All bathroom cabinets in Marcus Ward will be leaking black sludge from 2am to 6pm. Do not look at the sludge. Do not interact the sludge. We know that it smells bad. But there are dire consequences for those who ignore our instructions. The sludge will be gone at the scheduled time.
Another billboard has come to life and is currently on the loose. This billboard has been dubbed with the name Kyle, and exhibits an ability to change the poster displayed on its face at will. It was last seen with a "Tchivsky's Levitation Night" poster in Avery Ward. Report any signs of movement.
The Underground Tunnels are closed for repair. It is recommended that you learn teleportation, or learn the Old Crow Song until the Tunnels reopen.
--Taken from the community billboard in the Rec Center. There are no Underground Tunnels...right?
The moon was bright and full, visible even as the waning sunlight cast a purple glow on the remaining clouds.
I watched as they drifted lazily around the celestial body, and soon they covered its face, cutting off its light.
This was a mistake.
A single blade of red light fell to the ground , slicing its way through the offenders.
The clouds screamed; not an audible one, mind, but one you heard with your very soul. Scarlet bled into the clouds, creating a beautiful corpse. The moon stared at the town of Misery like a bloodshot eye.
I stared at the spot where the light fell, and I shudder to think of what would happen if it had fallen on someone.
The stars themselves cower from the moon, their light dimming to avoid offending it.
Time stopped.
For a few hours actually.
I only know this because a few of the townsfolk and I were able to move around in this frozen world. Apparently this is a regular occurence, and a few were excited (mostly retail workers and a few of my fellow students) while others saw it as a nuisance.
I noticed that it was only humans that moved around in the frozen world--I could approach angels and demons with no repercussions, or I could see a mermaid in mid arc; I could even catch up to the elusive peacock that runs around my neighborhood.
According to Lucas, the boy who wears welding gloves everywhere, the time stop is for those born under certain constellations. Which one is on a cycle, and apparently its the Dancer’s turn.
Most people use the opportunity to cut class or steal from the convenience store; the more responsible ones use the time to catch up on their work.
I....used it to read. I had a lot of books to catch up on, and hours of time that didn’t pass? Of course I abused it.
Micah Prince invited Julia to a party at Rock Coast, the beach characterized by broken stones and ship sinker boulders that was a popular swimming spot for the MSAA students. Feeling that I needed to expand my social circle, Julia...strongly suggested that I should come with.
She also said that I had to bring grilled chicken. That was non-negotiable.
When we arrived, the Coast was buzzing. A virtue of being popular Micah Prince, I suppose. Old faces and new mingled, some of them friendly. A few of them were posturing while slightly cutting into their ego. Some were playing games, throwing around a ball or skipping stones into the water. There was a circle around a pentagram made of rope that held a snake eye trapped in amber in the center; and the circle was chanting around it. Julia pulled me away from them before I could question it.
Micah was talking to Sara and Kurt when we arrived, and waved at us to acknowledge our arrival. Sara smiled at Julia, but then glossed over me and went back to the Prince. Kurt, however, purposely caught my eye, and gave me the glares to end all glares. The boy who was already soaking wet had complete hatred and malice in his eyes. Readers, I definitely shrunk into myself. The look was only broken when Lucas threw a chunk of chicken at him, and Kurt broke away from his conversation to give his brother a verbal lashing.
Lucas carrying chicken brought my attention to the only constant among the gathering: everyone had grilled chicken. In a bag or a bucket, or a plastic case or a plate, the scent of chicken filled the air.
Micah clapped his hands to get everyone’s attentions. “Is everyone ready to dive in?” He was met by a raucous response. Micah did that smirk that meant something was about to go down, and opened his container. “Let’s give the mermaids what they want!”
I paused for a bit, but everyone else grabbed their chicken by the handful and threw them into the black water. Julia elbowed me. “Come on. They won’t let you swim unless you give them an offering.”
My curiosity got the better of me. I lifted my own plastic bag and removed the chicken, chucking it with everyone else.
A few seconds of silence was all there was. Then bubbles rose to the surface, growing into frothing. Then....the creatures.
Grey scaled beasts with shark like tails emerged from the depths, their razor teeth tearing into the feast we gave them. Some arced like dolphins to grab at the chunks while others clawed at the scraps. When Julia saw my awed...slack jawed face, she leaned in. “They’re the Rock Coast Mermaids. They’re cool if you feed them...unlike the other Mermaids.”
I gave her an incredulous look.
When the creatures vanished, and the frothing died down, Micah whooped and ran into the sea. The rest of the party cheered and followed after him. I kept glancing at the water, and with a heavy sigh followed at their heels. I had no reason to not trust them....though those teeth would stick with me for a while...
