Flu Week

Title says it all.  Tuesday evening I started getting nauseous, and by midnight I'd puked out most of my stomach.  The next day wasn't much better.  Fever, fatigue, inability to eat anything except applesauce... it was a real blast.  I was feeling a little better by Thursday, but I didn't want to leave the house.  Same with Friday.  I guess being cooped up inside gave me this sense of security that I didn't want to lose so quickly.  I know I'm not really safe anywhere, but I can at least feel like I am.

Still, I'm not going to let this completely get me down.  The Cultural Festival is today, and I'm going.  I've missed school, I missed The Taming of the Shrew, and I'm not going to pour black paint over my life and shut everything out because I'm paranoid.  Alright, admittedly, I'm terrified.  I'm not going to let it defeat me so easily, I can't.  It's bright outside, I'll be surrounded by people, and it's such a great experience.

I'm still wary though.  If I see any of my friends, I don't want them to start asking questions.  I've had to deal with enough 'worry' and 'care' from my parents.  I don't trust them anyways.  They're pretenders.  I saw them laughing at me on Tuesday when I was leaving school... before I got sick.  Like they knew.  They were laughing.



I'm sorry I haven't posted to you for so long.  I was sick... I wasn't exactly fit to pour out my thoughts to a computer screen.  But I missed you.  I'll be back later tonight.

It's Hard

My last post... I wasn't in the best state of mind when I wrote it.  That should be obvious.  I'd go back and clean it up, but I don't want to change the record of what this entire situation has been doing to me.  I didn't know a person could get this way.

I guess I should start with what actually happened on Thursday.  I was a little out of it... I suppose I'd have to be to want to go to Iverson.  I was just tired of sitting and waiting for something to happen, I guess.  I wanted to make it happen.  I took my rosary because, honestly, I thought it would help somehow.  It comforted me, it helped me feel like I had some security leaving the house.  I didn't feel safe, but...

Whatever.  The trip there was uneventful.  When I finally did get into the parking lot, I could feel this... oppression.  The air itself had a weight that made it hard to breath.  It made my heart race.  I walked past the playground to the closest building, because I wasn't quite ready to go into the woods yet.  They seemed shifty.  Untrustworthy.  It turns out it wasn't just the woods.

The wind grew still as I approached, and all noise seemed to die away.  In the window I could see the reflection of the playground, a few little kids hanging around it and running after each other on the wood chips.  After a moment, I stopped dead in my tracks.  I hadn't seen anyone on the playground.  The sharpest of chills went through every bone in my body as my eyes locked on the window, afraid to look anywhere else, afraid to confirm my suspicion that I was seeing something not there.  The silence grew more absolute in my stillness, and then cutting through it all was the sound of children's laughter.

I felt like breaking down then and there, but I couldn't move.  I'd lost all control of myself, helpless, able only to watch as the figures moved as one toward the edge of the window, staring at something that was not reflected back to me.  I could only see their faces, a mixture of curiosity and fright, as they inched closer and closer to the edge.  Then an arm slid barely into the picture, an arm longer than any human arm could be, and wrapped itself around those poor souls.  As they were pulled off, I knew that I was the last person who would ever see them.

A scream shook me to my very core and gave me the scared energy I needed to take command of my legs and turn around, but the source was hiding itself from me.  It was only a scream.

I took a deep breath and made my way toward the woods.  I remembered reading in a book.. maybe Frank Herbert's Dune.. fear is the mind-killer.  I wasn't about to let fear of a thing conquer me.  I was going to face it.

The next few minutes are a mess in my mind, like trying to remember a night of one too many drinks.  Images of the trees coming closer and closer, then surrounding me... and then one of the trees was not what it seemed.  It had a suit and a form, and.. and I think it reached out to me.  Then that horrible fucking laughter again.. I tripped and fell backwards in my haste, dropped my rosary, scrambled to get up...

In nightmares, a lot of people say that the ground starts to rock underneath them.  They fall, try to get up, and fall again.  They know something is coming, they know they have to get up, but they can't, and that's the part that's the nightmare.  This is all I can remember until I got back to my car.

I didn't have my rosary.  I didn't care.  One of my most prized possessions, and I had no desire to go back for it.  What has this done to me?

