Friend

Autumn found a polaroid amongst our letters. What was on it really wasn't pretty. He tried to hide it from me for a couple of days. But I knew there was a problem, he was tense, worried. One time during dinner, I asked him and he answered. He showed me the photo.

The boy was laying on a concrete floor, the backpack shredded. There was so much blood. I... What can I say?

His head had been cut off and was laying a foot away from where it should have been. I'm sorry Innes.

The back was signed "Friend."

Sweet Seventeen

Hey there, I'm sorry we've not been posting... It's just, a kid took us up on our offer for a place to stay, we knew as soon as we saw him. He'd been beaten up, had his face mashed in and then they just let him go. Bleeding and concussed, left right on our doorstep by what I can only assume were proxies.

As soon as he woke up, he practically pissed himself in the time between seeing us and registering that we weren't going to hurt him, he and Summer got along very well. Must be a TA thing. We'd done our best but apart from cleaning and covering the cuts and scrapes, only time'd heal most of it.  

He called himself Innes Watson. He was introduced to it through a friend. Apparently the same friend has been spending time outside of the organisational proxy thing that they seem to have had lately. I don't know the guy's name but we had a break in, nothing was stolen, but you know how it goes.

Innes' stalker just left a note about how he was going to tear the boy to pieces just because Papa Skinny told him to. And get this; it was signed "Friend." 

Who the hell in their right mind beats a kid to within an inch of his life and then calls him friend? It's fucked up.

Innes left a couple of days ago, he wanted to keep moving. We gave him enough food to last him at least a couple of weeks, we gave him our phone number. We asked him to keep us updated on how he's doing.

Shortly after that we had to perform again. Apparently copying Maduin's idea of giving him twenty dollars and hoping he goes away didn't happen. He just sort of stood there motionless. He didn't hurt us though so I guess we must have done something all right...

In other news; Summer wanted me to make my side of the story she went into in the last post. I was seventeen, I kissed her and then just got no... No positive response I guess...  So I fell back on my age old technique of just being my usual charming self the next morning. We had been friends for ages, I was actually so worried I had ruined it. Like, that worry that settles at the pit of your stomach was there with a vengeance. I didn't eat that night because I felt like I was going to throw up if I did.

The next day, I could see she was worried but I just distracted her, I guess. Pretended it never happened. I didn't want a talk from her about why it was wrong.

What else can I say? Did it work out in the end? I think it has... Though I suppose this isn't the end.

I mean, we're not dead or mutilated or insane or well...

We're not dead yet.

Happy Days

You know that game, Fallout 3? Well, we ended up dressing up as Vault Dwellers this week. It was the first time we had... I suppose the word is "performed" for him since April Fools. He had left us alone, but then he came back and... Everything hurts.

So we did something stupid, I believe it is not a first there. We have done so many stupid things. Back when I was having dreams of the Slenderman, he made up so many crackpot ideas for "cures." We tried the ones short of surgery, hypnotism, electroshock therapy... The only one that worked was dancing around in rediculous looking outfits.

I suppose we are like cancer patients, we will keep fighting it, but we know that eventually we are going to give in, we are going to fail to confuse this thing and it will make us something we never wish to become.

But until then, we have memories, we have happiness. Isn't that the American dream? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Anyway, Autumn and I stayed pretty good friends since we met.

We went to the same Elementary School, then got separated when Dad sent me to this crappy Catholic School. The girls there were horrible and I don't mind saying that. I hated the time I spent there. Girls are harsh bullies...

He would have sent me elsewhere but I managed to convince him that High School was where I needed to be I really did not need to be some private schooled kid with no social skills. Anyway, we were somehow in the same homeroom. One of the few people who knew each other in there.

I can't remember which one of us decided that we should just let them believe that we were siblings, despite the different surnames. The great deception. We'd joke about it, how funny it was. How people just assumed. He'd be the older brother who'd make sure I was safe... I am pretty sure he did the whole "you break her heart, I shove your head so far up your ass that you'll be speaking through your bellybutton" thing on the guy who took me to Junior Prom. (Much to my chagrin.) Only a couple of friends knew about it, said they thought he liked me.

When his parents moved in next door, they thought it was a happy coincidence. Summer and Autumn. Sometimes I even wonder if it was fate.

