don't remember much from around the car crash. I'm assuming that a low speed collision with a treeon top of a recovering concussion isn't a recipe for a healthy mind. Everything before I woke up in that room
Needless to say it's not something I'm in a hurry to review again.

They drugged me, I think. They did something to my head.

I feel like I can hear a pin drop though. My head is absolutely fucking killing me. I wonder if this is what a hangover feels like.

Oh. Hello there.
Time for more running it seems.

On Compulsion

Not sure why I'm still blogging.

I mean, the sane thing to do would be to not only delete the fucking blog, but change the password to this account to something random and lock myself out of it, just to be safe. At least some of us have the good sense not to broadcast their movements for all the world to see.

I mean it doesn't make any sense outside of viewing this all as fiction does it?
The poor sods keep blogging while their world falls to pieces around them despite their minds coming entirely unhinged? Half the people who blog would be in mental facilities.

And the other half would be dead or in prison.

But it's the expectation of the fucking genre, isn't it? The slow, murderous descent into madness and mayhem. Clawing at what scraps of sanity we have left. Hounded at every fucking turn by a fucking faceless thing in a suit.

Actually let's take a fucking look at that for a second. IT WEARS A FUCKING SUIT. Can you comprehend that? There are people, in the world right this minute, being chased by a faceless abomination from god fucking knows where who is genteel enough to put on a suit and tie before he does so. And his fucked up little... what? What do you even call these people? I'm not even sure. But can you start to understand just how absolutely goddamned insane that is?

I really don't think I understand it. I don't think anyone does. Not really. They pretend to but that's getting off of the fucking topic.
But it gets played out. And people watch. It's god damned sickening. I'm ashamed to have been guilty of it, at this point.
But then I never claimed to be a saint.


The compulsion to keep writing, even as one is being devoured.


Lovecraft, at least, would be proud.

Something interesting happened

Beat the living shit out of someone? Fine. Knife one of those mask-wearing crazies in the shoulder? Done that, not a problem. Suppose I have to add homicide to the list.

It's getting to be a pretty long one at this point. So you killed a person. That's done. Bravo. No point in dwelling on it, right? I thought you'd gotten over this already. It's been two days.

I just killed a person. Fuck.

Obviously not, you've reduced a human being to a bloody pulp. That's murder, remember?
Never mind that you don't remember doing it yourself, that's just making it fucking worse, isn't it Robin?

Leave it up to the imagination to fill in the blanks in the most unpleasant way possible.

It was a mask-wearing prick who wasn't all there. You could hear it in his voice. Sick, like a rabid animal.
Was he really even human at that point?

I don't know; you're the one fucking asking.

It was shaped like a human being. It moved like one, but it was wrong. Wrong shape, something just fundamentally wrong about it. Not that that it matters either. He's dead. Done, over with.

Oh fucking hardly, or you wouldn't be fucking monologuing over it, would you? Dumbass.
Are you even sure you're feeling guilty about that? And besides, you stopped going to church years ago. After she died, remember?


No point in stopping now, is there?

Doesn't seem to be. At this point you're fucked either way, so what's the harm in a little more? You'll go crazy and die, or get murdered by some idiot in an out-of-season halloween costume.

You really don't have time to waste, do you?

And to be perfectly fair, it'd be lying if you said you didn't enjoy it just a little bit.

What the fuck I did on my blog-vacation

In which Robin finishes whatever the fuck he was writing about before;

Where the fuck was I with this?

The basement. Cellar. Dungeon. Whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit.
Right.
Cold. It was cold.

Of course it was cold it's practically fucking winter outside. Never mind that it's nearly bloody April.

Concrete floors don't help that. There's a little drain, like the kind you find in boiler rooms or old laundry rooms, rusted round little drain with holes in it.

There's a bit of pipe, big metal pipe, running along the wall above me. It's got those little C-shaped brackets holding it in place and then it heads up into whatever is above I suppose. Wall's pretty cracked. Old building from the looks of it. Old or not taken care of. Frost damage, or just wear. Fractures around the brackets.

I'm handcuffed to it. Just the one hand. Honest to god handcuffs.

Guess they couldn't find the zip ties? Pockets are empty. Which is a shame.

I can do handcuffs. Zip ties would have been a bit of a problem.
Long story, I had a friend in police foundations.