His name is Kurt.
The boy who is always soaked to the bone. While he didn’t give me his name himself, his older brother, Lucas [the one who wears the welding gloves everywhere] happily gave it to me.
Kurt has no friends by choice. Anyone who approaches him is immediately met with a paragraph long verbal lashing.
He’s always wet, as if he had just crawled out from the ocean. It is not sweat either; the custodian Principal Lee Anders has assigned to him claims that it is actually lake water. How she acquired this information, though, she wasn’t keen on giving.
Everyone had to take shelter in their nearest building today as a massive swarm of demons flew over the school.
They choked the windows and covered the walls, and the buildings creaked when the motes squeezed.
Misery was known for its high Angel-Demon population, but this was an insane number even for the town.
The demons struggled to get in for a few minutes before they started to disperse. When the demons left some openings the braver kids decided to go and check what was happening.
According to them, Lee Anders was walking around the grounds with no protection at all, screaming at the demons through a megaphone. "Disperse! Disperse! Disperse!" Wandered into the classrooms as more and more demons retreared.
The whole ordeal was 10 minutes long, and class resumed shortly after.
I've began to notice that most people keep track of when Colem Arth dies somewhere. When I asked why, they turned me to the dark science majors who live in Aspen Ward.
The dark scientists have discovered a weird side effect to Colem's curse. When he dies 4 times in a single place, nothing else can die in that place. They have extra stipulations, such as:
Dying 2 feet away from the location of the first death counts as dying there
The effect covers a maximum of 2 acres
The effect doesn't prevent woundings, unless the wound in and of itself would prove fatal.
Though they aren't prevented, wounds are meaningless. Fingers can be reattached, and cuts close immediately. The wounds are only permanent if they are still there when the victim leaves said area, upon which normal healing resumes.
This has only happened three times. The first place is, obviously, Colem Arth's house. They say he uses it as a safety zone when he gets sick of the whole dying thing, and that sometimes when he's absent he's just hiding at home to avoid getting hit by a truck or something equally terrible.
The second one the dark scientists refuse to tell me about. They gave no reason why.
The third site is the most well known location and the site where the 2 acre rule was discovered.
This is site is called Lot 47.
Lot 47 is a vacant field outside of Marcus Ward that was supposed to be a new shopping centre to attract tourists, but lost it's funding at the last moment. Now it's over grown, reclaimed by the woods and littered with random steel pipes and piles of cinder blocks.
Kids use it for LARPing.
"What? That can't be right." I wasn't sure I heard the dark scientists correctly.
But they confirmed it. The day before the weekend, starting from right when school ends to when the sun sets, ayone from fhe sixth grade and below uses the Lot as the site of war games and intense LARPs. Since the plants there never die and are also subject to the healing rule, they don't have to worry about set up and clean up only involves reattaching severed limbs, which is why its so popular, or so the dark scientists claim.
(A few even admit to having played there when they were at MSAA, and that the only reason the sunset rule exists is because Demon Collectives like to stalk the Lot at night.)
Still sensing my disbelief, the dark scientists told me that there was Capture the Flag scheduled the coming weekend, and told me to be there and I would see. They refused to answer my questions about why Colem was at Lot 47 enough times for it to be a "No-Kill Zone" or what even causes the effect. I was left with more questions than answers.
Instead, I simply went to Lot 47 the day of Capture the Flag.
They brought actual weapons. Sharpened swords, axes, pocket knives, one kid brought a bow and arrows without practice tips. No one was allowed to unsheathe their weapons until they passed a (presumably) stolen street sign with '47' spray painted on it. They quickly broke up into teams and ran into the Lot. A few moments later, an airhorn broke the silence, and the games began.
I simply wandered around the Lot, observing. The kids did hack each other to pieces....sort of. Cuts didn't bleed. Limbs fell off, and the person who lost it would just groan or give their attacker a stink eye and pick up the limb, then run away. One sixth grader got his head cut off. His attacker helped him fix it on, the previously beheaded kid simply said thanks, then ran away.
The bow and arrow kid shot me by mistake. It hit me in the thigh, and I cried out from shock. But....I didn't feel it. There was no pain or anything. I could feel it wiggling around inside of me, but it was more like having a finger pressed really hard on my thigh than being stabbed. The kid ran up, said "You aren't playing right?" And asked for his arrow back. I pulled it out no problem, and there was no blood on it. I checked my thigh, and there was no wound. All the damage it did was saved for my jeans. The kid gave me a quick sorry and ran off to rejoin the fight.