The weekend's been keeping me busy with homework and graduation stuff.  I haven't had much of a chance to think about it, but I had to get this out eventually.  I had to.  Sometimes I feel like this blog is the last thing I have left.

what is it

i dont even know anymore i feel like i never knew what it was even though i thought i did its so much more so much worse i saw it and it saw me and


MY ROSARY

if i ever thought GOD could have saved me i dont think it anymore nothing can nothing there is nothing in my future

i look and i see the dark and i see the emptiness of that face boring into my soul taking it for itself
lost
i am lost already is there hope?
it is a hunter.  I realize it now, that's all it is.  It hunted ten years ago, and it was satisfied for a while, but some of its prey escaped and now the hunt begins anew and I'm all that's left, and it almost had me i barely got away

Is there anything left for me?




that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter

Captivity

I don't feel safe anymore.  At all.  I'm writing this from my basement.  I've boarded up the window and barricaded the outside door, I'm below the ground, and I still don't feel safe.

I started seeing it a couple days ago from my bedroom window.  At least, I think I did, and that's the important part, isn't it?  Reality exists only in the mind, and for that part, I suppose, it's real, and the fact that I saw it is real.  It thinks I can't see it, standing there in the woods, but I see it.  I see it all now.  I can't hide from it, but it can't hide from me.  Hide and seek!

Hide and seek isn't fun.

I also don't know who to trust anymore.  For a fine example, take the shining bastions of hope and comfort that are my parents (rather, that parents are supposed to be).  "Jon," they started on my when I got home from school, "We've set you up with an appointment for a doctor.  We're worried about your health."  Well, they didn't say it that way, my mom did.  My dad just sort of nodded along.

Thankfully they haven't bothered me since I came down to the basement, because I feel like if they were to come down and try talking to me, something very bad would happen.  They went behind my back, they're trying to take me outside the house when it isn't safe and when there's no reason for me to be outside, they think something's wrong but they don't know the fucking half of it anymore, they think they can fix it, they could only fix it if they're part of the problem

Are they part of the problem?  Maybe they're a problem in themselves.  Maybe I can't stand to be in the same building as them anymore because their concern and their compassion reek of secrecy.  They're not telling me something, something that they're discussing only between themselves.  Why else would they have hushed themselves so quickly on my walking into the room?  But I don't care.  If this thing gets its way, they won't have to worry about me soon enough.



What if I haven't seen anything at all?

No, God damn it, it's making me second guess myself.  That's got to be its game!  It tortures you with paranoia and self-doubt until you believe nothing, until you go insane.  But it won't get me.  I know its fucking game now.  It won't get me to lose the last vestiges of sanity, what little my mind may hold on to.  I may not look it, but I'm sane.  It's my family and friends who have the problem.  I know its game.

Fine, if that's what it wants, I'll play ball.  It may be around my house, it may not be.  It may be watching me, I may be watching myself.  But I know where it is.  This time I'm not taking a camera, I'm taking my rosary.

Jason

Jason and I have been friends for about four years.  We really started hanging out towards the end of eighth grade, having banded together to try to work through our horrible science class, horrible because we were literally expected to teach ourselves.  I think it was the humor -- we're both pretty funny guys, and the projects we did together were always comedic.

Lately we haven't seen as much of each other, but he's still a really good friend.  He also likes to get into some of the more interesting things in life... we've actually gone on ghost hunts together.  Unsuccessful ghost hunts, but you get the idea.  He's smart and open minded, and I guess that's why I decided to try asking him for help.

"Hey, Jason..."  It was our second hour AP Writers Workshop class.  Everyone else was too busy talking to each other and not actually doing classwork to pay any attention to our little conversation, so I felt secure enough to bring it up.  He turned to me immediately -- I guess I must be looking the part of a paranoid mess, because he already looked concerned for me.  Damn, less than a month and it's already taken this kind of toll?

"Yeah?  Oh, before you go on, I signed the both of us up for The Taming of the Shrew.  Anyways?"

"Oh, great.."  The Taming of the Shrew.  A free show is being put on for English classes next week, and I asked him to sign me up.  I'd almost forgotten.  I almost didn't care anymore, but then again, in times so harsh and uncertain to as fragile a mind as my own had become, a little Shakespeare was a much-needed positive to look forward to.  "Right, well, have you ever heard of.."  I paused.  I couldn't say it.  That horrible fucking face was staring back at me in my minds eye, daring me to utter what it had come to be called, and I couldn't take the challenge.  "Have you ever heard of things.. like.. from other dimensions?  Things that are in our world, but aren't from our world?"

He blinked a few times and leaned over the table, his voice lowering.  "Nothing that's real.  Jon, tell me what's wrong.  You've been looking terrible for weeks, you haven't been talking to people, and it seems like it's getting worse.  What is it?"

"Nothing."  I averted my eyes.  "What was the name of that Metallica song you played in speech class after you read that Lovecraft story?"

"The Thing That Should Not Be?"

"Yeah."

"What about it?"

I paused again.  I wanted to choose my words carefully, but I knew that I'd already dug myself into a hole with this conversation.  "Maybe you should consider that some things might be real.  Things that you wouldn't think should be, or could be."

