AUGUST 9, 2012

Log from August 9^th:

I’ve had my first experience with hitchhiking. I thought that if I stuck by Scarlet-marked drivers, I would be safe. My naïveté cost me one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life.

By day, I mostly travel on foot. It’s easier to outmaneuver them that way, I think – I take trails and shortcuts, keep away from the road. I don’t know how to Run; I think that’s the problem. I always felt so safe. How stupid could I have been? As long as I stay away from civilization by day, though, I feel like that might be better. It’s false safety, but it’s there.

Once the sun starts to set – that’s not until something like eight-thirty at night – I make my way back to streets and get on the first mode of transportation I find. Usually busses, but tonight, a car pulled over on the side of the road and asked if I was who he thought I was. I looked him over; red cowboy boots. I found it funny, since the Mistress wears boots of a similar shade, if not the same style. I said yes, and he told me to get in.

We were driving for a while. He was willing to take me down the 401 and pay my toll into the United States, which was a relief. I looked up the route I needed to take, beforehand; 129 hours on foot, 15 hours by bus, or 8 hours by car. Anything to whittle down that trip seemed like a blessing, and with no one else on the road he was going sixty over the speed limit.

Then suddenly he was pulling over – the deceleration almost made me dizzy. He started going on about the Mistress, and being important to her, and then…he just…sprung at me.

By the end of it, I was just…soaked in blood. It’s not like I minded, it wasn’t the first time, but…I was shaking. Killing someone like that is different. It’s not like in tribute.

I just kept telling myself it was the same. I was protecting what belongs to the Mistress.

Unless, would she have wanted me to be-…?

I couldn’t stomach it. I’m feeling sick, right now.

In the end, I had to skin him. I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be recognized. I know I read something about flaying, before. There’s still blood everywhere, but this isn’t CSI; DNA doesn’t solve everything in sixty minutes.

I don’t know what I’ll do with the skin.

For extra measure, I spent hours taking off the license plates. It was grueling, and I was stuck using everything and anything the man had in his glove box. My hands are so badly scratched that I can barely type…I’ll need to have them bandaged.

Now, I’m just…bundled up in a ditch off the side of the road, maybe a mile away, with a bag of stinking flesh, license plates, and my laptop. It’s the only source of heat, and I wanted to write down what happened. The details already feel a hundred miles away.

God, the nausea is too much.

AUGUST 6, 2012 (PM)

Log from August 6^th (PM):

My very soul is marked in scarlet. My flesh is coated in claret. My clothing bears the colour of crimson.

I am Scarlet-marked and yet I have spent this entire time waiting for punishment, a follower lost to his lust and desire for beings that don’t occupy our reality, for fiction and for those who impersonate that fiction. My depravity is, was and always will be a joke.

And yet, The Mistress passed onto me her latest logs, scribbled in her colour over ripped out pages of a graphic novel. In the end...as long as we are lustful, we are hers. I have fulfilled my service by extracting her logs to my best capability.

August 2:

With the shitstorm currently being kicked up, I’ve decided there’s really only one logical course of action: forget Russ and get back into the Game. Before I got sidetracked by my Scarlet-marked and all the various other fuckery, I was trying to make this my year. If the end is to come, I want to make it spectacular, and I want to make it mine.

…Okay, so I’m not forgetting Russ entirely. The first Marked I come across is also being given the order to assemble the cavalry and hunt the fucker down.

I’ve gone to the only place where I know for a fact I can’t be tracked. At least, not so easily. If I encounter Fears, all the better. Less pesky humans in the way, at least.

I know they can’t be killed, but if they pass through…at least I’ve got a better chance of working something out. See how involved they are. Get a who’s-who rundown of the apocalypse. That way, I’ll know for sure which proxies I want to impale on a stick and parade around.

Jack hates the Empty City, though. He thinks it’s boring.

August 3:

Did anyone know that I can go like, overseas via Empty City? I mean, this place may be a bitch to get out of, but talk about easy mode of long-distance transportation.

Maybe it just likes me. Little odd, since I’m pretty sure the only things that can cooperate with this Fear are…you know, other Fears. Maybe proxies. Can proxies just go through this place? Man, someone needs to write me a rulebook…before I start thinking on this too hard and worry about the implications.

Too late, actually. I’m wondering.

There’s just so much of myself that I don’t understand. When do my memories start? Are the ones I have really mine? …Who the hell am I, even?

This is turning into some angsty teenager self-discovery shit, but…I’m serious. I can’t really tell where I end and the Red Cap begins.

…I’m not even sure I know what ‘the Red Cap’ is.

Ugh, getting past this crap: I started writing this to tell the world about what I’m doing, not what’s going on in my head. I’ve started dipping out of the Empty City to listen for Fear-related news. Not even sure where I am right now, but there’s something about a rash of suicides.

So, I’m blaming either the Choir or little miss love-me. We’ll just see what comes of it.

