Smiling Man

Smiling Man, oh Smiling Man, that wicked skull can grin. Have you met the Smiling Man? Mr. Jack.

Jack Skellington.

Fracture has a lot of theories on what exactly the smiling man is. New fears don't just sprout out of no where and the Smiling man is a very specific fear of a very specific set of usually appreciated social behaviors.

Fracture theorized that this fear of being treated well piggy backed on a fear of strangers, Father's territory, and as such the smiling man was potentially a very specific aspect of Father given new life through broad recognition of Father but in a way irreconcilable with what Father is at the very core of its being causing it to split off or be forcibly split off.

Fracture believed this to be the culprit.

Its just... sickening.

He even goes so far as to give them both flowers...

But that's just one mad man's theory, and fuck that asshole. Fuck you fuck face.

And fuck the fucking Smiling Man.

Nat's absolutely convinced it's not really him... that it's this guy from her past, 'Writer', pretending to be a Fear. But that doesn't seem to be as comforting as you'd think it would be.

I've caught her shaking, heard her wake up in the middle of the night breathing heavily, seen her frantically jump and look over he shoulders when ever she brushes something. She's absolutely freaked. It's heart wrenching to watch her make a complete 180 from her confident bold self to scared and panicked at the first sight of a flower.

We've been hulling ass since that last run in with him. Neither of us wants to risk another run in.

You don't realize how damning he is when you first meet him. He laughs. He smiles. He speaks in a charming french accent.

But for all my running around the room, I couldn't get away from him. For all our fighting we couldn't stop or kill him, not really at least. Fuck, he went so far as to lean into my shots to make sure I'd hit him so I could see how pointless it was. He fucking filled our car with flowers in the five minutes we were away from it. He LET us dig our way into the car to drive off. He LET us go.

For all that speed, ability, and those sharp fucking claws, he could have just ended us at any time.

But he just follows you. Talks to you. Informs you of how rude you are.

You can't even try to talk back at him. He ignores your counter points and just keeps picking away at you.

I hope to god we don't have another run in because one of these days he'll catch us while hes in a sour mood and that'll be the fucking end of us.

Quite frankly, given my history with the Smiling Man and assuming it really is him, I'm surprised I survived any visit from him...

Fucking Jackass

If it's not one fucking thing, it's another. Fucking Writer showed up again today. He'd dumped a bunch of flowers in our motel room, then snuck up behind us while we were getting our shit together to get the hell out. The sick son of a bitch was trying to play with us, jumping around and using his Loop bullshit to make sure we couldn't stop him. As satisfying as it was to stab and shoot him repeatedly, it lost it's charm when the motherfucker just kept getting up.

After a bit of that we decided to switch tactics and just get the fuck out-but the bastard had dumped a fuckload of flowers in the car, so we had to dig them out so the pedals and seats were accessible. There are still random flower petals everywhere and the whole car REEKS of perfume. Writer followed us out to try to taunt us while we tossed the flowers out of the car, and I'm pretty sure Sloth pissed himself at one point, but we managed to get out there without much further trouble.

YOU LOSE AGAIN YOU TWISTED JACKASS. BITE ME.

Reiterating

I guess...?

Nat's mad at me. She wants me to talk about the uh... abduction.

We were abducted. By two men pretending to be cops... or maybe they were crooked cops. I don't know.

I know they pulled us over. Then one of them started saying a bunch of sexist things to Nat along the lines of how she should be 'on her back with her ankles to her head.' You know, class stuff like an asshole would say.

She really kept her cool. I was impressed. He had started humping the door between them before Nat finally snapped and pounce on the asshat with a knife. The she got tasered by the other one. I looked up at he and he shot me in the forehead with his other ready taser. That sucked.

Passed out. Guess I should be lucky I didn't get a stroke... or a heart attack... or fucking brain damage.

I woke up naked, arms tied above me with rope and hanging off a hook.

The guy in the room was setting up a camera.

"We're gonna give Fracture a little show and see if we can't get him to give us a little bonus with a home movie," laughed a man dressed as a butcher. Kinky.

Homo-erotic, as Fracture might say.

So that dumb ass put his back to me. I got to getting out of my ropes. Fun fact, rope is weaker than metal hooks. If you can shimmy it right, you can cut yourself free on your own hook.

Or slit your wrist. Both are better than torture.

I rolled the dice and won, freedom.

I picked up a fire extinguisher at me feet. I get the sense that the finally for my little show was to be set ablaze as there was also gasoline in the room. Such class when they try to burn my ass.

So like I was saying, Fire extinguisher. Bashed the butcher's head in from behind.

That when Nat broke into the room for a peep show. Apparently, she had killed everyone else.

