Down Again (Call Center Blues)

Not much to say.

Ah ... so the call center I work for is a contractor for many major corporations worldwide, part of why I'm not actually allowed/supposed to mention names here, I guess. They're a good company, though, as far as I can tell.

Well recently I mentioned I lost my old posting. I don't think I mentioned the fact that they transferred me to a brand new contract with a first-time client, but they did. And ... then that client pulled out due to the fact that they were paying our department per-person per-hour, while almost no call volume came our way whatsoever.

It was easy and really pretty awesome, and well ... other than fighting off boredom (I'm good at fighting off boredom), 'no call volume' combines with 'unlimited internet access' to become 'absolutely amazing job posting.'

The free lunches end by the end of October. I'll have to transfer to yet another contract (my third this year, jebas), and ... that's stressful.

I think it's partly because I kind of had become settled. Attached, maybe. Other than the Ren Faire which I signed up for as early as humanly possible, I only missed like one day total ever. I bought a plant for my desk, got a bit settled, all of that. I was expecting to be with the contract until it ended or something better came about (something I'd like to do more than something that pays better; not living alone means I don't have to worry so much about my paycheck), I just ... wasn't expecting the contract to be gone so quickly.

They had nothing but compliments for the company as a whole, it just doesn't make business sense to keep a contract of that nature going when there's no call volume at all.

In practical terms, that means I get to go to another contract and finish training just in time for the Christmas ramp-up (because basically everything ramps up for Christmas, it's America, land of the consumerists.) Not only will it be a new contract with a new desk surrounded by new people and new work obligations with a new company line to toe (and probably different Internet restrictions, I think we're not allowed to use Google) - even assuming I get the offer to transfer - but it will be a veritable deluge of calls and probably mandatory overtime anyway.

Oh, and I created a kind of prototype map based on another map that I enjoy in Minecraft. So that was fun too.

Fucking Hell

I'm running on three hours' sleep and a shitload of caffeine, I'm tired, my giant gaping wound on my cheek hurts (and it'll feel so much better when I go apply peroxide to it, I'm sure), people suck, circumstances suck, fuck everything.

Drew the Death card as my card of the day. lololololol.

What are we transitioning to, eh? What major change is coming? I'd like to know. Would you like to know? I'd like to know.

Honestly nothing's been especially stable since I started this glorified, publicized journal, just in various states of disarray.

My car broke down. Key won't turn in the ignition switch. Like, at all, either copy. It's just stuck. Which means we can't turn the car on. Already spent money on getting it towed to the repair shop. Going to spend more money one way or the other to get it repaired, assuming they get their heads out of their asses and actually diagnose the goddamn problem.

We had to leave the car in a Wal-Mart parking lot for a day and a half (and oh, walking home in all that heat with a fever of my own was so much fun don'tcha know) because it got to the store just fine but it failed at existence when we tried to go home. Which meant in practice that at 7 AM Monday morning, Mom was dragging my ass (that went to bed at 3) out of bed and into the other car, in order to get it towed and I've already covered this part so let me just say that 8 AM is not a civil hour to be awake at, and most of the local businesses that aren't the repair places agree with me; they weren't open until 10.

I bought myself a LoL card with my paycheck money, and a pair of shoes because my old ones basically fell apart the other day, too.

I'm goin' to bed six hours before I normally would because I'm dead fuckin' exhausted (like, think queasy, about-to-throw-up, dead-eyed, caffeine-crash exhausted) and I get to do something I've missed so much since getting my own car - wait no, there's a reason I wanted one. Fucking public transit. I don't like busses. They reek, they're noisy, and one of them was involved in my hasty departure from public education. Oh, and you have to get up even earlier than you normally would in order to get there on time - it'll be prolly an hour bus ride to get where I'm going.

And I don't even know if the old 10-ride pass still works.

Oh, and all of these pens are dead. What, am I exuding an entropy field today? Fuck my life.

(And I feel bad for bitching, because no matter how much it sucks, someone else has it worse.)

"Real" Encounters With Mysticism

The melody of mermaids
keeps me awake at night
The eyes of starlit heavens
following me secretly

So I'm going to preface this post with the admission that I - like so many others in this world - was very, very stupid as a child. So that's out of the way. Now, I've hinted obliquely and outright stated most of the content in this post in other places on this blog, as well (yes that's me, yes I know what I'm saying, writing backwards isn't that hard until e starts looking like it's supposed to be ɘ).