I was seventeen, throwing stones into that lake that held such fond memories instead of working on that project that had a couple of days to go and we hadn't started. I remember the spring air. The smell of trees and flowers, the way the sun glittered on the water. It was a day unlike any other.

There was a smile on his face as he spoke up finally. There had been a lull in conversation "Let's run away."
"What?"
"Into the forest. You and me. We can survive off of fish and wild berries and when we fail we can go to that grocery store and steal from them."
I laughed at him. "You really think we could do that?"
"Of course. I also think that if you get a big enough slingshot and were on the moon, you could send a golf ball into orbit. Although only one of those might happen for me." He grinned.
"Make that none of those, there's not a chance I'm going to do that." I was still chuckling.

"You just don't want to leave your warm bed, don't you?"

I huffed and walked back toward the car, an old rusting, dark red, 80's Ford pick up. August loved it so much, I think he'd have driven it until either the axel broke or it would have killed us.

He put his hand on my shoulder. "Summer, wait."

I turned around. And he kissed me and I kissed him back and all those feelings welled up inside me and they felt real, physical for the first time. Those butterflies in my chest were flapping around like headless chickens! I read about it, Love.

I was jaded enough to think it would never happen to me.

We drove home in silence, a pleasant one, the sun was setting. We said our goodbyes.

The next morning, at school. I had stayed up all night, trying to work out some speech or other to tell him that what happened... That I wanted us to be friends. But he acted like it had never happened, he cracked a couple of jokes and I just forgot about what I was supposed to say.

I suppose I was too selfish realise that I'd hurt him, but I guess that's a different story, isn't it?
I never forgot about the kiss though. It was just that I was happy, and that this was something I have never regretted.

Apologies For Autumn...

Autumn was in a bad way last week... It feels like it's been less than a week but it's actually been more. Either way, I'm sorry you all had to see that. Slenderman came along, decided that our April Fools joke wasn't funny, and... Well, it hurt him more than it did me. He decided he needed to be drinking way too much for what is good for him. When he... He had me, Autumn decided to grab a hold of him, to try and stop him...

His hands  were badly blistered, so were his arms and my neck. It hurt, but I was worried for him. He took a few sick days from bar work. I mean, he never takes days off. Without the money I could probably keep us afloat, but

On the couple of days he had free, he read Wuthering Heights to me. I tried to tell him not to, but he insisted... Autumn is stubborn as a mule sometimes, it hurt when he read. You could hear the pointedness of his words, the pain.

The tale of a ghost story, he decided it would help... When you see things at night, with Autumn's arms around you, the scrawlings in your mind like on the walls of Catherine's chamber. And you see a ghost at the window, trying to get in... It is not difficult to see the similarities...

I ended up burning the book.

It only succeeded in scaring me more.

It was only when he came home and saw me there, that he held me tight and just said. "We are nothing like any of them..." That I understood. He was telling me that we were lucky, we may have the thin man, but as long as we dance we will be okay...

As long as autumn's here, we'll be okay.

Summer

tennis

Have you ever tasted strawberries and cream? It's fucking beutiful The english have this thing where they watch tennis and eat them. It's funny, we dressed up as posh fuckers and fuck I'm pised right now. Anyways, we dressed up as "posh gits" with deck chairs and just watched slenderman, eating our berries and cream?

It was pretty sweet.

The strawberies, and the fact we just... Well. Yeah, we gave him an anti show. He became our show. he was angry though. It hurt me, aned it hurt Summer because we april foolsed it... I never want to heaw that again...

Neverever ever.

Itb listered where He touched us, ignoring cvlothes. I

fuck I hate it. I hate it so much I dont' wanna put on a show but I ahve to. I dont want to lose her.

Reading

Since I can remember I spent my time with Summer. Football ( The English kind, not the American kind... What? They had the name first. We just appropriated it.) Tag, Hide and Go Seek. Anything really. In fact there was this one time when we were playing dodgeball with a few other kids, she said use the ball. There were two. So I picked up a basketball and threw it at her. She bounced it off her hand and it broke her finger. Of course I had to pay her back so she had me turning pages for her to read aloud for the next month. Charlotte's Web. I cried at the ending. (What? I was young and imaginative... According to Summer anyway...)

She taught me to read properly when my parents were out working. Doing something or other. They worked in a pharmaceutical company so they didn't have much time for me. They were either talking to doctors and selling drugs, or talking to the company and looking at what drugs they had to sell. I was pretty young really, and I missed them. But you know that thing about gifts not making up for bad parenting? They worked out pretty well with me.