So we collected our effects, stole a new car from among those around the little abandoned hut in the middle of the desert we were in, and kidnapped the coked out druggy Nat found in one of the rooms.

Here a little bonus update of events since then, I took the coke addict out when Nat was napping. I dressed her up to look like Nat, bought her some knives, and then send her to a homeless shelter to try to 'fix her life.'

Should throw any on the border pursuers off our tracks.

Enjoy the crack head Fracture.

Fuck you Mexico, back to the land of Freedom Fries and Dutch toast!

Sloth out.

Love

I had a Dream about a child and it's Mother.

They were on a stone walk way. A side walk maybe. It was a dirty place. They themselves were ratty and filthy, dressed in outfits that were either hand-me-downs or thrift shop purchases.

The mother looked so tired. She marched down the street determined to get home but given her state she could have found rest just as easily in the middle of the street as she could her house. From a glance you might notice her bruises and the finger marks in her skin and figure she was worn down from an unpleasant domestic situation. If you took a minute to talk to her, you would probably assume it was work that had her so spent given the various complaints about it she was willing to give to any ear she could find willing to pay her any mind.

And if you stopped to watch her for a while and realized she dragged that child along everywhere she went, you'd probably realize that its a great many things that has her so down. A man, if she even has one, seems to be the least of them.

And I watched them for a while. They were an oddity. Before I realized it I wasn't watching them anymore.

I was looking up at my Mother as she dragged me around from place to place.

'Other people are so tall,' I lamented to myself. 'Wish I could be tall'

I couldn't remember a time where I had ever saw someone short like me. Just my mother and the blur of normal people we passed by as she took me from place to place. They never had people like me with them. No one to drag around. I must look so odd.

I wanted to ask why I was the only short one here but I didn't feel like getting thrown against the wall today so I kept to the rules and didn't talk.

Hate those stupid rules.

But I saw something as we passed an alley... made me stop which made my Mother stop in turn. I had never done that before. She looked at me with a confused look before following my eyes down the alleyway until she saw what I saw.

A body. The body of a small girl, another little person like me. There are others...

"Oh. Poor child."

I bit my lip a moment before finally venturing to talk. "Ch-... Child?"

"Yeah... like you. A kid."

"A little person..."

"Yeah I guess. Not like you won't be as tall as me when you're my age. In fact, you'll probably be taller."

I was in a world of wonders. There are others. And we change. One day, we get tall!

"Me and her will be tall one day?" I asked so I could be sure I was understanding right.

"You will. She won't. She won't ever do anything ever again. She isn't alive anymore."

"... Alive...?"

She rose an eyebrow in confusion at my question. "Yeah. You know what that is right? You can't possibly be this dumb."

What... is alive. I'm alive I guess? If I give her life, can she do things again?

"What does it mean to... 'be alive'?"

Mother stared at me for a good long while, as if it was somehow inconceivable that I didn't know.

'How would I?' I thought to myself. No one had ever yelled it at me in the street in passing trying to get me to move. Where else was I supposed to learn?

It felt bad. Like maybe, something was wrong with me. 'Why don't I know the things I'm supposed to know?' I wondered to myself as she stared at me bewildered by my ignorance.

"Well... let me show you," she said as she pulled out a thin metal object. "I want you to focus on this sensation," she told me as she slit my throat.

I tried to scream in pain but there was no sound anymore. I started to feel heavy. God it hurt so bad. I fell to my knees, my brain racing trying to comprehend what had just happened. Trying to sift through the rush of agony and the surge of adrenaline.

I reached out toward my Mother as my vision blurred. I cried out for her in a hoarse voice but barely any sound made it out.

Wh-What was happening? How do I make it stop?

Oh my god, the red stuff is coming out! I can't get it go back in. Its everywhere!

"That rush. That's life. And sensation of loss. That's life. That confusion and desperation in the face of a hopeless situation. That is life. That pain, that inescapable all consuming pain as everything gets taken from you slowly turning the world into an incomprehensible blur of misshapen monsters, THAT IS LIFE. I have done everything I can to keep you from that. So you'd be safe... but real love means keeping you safe from all pain for good."

I felt something grab my hair and lift me up. I tried to yell out in pain but I instead spit up blood as that metal implement got forced into my chest over and over again before Mother finally let go of me once more. I crumpled over onto the floor. I couldn't move and everything felt so cold.

"Remember that Mommy loves you. That's why she saved you like this. You'll be forever safe, right here with mommy. No more pain, ever.... can you hear me? I love you."

But I was gone by then. No more thoughts. No more sensation. Just darkness. Just the infinite black void. A place where I was nothing... but I was safe as nothing.

Fuck all of this crap

Fracture, stop sending incompetent idiots. Or maybe don't, because if you sent someone competent, one of us might actually get hurt. Still, sending rapists after a woman is cold, even for you. Don't you like to pretend you're better than that or something?