TL;DR: Jibber-jabber about crazy metaphysical stuff. Wall of text inbound, though there are pictures at the end.
Let's get started. Alpha, hon, you'll probably want to stop reading about here. (I know, you don't use that name anymore.)

Tarot

So some of my first experiences with any kind of mystical, magical stuff, other than the rites and rituals associated with organized religion, came from tarot cards. Innocent, easy tarot cards. Even hardcore anti-pagan Christians will sometimes get a tarot reading, or their horoscope did. It varies from case to case.

I tend to have about a 75% accuracy, I'd ... wager, anyway, though I'm horrible at answering questions with it. But then, that's partly the kind of spread I prefer - the standard Celtic Cross 10-card spread seems to generally assess the entire situation and give a full breakdown of the entire life, up to the moment in question. Mom is better, and that's part of the reason I never have her do a reading on me.

There are such stories there.

Nowadays I do a simple one-card draw almost every day, for general guidance. Since getting obsessed with the Slender Man mythos I tend to draw the Nine of Swords with alarming regularity - which is kind of fitting: this is the card of fear and nightmares.

When I was younger, I had a tarot reading at a local Renaissance fair, done at cost from a professional. My question was fairly simple: what is my power/strength/ability?

I have a tendency to attract cards from the Major Arcana. Of the entire spread, I only remember one of the cards now, and that one The Magician. The answer, as the tarot reader interpereted it, was that my power was the ability to change others' perception - to effectively appear how I want to other people.

The "Spirit" and the Rain

So this next bit is going to be from the gullible mind of an impressionable, sensitive child. Take it for what it is.

I've known Alpha most of my life, though we've only really met face to face the one time. At one point (I was in college, I remember), he got caught up in this ... pseudo-cult thing. It was headed by a girl who I spoke to once over the Internet and then never again, really. He's since stopped talking to her, and he requested not to talk about it with him ever again. She was rather persuasive, and they had this belief that he was some sort of angel-knight to protect her. (Emphasis on the first part.) She was some kind of figurehead magic-woman. I'm fuzzy on the details, partly because he didn't really talk about it much to me at the time, other than to suggest I was supposed to be some kind of seer, and powerful besides.

He wanted a taste of power, of better control, himself, and told me he had contacted a dark creature in order to get the training he wanted. (He gave it a specific name, but I don't remember.)

This is all relevant to a couple of specific incidents. One: he challenged me to try and develop the power he believed I had and use it.

He did this ... well, let me transcribe the conversation as well as I remember it.

Him: "I want you to picture someone. Anyone, really."

Me: "All right I've got something ... " It was a man-boy, a teenager or young adult, maybe, with dark hair and a denim jacket, seen from behind. Like a photograph.

Him: "All right. Now what I want you to do is I want you to make it rain. The [spirit] will know if you're successful. If you don't manage it within three days, that person, whoever it is, will die."

Me: "What."

In all honesty, in perfect honesty, I didn't care about the boy/man. I should have, but I didn't. It was an affront to my pride that he thought I couldn't accomplish this impossibility he presented me with, that there was some kind of condition for failure in this agreement. So I set out to do it, without the first inkling of how I should begin.

I'm fairly confident I did it wrong.

I'll admit, I was angry, a little, and prideful, and stubborn.

I took what I knew of how storms were born, how water is drug up from the river (and other bodies of water, but seriously, I live right on a river) to the clouds, gathering there until it becomes too heavy and falls. I took that knowledge, and I tried to force it along, to grow a storm as organically as possible. I had a pad of paper, and I like to draw, I focused my will through that, scratching dark circles with an ink pen onto the paper, representative of the storm's mass. From above, all storms make spirals, so I made spirals, concentric rings made up entirely of smaller rings, ink like water.

And then I focused all my will, and ... nothing happened.

A great big nothing, no storm clouds blocked the sky, though it was humid and there were some clouds. They just weren't right.

I kept at it, persistent.

It rained, a light sprinkle from an almost clear sky. Not enough to be serious, but enough to let me know I did something.

Maybe.

For the next week or so after whatever-I-did, I was laid low with some kind of illness, Mother Nature's fond "Fuck you," for tampering with her. I'm given to understand that whatever it was I did, I probably shouldn't have tried it.