The plumbing looks... old. It's not copper. I don't think they make copper piping this big. Not old enough to be lead but it's black under the dust, like one of those old-school frying pans, or the stereotypical wood burning stove. There's a busted, rusty water heater over to one side of me and an old beat up washer and dryer on the other side. Furnace on the other side of the water heater. The whole place can't be much more than 7 x 9, low ceiling. The door's pretty low too. Maybe it's under something else?

Don't have my phone, so I don't know how long I'm waiting there. Time does that... stretching thing. Footsteps. Some fucker in a mask opens the door. Big white mask, no mouth, sort of shield shaped? Really pointy chin. Tall guy, big black coat on the shoulders, pinstripe suit.

He reaches up to brush the snow off with his hand and...

Oh god. His hand. His hand is... it looks like it's just flayed skin but that's not right. That can't be right. It's not really a hand. It's a claw. His hand is a claw. A mangled, broken why is it so red. Red like... raw meat. Makes you want to throw up just looking at it.

There's another one with him. Shorter, lanky. Still taller than me Fucking hockey mask. Like he's Jason Fucking Voorhees. Big, baggy, beat-up sweater hanging off of them... kid? Holes in it. Pinstripe doesn't do any talking. Just stands there, for all the world acting if he were the grim fucking spectre of death itself.

The kid? The kid talks a lot. Talked a lot. Big talker.

Ha. Solved that problem, didn't you? Solved it quite well. Don't look at me like that, the bastard had it coming and you know it. This jog any memories?

"Going to fly away little bird?"
Posturing. He's fucking posturing. The fucking bastard.
"Can't run now!" Laughter.
"Not so tough now!" More laughter. kick in the gut. More laughter, and a few more kicks. ribs ache.
"Scared little birdy. We're going to clip your wings." Laughing again. Like a cut-rate villain. Don't think he was all there.

And then he fucked up.

"You know what happens next?" Laughing. Getting closer. "We find your family. And we cut them all- wait." He pauses. You can hear the grin in the voice. "Yours is dead, isn't it?"

That seems like a mistake to me.

"Poor little bird, all alone."
He made to kick me again. Grabbed his other leg by the ankle with my legs. Don't think he saw that coming. Tripped up fell backwards like he'd had a carpet jerked out from under him. Skull made a nice cracking sound when it hit the floor. Not sure if I was grinning by this point.

Not sure what happened next.

Well no, that's a lie. We can infer some things that happened between A and B. By the time you came to, the unlucky bastard was a bloody wreck on the floor, and there was a bloodstained pipe in your hand.
No, still not over that?

Excuse me while I take the opportunity to attempt to empty my already empty stomach a second time.

You said "wreck" right?

I did. It's more that he's a loosely connected set of chunks that have been smeared across the floor. Connect the dots, it's not hard. I imagine it is pretty hard to laugh when you're spitting your teeth out onto the floor. Harder if you're coughing up blood. And I would suppose it's pretty much impossible to laugh when you're dead.
Some people just have no class.

His buddy with the fucked up... hand-thing, must have fucked off. There's a big hand-shaped smear on the wall near where he was standing. Not sure what it's made of, not going to bother finding out. Still needed to get the handcuffs off, but that's less of a problem now.

Plenty of tools. Didn't take much work to get free.

They had a pretty good set-up here. It's an old shop of some sort. Maybe did auto work, judging by the big doors and the lifts. Maybe a chop-shop. Has that kind of feel to it. Grungy, sketchy. The bits of car might be mine. Found a couple odds and ends that look like they were mine. There's a few things that look like graves out back. Doubt I'm the first to have wound up here.

Murdering fucks. Deserved what they got.

Someone's been living here, judging from the cot, the wi-fi and the shitty netbook. Can't find my laptop. Not like there was anything important on it.

In which I explain where the fuck I've been

It's been... one two three four... FIVE DAYS!

FIVE WONDERFULLY FUCKED UP DAYS!

Since I last posted on this blog. Don't know why I'm still bothering, but that's for another time. Excuse me if this is a liittle fucked up. I'm posting from a computer that isn't mine and whatever I've been dosed with doesn't quite seem to have worn off. Also the keyboard on it is a piece of shit.