As promised, the end of the game was signaled by another airhorn when the sun began to set. At this point I was hanging closer to the edge to avois getting accidentally maimed again, but as the airhorn went off, I noticed a few figures beginning to approach. Shadowy, indescript figures with a bunch of red dots across their form, slowly approaching the Lot....
I got pulled away by a larger sixth grader who said we had to go "NOW". He pulled me away, back towards where the kids had entered the Lot, and I could still feel the shadows watching us leave....
The coming school day I asked Mr. Lingua the talking aardvark about Lot 47. He kind of shrugged and said "No ones getting hurt." Which I guess is sort of right....
The older adults in town seem to want to forget about Lot 47 in general....
"You need my WHAT?" I had to take a step back. What would you do, Readers, if your principal asked for your blood?
Said principal casually drew a knife from his belt. "Your blood. The creature in there wants an offering."
"I would hope you knew better than to call a spirit a creature, Mr. Lee Anders." Prudence took the knife away from him. "That looked really threatening...."
"I'm a principal."
"Did you say a spirit?" I interjected. "Spirits haven't been seen in centuries..."
"Just because they aren't seen doesn't mean they aren't there. You're made of cells, no? Atoms? Quarks and gluons?"
"I-I guess....but--"
"Besides, magic can't hurt them."
"Nor should it." Prudence gave the principal a look. "The spirit should be appeased, not attacked. Which is why we need your blood."
"Why my blood?" I pulled my sweater sleeves down a bit. "Doesn't all blood work in spellwork?"
"This isn't spellwork, it's an offering. And your blood is....special."
".....No?"
"Yes. Your blood is....unchanged. It's what we call 'Unmisted'."
"....I've never heard of that."
"Its a local phenomena. But it just means that, for now, your blood is special. And sadly, that means you're a....delicacy."
I shuddered at the thought. "I--"
Principal Lee Anders stopped me. "This is our only option son. We need your blood."
I resisted for a bit, but eventually I gave in. None of Principal Lee Anders' spells worked, and Prudence's meditations gave her the same answer. My blood was the only way this would end.
Prudence carefully pushed my sleeve up and drew her knife. I clenched my eyes shut and turned away, and winced. Luckily she made the....incision on my arm instead of my palm. Principal Lee Anders quickly bandaged the wound while Prudence smeared my blood on her hands. I felt woozy; it was too much for me. The cut, the...ritual....
I tried not to throw up.
Prudence reached for the vines with both hands, and before she even touched them the vines fell away. Prudence glanced back at Principal Lee Anders, then tried to enter Building 17. However, she stopped short. "Ail'sur'ia..." She cursed. Prudence then gave me an apologetic look. "It wants you to come with."
Dear Readers, at that moment I spoke my mind.
"Are you guys going to feed me to a spirit?"
"Wha--no!" Prudence rushed to deny.
"No harm will come to you, Mr. Page." Principal Lee Anders came up and put a hand on my shoulder, and a chill went down my spine. "I swear it."
Our magician of a principal wrapped a silver thread around my wrist and Prudence's, then used golden confetti mixed with sand to draw a circle that hovered in the air around him. "Stay behind me at all times."
When we entered Building 17, the vines came up again, trapping us inside. The interior was destroyed; the walls were split by tree roots, and flowers grew at random intervals. Moss covered everything, and small glowing motes were the only source of light. It was warm, and the air felt wet.
I looked ahead at Principal Lee Anders, and he was smiling. "Let's do this."
[End of Part 2]
No one could enter Building 17 today. While it wasn't exactly because of the overgrown vines wrapping around the entire property, growing denser and knotting at any entrance, especially the door, they certainly helped.
My peers weren't exactly....affected by the blockage. They saw it as an opportunity to mess with their phones and have a break; two couples even decided to have a picnic right then and there.
Meiriam, of course, went to grab her father, Principal Lee Anders, who proceeded to do a particularly....intricate ritual that required dancing around the building, swallowing a stick of butter whole, and stabbing a statue made of some kind of melon with a firepoker.
The vines choking Building 17 blackened, but did not wilt. Apparently, this was not the intended effect, since Principal Lee Anders frowned, crossed his arms, and said "The woods rot serves to the feeding of his growth." Whatever that meant.
No one except me seemed to pay much attention to Principal Lee Anders as he tried to free the building several different ways, which includes: using wichfyre to burn the vines away [it didn't], talking to the vines using the language of flowers [from what I gathered, the flowers grown by the vines in response essentially said "fuck off"], and simply hacking at the vines with the firepoker.
There were ten minutes left in class when Principal Lee Anders decided to call for outside help.