Or, y'know, I could be crazy and caught a weird summer flu.

About Cat

This was actually when I met Alpha's friend Cat.

Cat and I talked over the internet, after the incident. She suggested that I'm a new soul, with only a couple of reincarnations to my name. She didn't like what I told her about the [spirit], or about Alpha's bargain.

She also said I had a dark green aura which ... might be a difference in perception, or she might be a manipulative bitch, I'll get to that in a minute. At the time, I had this belief that I had a black soul, black energy and that there was something horribly, terribly wrong with me. She also suggested that the [spirit] took advantage of me while I was working my 'spell,' that it ripped a chunk out of me, but she was going to heal it. I felt a weird, stabbing pain/tingle on my arm for the duration of her 'healing.' It was weird.

Energy Flow

The second major experience that I had with this kind of mysticism, before Alpha got out of it and I stopped really thinking about it much, came one night after a series of bad decisions. It was before talking with Cat, but after the rain incident.

Alpha was operating under the belief he was some kind of angel or higher-plane spirit, coloring his soul a brilliant white in contrast to my 'black.'

He said that he was able to change how his 'soul' felt and appeared, and that I should try it, since I was supposed to be this 'seer.' But that I wasn't supposed to try to imitate his energy, since he was an angel and that wouldn't work at all, with consequences.

You can probably imagine how that suggestion went.

I tried to mimic what I felt when I reached for my dear friend's energy, but I never quite succeeded. I determined that the issue was one of proximity - he was too distant, and the power I was reaching for was too vague and indistinct.

So I formed a lance of mental energy, with barbs in it, and I pierced the core of that fiery ball, telling myself I'd take only a small bit, for comparison.

Well, to my perception anyway, I succeeded well enough at bringing it closer, to examine it.

Now, this wouldn't be something I'd list here if there weren't at least a little evidence something happened, so this is that: while I was 'examining' my trophy, Alpha asked me what the hell I just did, saying that it hurt and he had no idea I was capable of anything like that and to never, ever do it again because it hurt.

But since I had a chunk anyway, I figured I'd try the other forbidden thing, to warp my energy to cause it to read like his.

My own power rolled under my examination, thrashing and twisting, never settled or still as I focused, fighting it to make it clean, a ball of milky white, rather than the black waters I normally envisioned. I burned off a lot of my black 'ball' of energy trying to perform this transmutation, but I succeeded ... for a moment or two, anyway.

Predictably, I got sick and nothing else came of it.

Aura Picture

I mentioned also that I was going to cover the 'aura color' a bit more thoroughly, and so I shall.

After college, I went to this psychic convention Mom had been invited to. It was in a small room, and I had a buzzing in my head, like all eyes were on me, picking at me and trying to make me give up my secrets. Among other things I looked into there, there was a little photo booth thing.

It took pictures of auras. Now, I've always believed in auras. People give off energy, especially electrical energy (which is how your iPhone works, by the way - capacitative touchscreens work off of the electrical energy and heat your fingers give off, not pressure. That's why it's nearly impossible to purse-dial with a touchscreen). A cloud of imperceptible energy surrounding everyine is plausible to me, because of that.

There've been studies on this matter - the aura is part of why amputees have phantom limb pains, in theory. An aura-reading machine took a picture of the aura of a leaf that had been cut in half before - and after - it was cut in half. The leaf retained its full-sized aura after the cutting.

Another important thing to note is that the pictures were all different. There were about six taken of different people, lying on the table by the machine's booth. Some were less intense in color, some more intense in color, with all kinds of different swirling hues overlaying the image of the person captured underneath. It was about $10 to get a picture taken with an interperetation attached, and mine didn't match anyone else's either. I think the woman doing the pictures was a little surprised at how intense it was.

The Aura Picture - exactly as it is in real life, more or less.

My computer doesn't know my scanner anymore, so I took a picture of it -

it's so glossy I can see a reflection of my phone and my thumb.

Most of the other pictures I saw were less intense, and I remember them with a lot more greens and blues and such.

The color interperetations attached to the image follow:

Center: orange, creative, artistic
My left: yellow; sunny, exhilaration

My right: red, force of will.