So where the fuck do we start?

Physical condition perhaps?

Okay good a place as any. Physically you're a bit of a mess. A car accident, even a low speed will do that to you. Getting grabbed out of the wreck of said car will not improve that situation. Neither will dragging your sedated ass to a dingy, old, abandoned  building somewhere in... well there's no point in mentioning, and chaining someone to a bit of the plumbing in the cellar. Over all? Aches, pains, one shoulder is a little fucked up I think, to say nothing about the state of you ribs.

But then, I'm not a doctor. I am vaguely reminded of the second time my nose got broken. That was fun. But getting off-topic.

So what about mental condition?

Don't quite think I'm exactly qualified to assess that.

So, car accident you say?

Why YES! That was ALL FUCKING KINDS OF FUN. Let me tell you about the car accident.

It's a dusty stretch of back roads out in the middle of nowhere. The road comes to a Y-shaped intersection that's a bitch and a half to get around if you want to head down one arm from the opposite. Pretty deep ditch on either side. Fields, tree at the fork. I'm sort of parked in the middle of the road, trying to figure out which side of that fork to go down.

The old farmhouse is down the left-hand fork, so I start towards it.

Blink.

About half way down the road.

There he is.
There He is.
THERE HE IS. I think I might have lost it.

No question. You lost it.

The... wrongness of it. It. Not quite the right word.

Do we even have a right for that? The right word would probably be a wrong word all of it's own accord you know.

It's limbs are jointed the wrong way and where did the extra sets of arms come from? The car is moving and then
The last thing I remember thinking before the crash is 'he looks just like a tree'

Blink.

Tree. There's a tree there's a tree and then... white. Noise. A sort of ringing? That fades into a persistent honking noise that sounds like it's coming from all directions.

oh.

We seem to have crashed.

Idon't remember accelerating, or turning.

Or running into a fucking tree.

Am I in the ditch?
and then the door opens. I start to fall, the seatbelt catches me a little. Then.. hands, the seat belt is gone and pain in my neck. Things get hard to see and then black.

I wake up in a fucking cellar, chained to the plumbing. Like someone's idea of a bad horror film. Now, where did the...

pardon me, i think i'm going to have to be sick.

God that hurt.
Instantly regretting it.
I think I'm... out of whatever that was.
At least, this looks like the highway again.

I think I could do with a doctor. Cauterizing your own finger with a car cigarette lighter probably isn't exacatly what you'd call medicine. Do they even make cars with cigarette lighters anymore?

Christ, what the fuck was that?

I feel sick.
Five.
That can't be real but it looked it felt
This is five. 
so very real
Ignore the sirens.
it looked just like her

Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room. 
It's not

Eight. 
shes dead but it looked she's fucking dead alright
This is eight. 
i feel sick
We have killed your friends. 
where am i

Every friend is now dead.
i feel sick
it hurts why does it hurt
My brother was actually eaten by wolves one winter on the Connecticut Turnpike 
it hurts
Mom it hurts.

This can't be fucking happening.
This is not real.
This place got half burned down years ago.
You remember things like that

It never really got fixed, because the bastard could only keep money in his wallet long enough to spend it on booze.
That's why you got moved. Toronto, remember?

I wonder if there's anything...
There's got to be something inside right?

No man. This cannot be
what the hell is going on

That is the same fucking hitchhiker. From two hours ago.
Unless he's got a fucking doppelganger, that is the exact same goddamned hitchhiker that I went by two hours ago. And that is not fucking possible. I have been driving in a straight line. The road hasn't so much as BENT the whole goddamned way.
What the hell is with the goddamned fog?
Turning the fucking car around, going the other way.

A fucking hitchhiker. I don't believe it.
Okay, where the fuck am I?
This map has to be fucking useless. There isn't a stretch of road that even FUCKING REMOTELY resembles this anywhere. There isn't. It's just straight fucking road going on to infinity that isn't on the fucking map.

Wait...
No. No. FUCK THAT. Fuck that shit.
god damn it this is not fucking happening it is not

Road to Nowhere

Still inside the fucking cloud. Five fucking hours. I don't believe it.
At this point, I'm betting the highway is some sort of mobius strip. Wouldn't be too fucking surprised at this point. I swear to god, it all looks the fucking same.
The bit of fence I'm next to? Well it looks like any split rail fence but I'd swear I've been by it a least twice already. Hard to tell in the fog.
Sure as hell not getting out of the car.
Wait.
Is that a fucking hitchhiker?