For those of you who aren't fuckface, here's how it went down. We were just about to hit the border when a couple of cops showed up out of nowhere. We weren't sure if they were there for the stolen car, just pulling us over out of boredom, or if they'd been bought, but it didn't much matter. Cops are always fucking trouble. ALWAYS.

These ones were pretty fucked up. Pigs tend to be sexist, racist pricks, but the one in particular who came up to talk right when we pulled over was the fucking worst. Rambled on and on about how women can't drive, about how I shouldn't be driving because I was a menace to everything on the road, and how I should be back in the kitchen or getting fucked.

I'll admit, I lost it. I killed that fucker right then and there. Turns out, I had good reason. His partner zapped me while I was killing him, and next thing I knew I was waking up chained to the ceiling listening to the assholes debating on whether they were allowed to rape me before they sent me in to get their money. If I hadn't managed to get free... Well, there were three of them, and they decided that they'd probably still get their money if they had their fun first.

The idiots came in one at a time, the first one planning on having his way with me, the other two investigating the silence. Those three went down fast too. No way in hell would I ever allow a rapist shithead to live. They had another woman chained to a bed in the room next to mine. I freed her before I found Sloth, and then we got the fuck out.

You act so fucking high and mighty, and yet this is the kind of scum you're willing to give your money? Fuck you. We're still alive, and we're staying that way.

Fenrir

I had a dream about a wolf.

The wolf was a monster by its very nature but that was a fact it could not accept. So it sought out people it thought could help it understand itself so it could better itself and learn to repress urges the world at large would view as bad or monstrous.

What it found was pain and betrayal. The wolf was caged. Tortured. Experimented on in the mindless pursuit of causeless knowledge. Man is always so quick to try to know what they can't truly grasp.

Its debatable if what entered that building was a foul beast or simply a wolf, but what broke out was a monster. Angry. Hungry for vengeance. Desperate to see what it considered to be justice.

And the wolf found allies. First among the morally ambiguous, then amongst those others would consider good. But for all his efforts and all he did with all his power for what he had been taught was right, his involvement only seemed to make things worse and get his friends and loved ones killed.

In the wake of possibly losing the one person left that he held dear, the wolf gave into its darker nature and fed on those that posed as a threat to her safety.

But the damage was done... she would never be okay again... and she would never be unable to see the wolf as anything but a monster again.

But at that point he didn't care anymore. When he gave in and started to feed himself in all the horrific ways he had denied himself before, she stopped being a thing he loved and started being a trinket. A trophy of his victory, not too unlike the pile of bodies he now called his bed.

The world would forever curse him and call him a monster. But he would know better. He knew that he was one of their betters. That they were lowly little humans. Men. Mortals. All of them, just animals.

But he was God and this was his right, to be strong and tower above all before him and feed on whatever he liked.

Which was everything, but the poor girl at his side.

It was quite a nightmare.

I'm a fucking action hero

Since you're reading this, we're obviously both still alive, Fracture. You failed. Again. Fuck you.

For everyone who isn't fuck face, this is how it went down. After my last post, we got a threat from Fracture saying that we'd be dead before we hit the border. So he knew we'd gone down to Mexico, good for fucking him, right? I wasn't too worried, though I kept my guard up because doing otherwise would have just been stupid.

I have to admit, I was not expecting the attack to come at a random gas station in the middle of nowhere. But it did. A group of them came at us while we'd split up to refuel and get more food and shit. I killed the three after me without too much difficulty, then I had to go save Sloth's ass. Again. He's surprisingly high maintenance for someone who's managed to survive as long as he has.

We thought that was the end of it, but then we discovered that one of them had stolen our car. Which they immediately tried to use to run us down. Cowardly shitstain. We got the hell out of the way, and the guy drove off with our car and our supplies. I stole another car and we took off, aiming at that point to get away long enough to stitch up our wounds and shit. No such luck, our old car and a couple others came tearing after us.

I outran the other two cars, but our old car was hot on our tail, so I gave Sloth the driver's seat while still tearing down the highway, swapped over, and shot out a tire on our old car. It was at this point that I realized we needed to get our shit back if we could manage it, so Sloth did a very tidy turn around and got me close to the old car. This is where shit got really intense. I darted out of the car, across the highway to our old car, while the other two cars caught up and started shooting at me. I managed to not get shot while I crossed, then used the car door from the old car to protect myself while I pulled shit out of the car. The idiots from the other cars got out to try to shoot me, while I darted back across the highway to Sloth, and we sped off leaving the idiots in the dust.

We're gonna be juuust fine. I guess your people are as stupid as you are, fuckhead.