THE CHOIR BEDTIME STORY

They’re laughing at me

Behind my back –

Like the blur at the corner of my eye

It’s just too much

The rope is slack

My rhyming is my last goodbye.

Around my neck

I hear a shriek

That piercing sound’s my only friend

The noose is tight

The world is bleak

At least the whispers now will end.

August 5:

It was the Unnamed Child. I know that because I ran into this woman who was just bawling her eyes out and screaming at the cops about her ‘missing daughter’. Said woman was eighteen and a virgin.

How did I know she was a virgin? Sixth sex sense. Also, if you’re bored; try saying that five times fast.

Anyway, when I came back to the realm of consciousness, she was dead, no longer a virgin, and I was blood soaked.

I’m scaring myself. I mean, it’s kind of in a good way because oh god, the power rush, I’m king of the world but…

Didn’t I used to feel guilt?

August 6:

I had a real name, once. It wasn’t always ‘Red’.

When did I stop being…whoever I was, before?

AUGUST 6, 2012 (AM)

Log from August 6^th (AM):

Those who bother to read this know that Russ has begun communicating with me publicly, now. I can only guess it’s because I’ve deleted all but one of my email accounts, which I am guarding like it’s my greatest secret.

However, it means that there’s probably less to explain about why I’m now on the run.

I don’t have a car. In fact, I don’t have much aside from a messenger bag and the clothes on my back. I have a debit card and a bare minimum of cash, and my apartment is up for rent. It’s strange, but I don’t feel like I’ll miss all my possessions. Serving the Mistress is my higher calling. In a way, it’s almost as if she’s become my religion, and I’m as devoted as a nun.

Russ called her the ‘primary Vessel’. If the Red Cap chooses all of its Vessels, what makes her…more so? I swear that I can feel something more about her, but I can confess that I’m not an unbiased judge. If I could have chosen anyone, I would have chosen her, too.

I need to know more. Every moment not spent running, I am going to spend trying to understand. I scraped the surface, before; that’s why I know about ‘the magnet’.

After all…because I’m running away, I don’t know whether or not the Mistress will be able to find me ever again.

Information may be all I have left.

AUGUST 5, 2012

Log from August 5^th:

I have this feeling the Mistress has gone somewhere. Her anger towards Russ was…beyond description, and I have to wonder if she’s gone after him.

There has been no word from her, at all. I still get the sense that I am being stalked, in some way. It’s this sense of…crushing danger. It’s watching me because it wants to hurt me.

It’s been getting worse, since she left.

AUGUST 1, 2012

Log from August 1^st:

THE INTRUSION BEDTIME STORY

There are fleas in my blood

Earwigs in my brain

Maggots in my muscles

The itch is insane

Spiders in my throat

Spinning webs in each lung

Catching flies and the wasps

Leaving welts on my tongue

There are bubbles and blisters

And pus in my skin

I’m begging you, god

Stop letting them in

JULY 30, 2012

Log from July 30^th:

It’s taken some time to absorb the fact that, according to my Mistress, I am a Vessel. If she were to be with me, part of the Red Cap would be absorbed into me. Our power would be shared – perhaps not one in the same, for I don’t believe there could be another who is more powerful than my Mistress – and…

I would no longer be her Priestess. The ground between us would be more equal.

I have decided never to ask such a thing of her. She needs me, exactly as I am. Besides…I kind of enjoy being a celebrity among Scarlet-marked, but I don’t think I could handle being their ‘mistress’, also.

Especially since…I don’t think I could deal with touching a man in any intimate way. It just makes me squirm.

JULY 29, 2012

Log from July 29^th:

In her anger, the Mistress left at about nine o’clock this morning to resume her hunting. She took with her the boy; the dog has been missing since yesterday. Apparently, he runs off quite often, and neither of them seemed particularly concerned.

What the Mistress neglected to say in her last few logs was that, during her stay, we were all very certain that we were being watched by something. We could feel it, lurking in every corner of each dark room. The boy hasn’t slept and seemed terrified, but whenever he thought no one was watching him, the expression would freeze and fall away. As though he were faking it.

Now that they’ve gone, I would have thought that ‘being watched’ sensation would have faded. It hasn’t.

Maybe it’s the emails from Russ that are bothering me…

Or…maybe it’s because I’m a Vessel.

I’m still processing that. I didn’t have the slightest idea. It explains so much; why the Mistress won’t touch me…

July 29: (Edit)

I was so caught up in thinking, I almost forgot: All she left behind was another rhyme.

THE MOTHER OF SNAKES BEDTIME STORY

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

Go shatter into shards.

I resent what lies behind me,

And I dread what’s in the cards.

She’s there, in my reflection;

She watches while I groom;

She knows how much I hate myself,

She’ll take me to her womb.

I will get a second birth

With scales, a tail, and fangs.

Her daughters must serve faithfully

To soothe the birthing pangs.

If the darkness makes me ugly,

Just look at me once more.

I’ll go back through the mirror

And leave your entrails on the floor.