I woke up this morning, fog everywhere.
And I mean fucking everywhere. It's gone noon, the sun should have disposed of this by 9 AM, but instead I'm driving around inside a big poofy cloud of fucking water vapour. It's got to be fucking huge.
It shouldn't be this

Motherfucker.

Mad World

Not going back there. Not that I had much choice after my run in with who I assume was good Dr. Serra, who I assume is now going out of her way to violate what passes for a Hippocratic oath these days.

So I dragged myself to the ER. Mentioned that the other day, I think.
That went superbly. Told them I'd been mugged (90% true) but didn't see who did it. (Entirely false)
They seem to have done a pretty good job patching me up. Brace for the ankle, even went so far as to stitch the cut on my arm.

And then things started happening. So I got the hell out of there as soon as I could.
People should not be able to grin like that. They shouldn't. It's just not fucking natural. Hell of a lot of blood.
I haven't been comfortable staying in one place for too long. At least it's justified now.

Been saying it a while, but there's a great fucking granddad of a storm waiting out there. Best get out of it's way while I can.
If I can.

Can't Decide

Man goes to the doctor. Complains of problem with ankle
Doctor proceeds to beat the patient within an inch of his life.
Everyone laughs. Except the patient because he has fucking bruised ribs.

Typing this waiting in the ER. Hopefully they don't give a fuck.
That last little dust-up didn't go so well for me, you might have guessed. I'm not exactly a medical expert, but I severely doubt that my ankle should feel like this. Or my shoulder.
Now, I have two options:

1. Go to a hospital and say I got fucking mugged (which has the potential bring up the whole nine yards about murder, arson, and jaywalking)
2. Seek the help of a certain unlicensed professional.

Not really much of a choice is it?
So I called up a certain "Doctor". Maybe you're familiar? She didn't get back to me, so I wrote it off and kept driving.

I pulled in to a rest stop last night to catch a bit of rest, needed to stretch. Fucking cold night. And my jacket is still filled with holes. Need to replace it.

So this... woman shows up. White coat, scarf, what looked like chocolate but I'm assuming was blood on both.
Creepy fucking mask. Points for that, the thing was made out of bits of bone.
Not sure what it was painted with, don't want to know. Horn sort of thing, on the one side. Deer maybe?
What happened next? Ow. Really fucking ow.

She came at me with a fucking bone. Like a fucking shinbone.

Get on the ground. Pain, really bad idea. Face is still in one piece but she got your shoulder, more than a little raw. That's alright, you can shake it off. 

Roll over, you need to get up. Nope, foot planted in my ribs. Just about knocked the breath out of me.
Swing, try to hit something dumbass. The wrench in my pocket gets her in the leg.

Bad idea. She goes for my head. Try to pull my arm up. Wait, wrong fucking arm.
Pain. Everything goes white for a second, and then red. Blood in my eyes. More pain, boot in the ribs again.
Drives the breath out of me.
That's alright, you've been here before, plenty of times. Try to roll with it. If she wanted to kill you she'd have done it by now, right?

Lost track a little, more hits with that fucking bone. . I remember trying to pull my legs up, cover the squishy bits, that didn't sit too well with the crazy lady.
Not sure when she left or how long the beating lasted. I'm a fucking mess now. Bruises all over my arms legs back. Plenty of them on my ribs, nasty cut on the side of my head.
When I could move again, I had a bit of paper tucked in my pocket, and a fucking lollipop. Believe it. A fucking lollipop

It's a prescription, little hard to read, physicians apparently can't write worth shit, but this was worse.
"Anger management zalafl?" Trying to prescribe food maybe?
And then:  "Hello Robin, we haven't met before in person but I hope you feel better soon please take this gift as a sign of everyone's fucking appreciation for you."

That's just fucking cheery isn't it? I'm guessing the good Doctor caught up with me after all.
Fuck you too Doc. Fuck you too.

Slept too long

Six fucking hours.
Fuck. That's too long. Anything could have happened.
Must've really done a number on me.
Where the fuck is a hospital when you need it?