"What the fuck are you talking about?  Jon, I want to help you out, alright?  I'm worried about you.  But I can't if you're so vague.  Say something definite for once.  You know I hate it when you act like this."

I'd been worrying him, and now I was worrying him more.  This wasn't helping either of us, so I ended it by going to a computer and pretending to work on my short story.  I actually did think for a minute about the subject matter I'd chosen -- an apocalyptic allegory for Genesis, but this one ended in despair rather than creation.  But then I thought, how could there have been despair if nothing was created?  In the long run, they are one and the same, and God is an eternal sadist.




I'm so sorry, Olivia.

Iverson

I finally went there today.  I couldn't sit here anymore, I just had to... just to see it again.  Just to see what there was.  So what was there?

Nothing.

To be fair, I didn't stay very long.  As the minutes passed, I felt more and more that I wasn't alone, but it was more than that.  Being in someone else's house when you're not sure you should be is similar, but infinitely less sinister than what I was sensing in those woods.  I took some pictures, so I'd might as well share.

Iverson's playground.  It's amazing how playgrounds are still fun when you get older.

One of the buildings.  Not sure what it's used for.

The river's been high since the snowstorm.

Dirt trails are nice when they're not so muddy.

The river again.  Other side looks spooky.

My camera started acting up right around here.  It wouldn't focus properly and I had to try a few times to actually take the picture.

Again, blurry... maybe I turned right when it finally took the picture.  I don't really remember.

Couldn't tell you what the blur on the left is about.  Another building of whose purpose I'm unsure.

I don't even know...

Iverson usually looks prettier when it's not so damn wet.

I didn't even know this was here before.  Modern art?

This is the replacement for the one that burned down.  I only see it open in the winter though.

Path back up from the toboggan runs.

I started getting a headache halfway through taking these, and by the last one I felt too uneasy to stay.  I could feel eyes on me everywhere, even though I saw nobody.  Besides, my camera ran out of battery by then.

Disappointingly uneventful, but the feeling of the place... it feels wrong.  Dead?  Not quite dead, no.  Why can't I have the eloquence of Shakespeare, that I could put the sensation into words and share it?  He would know how to say it.

I'm definitely talking to Jason on Monday.  It's obvious that on my own, I'm getting nowhere, and in the meantime the isolation and inability to deal with the idle troubles of everyone around me is killing me faster than whatever this thing is doing.  I know it's after me.  I feel it in my sleep, I see it for the briefest of seconds when I turn a corner or open a door, only for the image to vanish before me.  I just wish it would make a God damn move already.

Parents, Snow

First of all, fuck Wisconsin.  Snow in the middle of April is something that shouldn't happen.  Should never happen.  Just happened a couple days ago.  As if my days couldn't have gotten any more depressing.  It's almost gone by now, but the fact remains.  Snow.

Naturally, Jill hasn't talked to me since that last conversation.  Nobody else really has either, actually.  I suppose I can't blame them -- I haven't been the most sociable myself.  I haven't been sleeping lately -- no dreams, just can't sleep.  It's been making me irritable, and people don't want to talk to me quite as much.  Usually people love to talk to me.  I haven't had a decent conversation all week...

The worst part about it all is my parents.  You know how friends will ask you what's wrong when they sense something amiss, and they want to seem concerned, but you know they're only doing it for pity's sake?  My parents have been doing this to me in-fucking-cessantly.  "What's wrong, Jon?  Oh, you seem down, what's wrong?  What's the matter?  Aren't your friends talking to you?  Haven't you been sleeping right?  Why won't you finish your dinner?  Have you been keeping up on your homework?"  I love my parents, but shut the fuck up.  Please.  I only worry I'll lash out at them somehow and make the whole thing worse.

There's this prevailing sense of dread every time I go outside.  On my way in from school today, I swear to God I felt someone behind me.  There was nothing, of course.. nothing... but you can't just ignore feelings, can you?  Especially given the circumstances.  I can't even look out the window at night anymore for fear of seeing what I don't want to see, what can't be unseen... and the whole thing is weighing down on me like my own personal cross.  Loneliness.  Isolation.  Jesus carried his with only the strength of his own body and will, and perhaps the grace of God.  It seems I'm doing the same, but do I have His blessing?  Maybe it doesn't have to be alone.  Maybe... I'll try talking to Jason.  Maybe he's my only shot.

Regardless, I'm going to Iverson soon.  I don't know if I'll find anything there, but I'm not going to sit and let this happen anymore.  I refuse to let myself be driven mad through my own idleness.  I need to feel like I'm accomplishing something, otherwise what's the point of it all?  Without that small comfort, I'd might as well just end myself.