I didn't expect my neighbor Prudence to show up, trying to ride her bike in her vestments; as an Oracle, the priestesses who followed the Goddess Aliurian, her garments were highly impractical. The vestments were designed to show off as much skin as possible, to display the jagged tree like scars that all Oracles had to bear.
Prudence approached the vines and pressed her palm against them, letting her eyes drift close. She stayed like that while my peers began to wander off, some moving on to their next class, while some outright skipped, using Principal Lee Anders attention to the blockage to leave without his notice. My next class still im Building 17, so I had to stay while the next group of students approached and were faced with the same problem as the previous period.
Prudence pulled away from the vines with a worried look, and pulled Principal Lee Anders aside to talk. They would occasionally point at me, which just made me hug myself and try to seem smaller than I already was. If they thought I had something to do with this catastrophe, they would be sorely mistaken; I still wasn't allowed to do the practical labs in any of the thaumaturgy classes.
Principal Lee Anders approached me with his hands behind his back, and Prudence followed, fidgeting with her mossy hair. They pulled me to the side, away from the other students.
"Story," Prudence began, wringing her hands. "We, uhm..."
Principal Lee Anders interjected. "We need your help, son."
"With....the vines?" They nodded. "I don't see how I can help..."
"It's not you, per se..."
"Your blood, Mr. Page. We need your blood."
[End of Part 1]
It rained today. This doesn't sound odd enough for Misery; it isn't.
It's what happened in the rain that concerns me.
Micah Prince, heart throb of MSAA according to Julia, and a man of many secrets, is the only one in my neighborhood with a fence. No one knows why this is. Nor do the Princes care, since the fence is grimy, warped, and has no upkeep at all.
Perhaps this is why.
When the rain struck the fence, runoff revealed two different messages.
The first was: "Q xuqhj veh q xuqhj. Q iekb veh q iekb." Running it through a few ciphers (as I did with most cryptic messages like this), revealed, when using Rot16: "A heart for a heart. A soul for a soul."
The second message didn't need translating. It simply said "If you love someone, you have to be prepared to kill them."
When the rain stopped and the fence dried, the messages disappeared.
I had the unfortunate expirience of being behind a car that was constantly falling apart.
Well, its tires were. As the person drove, their tires broke and fell apart into sand and dust, leaving trails behind. Despite the constant disintegration, they kept reforming, seemingly from nothing.
Still, the slant in the car and its uneasy handling lead me to believe that the car should be scrapped, or the person's liscence revoked. Probably the latter--I doubt the former would hold.
It was for a class on symbolism, and when I said the word everyone in class immediately hissed. One boy even dropped his human guise and revealed his true bat-thing form, and broke a window trying to escape (the panic I felt at that moment was worse than when I saw Colem die for the first time; I may have had a panic attack)
Apparently, Illumination is the name of the rival town that everyone in Misery utterly despises, even the town itself.
In every conversation I had, they would talk about Misery and Illumination as if they were two living entities. But I couldn't dig deep into that, since everyone had some kind of spiel about how much Illumination sucked, or how Illumination was the worst, and different variations that gave the same sentiment.
I was outside of the deli with Julia when it happened.
The deli is settled between the second and third lights of a series of four intersections. Every road was empty, and every light on Crown Street, which led directly into the Lower Marcus Ward, had turned green at the same time.
I assume the driver of the green sedan yelled out "Score!" to themselves, since the moment they turned onto Crown Street they immediately started to pick up speed.
They didn't even reached the second light before the hood collapsed onto itself, as if they had hit something. The car spun and struck a mailbox, knocking it over, and then finally stopped. Julia and one other passerby ran to save the person.
Before the police came to try and control the situation, I managed to get a look at the sedan's damage. It was curved, like it was trying to wrap around a pole.
Since there were no cars, I tried to find what the person hit, and was met with empty air.
I did hear....something. I couldn't determine the sound or the source, only that it was getting further away.
Instead of exploding, or being ripped in half, it became several other species of birds, including a couple of really beautiful pigeons, an albino macaw, a crow with four eyes, and a peacock.
The peacock now wanders around town, showing up in the most random places. Currently, he's nesting on top of my home.
Despite the fact that Kevin hates the peacock with a passion, and tries to attack him, the peacock will still go to the Marcus Ward.
The girl who lives with Micah Prince. He doesn't have a sister, so....a friend? A cousin? A girlfriend?
For some reason, I cannot remember this girl. Beyond this blog, I also keep a journal with me in case I get hacked or something gets corrupted.
I have four seperate journal entries about her. Nothing about a name, or anything weird--just how I've seen her around.