When I was younger, I struggled with reading. So she put it upon herself teach me. She would bring in a book, set it down on my lap and say "Read." If I ever got somewhere that was difficult to pronounce, or I couldn't understand, then she'd spell out the sounds like she had been taught the same way. It... I suppose she was kind of an older sister to me.

You know what happens when you learn to read? You learn to write. I did as well. Poetry I guess was my thing when I was younger. But now I don't do it anymore. If circumstances were different... Maybe I'd have made something of myself. Somehow made it as a ghostwriter or something.

Actually that's doubtful. Very doubtful even, but I can dream.

Nowadays she rests her head on my lap, she asks me to read to her as I run my fingers through her long blonde hair. Jane Austen, John Buchan, J.K Rowling... if it's beautiful or exciting she'll let me read it. She says she loves the imagery in my voice. Sometimes, when I read to her, it's like I'm visualizing the places. The Thirty-Nine Steps of the novel, the sea, waxing and waning of waves, or the buzzing of the plane engine as it flies overhead.

Sometimes I realize I've lost myself so much in this book, reading, that I'm late for work.

I don't regret a second of it really.

I'm sure most of you know this. You do what you have to do to make your girlfriend happy.

The Shadow Spinner

I suppose the interesting thing about working at a bar is the people you meet. (I'm going to keep locations secret for now because I have no idea who may be reading.) To give you a general idea of how it's like, we keep a working blunderbuss under the bar. The boss man has been known to use it on people trying to buy us out. And it does feel a little comforting knowing that there's a fuck ton of scrap metal able to be projected out of the barrel at high speed toward someone trying to steal from us.

I don't pay too much attention about the whole being bought out thing, I just work there, serving drinks, making the occasional cocktail, from biker gangs to businessmen and as such you get all these funny stories.

Guys buying girls drinks is the funniest thing. Most of them act all cool, like they're not doing it at all because they want sexytime with such a women, just because they're flattering and sweet.

Or that time Batman walked in. (Yes, seriously. He was in a Batman outfit and growled at me for a beer. I think that classifies as (The Motherfucking) Batman.)

I was also propositioned twice for sex.

I declined. (Seriously, what the fuck is it with cougars and hitting on guys young enough to be their son? One of their responses to "I'm sorry I have a girlfriend." was "She can watch." I have never slapped a customer, but I was close at that point.)

You'd be surprised how much hard work it is, but they tip well enough to just about make rent and utilities whilst Summer's work as a councilor in the local high school gets us enough to eat and for the next show.

Occasionally I see a kid in a hoodie walk in with the hollow eyes and the stalked demeanor, asking for a glass of water. We offer food and shelter for a little while. It's not permanent, and it's not much, but I hear the stories. I've seen some of them happening as well. We know that we have it a little easier than most. So we do our part.

What we do...

It is kind of like that book, The Shadow Spinner.  I remembered it a while back, when we first began to see him. It is about a Sultan who asked each member of his harem he took to at night to tell him a story, if it bored him then he would kill her. Until he gets to Shahrazad. She survives for a thousand days, each night telling him a part of her story more exciting than the last.

We* do something so ridiculous and outlandish that maybe Slenderman believes we are on the same level as him, or maybe he sees us as court jesters and he keeps us alive because we're interesting.

Either way, it gives me a day longer with Summer, and for that, I would gladly die the next day.

Sometimes he vanishes like we scared him. Sometimes he comes closer, and sometimes he gets bored and wonders off.

One time I dressed up in a Slenderman costume, (It's pretty easy actually. Makes me wonder if some of those vlogs are fake...) mimicked his every move. He tilted his head, I tilted mine. He took a step forward, I took a step backward. The next thing I knew he was up close to me, and then he just vanished, like evaporated or something before my eyes.

I don't know if Slenderman spooks easily, but that time I couldn't sleep. It felt like I was mocking him... I suppose I kind of was but still...

For the record, screaming "In Brightest Day, in Blackest Night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power. GREEN LANTERNS LIGHT!" did a good job. He vanished pretty quickly for some reason. I haven't seen him since then.

And with that I leave you. If you find yourself near Chicago, drop us an email. We'll see what we can do to help.


Autumn

*See: I (Summer does do things, but it's my job to put myself between him and her. He is dangerous afterall.)