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?