No one seems to know who this girl is, and when I asked Micah he agressively said "Don't worry about it," and left it at that.
I remember intending to approach the girl and ask but....nothing. I can't seem to remember her.
I'm making this post now in hopes to remember. Focusing on her seems to stop....whatever this is, but the instant I get distracted....
I had to write this post, dear readers, five times. That's how quickly I forgot this girl.
An entire forest grew around the town in an hour. It stayed for three hours, before dying, then vanishing completely.
No one could damage the trees, with axe or fire, which were both attempted. About 10% of them had blue leaves, and fruits in geometric shapes.
People who had nothing to fear, like Colem Arth, tried this fruit.
Colem turned into a statue of diamond. A few others grew crystal horns, or had a ringing quality to their voice. One girl, a 7th grader named Nancy Hewitt, had her eyes and tongue turned to crystal. Unlike Constant Lee Anders, Nancy Hewitt could still see and retained the ability to speak. These effects did not disappear.
Her name is Sara Powers. And she has a strange condition.
During my first week in Misery, I was required to stay after classes ended every day, as a sort of study hall to catch up on what I missed, as well as a seminar on the required extracurricular activities that they offered.
One of those extracurriculars was gardening, which provided the herbs for home ec, tea reading, and rootwork classes. It was also one of the only clubs that, by necessitiy, had its own building to itself, the greenhouse.
Sara Powers was a reserved and....let's say "abrasive" individual. Like 50 percent of Misery's population, she wore dark, concealing clothes, dark make up, and dyed her hair black, though streaks of her natural brown would occasionally peek through. Upon meeting her parents, it seemed like she was raised into the fashion, rather than choosing it like most of the Miserians.
She always seemed to be able to appear out of nowhere--I thought that this was her oddity, like Kurt's constant sweat of lake water or Anthony's apparent ability to talk to vehicles. However, my visit to the greenhouse proved that this was not the case.
When I entered the building, I didn't expect to see Sara in there. She didn't seem like the type to garden, or in fact care about anything that was alive.
She was kneeling on the ground, digging through a cherry red messenger bag and muttering to herself. She gasped, and pulled out a crude and shoddily crafted wooden mask.
I would have walked in and said something, but then Sara put the mask on.
Describing what happened is....hard. I could say it was like she shed her skin, but that wouldn't be accurate. It was more like her body was made of dual faced plates, and the plates were faced to the side that showed off Sara. But when she put on the mask, those plates flipped to reveal this new....creature? Entity fits better.
And yet, that description still doesn't do it justice.
What matters is that Sara was not there anymore. This new thing....she had skin that seemed to be made of polished wood. Her hair was made from the branches and trees of a willow tree, and she stood as tall as an oak. Her leaves covered the fact that she was completely naked, but it didn't hide the fact that she was levitating--my guess was so that she didn't harm the grass beneath her feet.
When this entity appeared, all of the plants in the greenhouse bloomed. Leaves stood and brightened to a healthy green; flower pods opened up and revealed dazzling heads; fruits ripened and herbs became ready for the picking.
It was like this creature was....
Spring. The word Miserians used to describe Not-Winter. I never understood it until now.
I had gasped. That was a mistake.
The creature spun to face me, and was just as shocked as I was that I was standing there right then and there. The entity grabbed her face and ripped it off; the plate ripple shifted back to Sara, and the crude wooden mask appeared in her hands. Her eyes were wide; mine were too, those hers were still the same pupiless yellow that the entity had, instead of her normal grey-green.
The entity. Spring.
Sara and I stared at each other for what seemed like forever. She began to countdown. "5...."
I was gone before she reached 4.
"The Sun is in Heliotrope. The Moon is in exile on the path of Diptera. S and P will become important in the future."
~Whistle; The blue tint in his eye suggests that he was high.
"Mommy, why does that boy keep dying?"
"I think it's more of an accident than a statement now."
~After Colem got struck by lightning
The Net was shut down today, which was inconvenient since everyone had some kind of project due.
So a girl with pink hair took the router and drew a circle around it with black sand (she carries a bag of it with her at all times....apparently). She whispered something to it, spat on it, then plugged it back in. Everyone had wifi immediately after.
She still won't tell me what she did.
"This isn't magic. This is the dark science--it's perfectly quantifiable.
....It's mostly quantifiable."
~Said by a cheerleader to a goth girl on how to summon a star god for their sociology project
"Meet me under the screaming tree when the moon starts to blink."
~A conversation I overheard between two students. Possibly a couple
"The red skull favours those who consort with beasts and corpses."
~Told to me by a flagpole with a face