(My) Left side: Future Influences; yellow


Your future is bound to be thought provoking. Like the rising sun, yellow brings warmth. Yellows are representative of the intellect. Each shade or tint of yellow expresses a type of function, ability, or expression of the intellect, from the craftiness of a mustard yellow to the high thought of a golden yellow. You approach the future with a sense of excitement and joy.


Center: orange represents energy with mental direction. You are ALIVE, artistic, perceptive, creative. Constructive self-expression is important to you.


(My) Right side: Expressed Energy; red


You work hard at what you do. Intensity of experience and fulness of living. Conquest, energy-expanding, you put the energy out. The world sees you as alive, outgoing, sexual, and powerful.


Other colors:


Violet: intuition, art, creativity, supernatural abilities, faith, imagination, incorporeality, reticence, mysteriousness.
Lavender: mysticism, magic, profundity, obsession, intolerance
(I can't tell the difference between violet and lavender. I'm sure there is one, but I can't, so I threw them both in.)



White: developed intellectuality, spirituality, vision of God, higher consciousness, dreaming, energy build-up, pain.

So that's interesting, and seems fairly accurate, too.

Assuming Cat wasn't entirely full of crap - which is a huge factor to consider - my only theory as to why she thought 'dark green' goes thus: A) these things change. The first half of the machine reading was 'incoming' or 'future' energy, after all.

As for B) ...

The original aura picture, with inverted colors.

Sure it's mostly blue, but there's some dark green there.

Remember to ignore that top spot - it's a

reflection from the overhead light.

"Gifted" is the Term

Or: Intellectually Gifted, Socially Cursed

They call it 'giftedness.'

It's a capacity for learning more effectively than those who would otherwise be considered your peers. It's a curiousity and a hunger for new knowledge, and an inability to be fully contented with incomplete or inaccurate answers. It's a talent for nearly every single thing you try, to the extent that there are so many options you become paralyzed with indecision.

It's not really just a gift, but also a curse. Being more intelligent marks you as different - and being different is generally considered a bad thing. Using the larger vocabulary you're 'gifted' with leads to a lot of blank stares. The same goes for any of the knowledge or trivia you've picked up along the way. People just don't care, and a lot of times they'll mock you for caring.

The standards are all higher. I remember as a child, I was actually embarrassed of my "A's" because nobody else really seemed to get them, and I did not have to try for them. A "C" was almost devastating because ... well, it's like getting an "F" if you generally get "C's." I never once actually got an "F" - the closest I ever received was a single "D" throughout my entire K-11 1/2 education (there was a bit of a dispute in my Senior year and I ended up graduating early to resolve it). In standardized testing, the one outlier among an otherwise nearly flawless score was in math - and even that, at about half the rate of my other abilities, was still an "average." My perception remains to this day that I am very, very bad at math, despite at least half of all other people being worse.

In a lot of cases, I tend to think, "I'm not really good at this, everyone else just sucks."

Mom has a funny story: after my first day of kindergarten, I came home and complained that I already knew everything they were trying to teach me. This didn't abate until I reached college. I never learned to study, or had to work to overcome challenges - which meant that in college, I actually started to get the C's, D's, and F's that I often overheard other people talking about, because I never had to work for anything. Even working my hardest, I was disorganized and frustrated with everything, because suddenly, things became hard. I couldn't read during classes like I tended to do as a kid, because I had to actually think about what I was being presented.

Giftedness also leads to social isolation - especially if anybody knows about it. In grade school, when I was first ... let's call it 'diagnosed,' what they did to determine this status was to pull a number of students out of their normal classes and put them through a battery of tests. I remember one of the tests involved a bunch of lines on a paper, and you were supposed to make pictures out of them. I drew some books. Even that early on, I indulged in too much escapism.

From there on, they continued to rip about six of us out of our normal curriculum in order to try and educate us at a level above and beyond our peers ... the problem was, it was ill-organized, ill-directed, and they didn't really try to teach us anything advanced, just different things than everyone else learned. I had a shaky foundation in my normal classes because I missed about half of the content. I was able to overcome what this did to my actual scholastic performance, but I wonder sometimes how well.

One of the other kids actually asked me for one of these noisemakers that I'd gotten - little packets of gunpowder that made a loud snapping noise when tossed on the ground. I gave it to him under the assumption he wouldn't do anything too terribly stupid with it. He got caught using them in the boy's restroom, and I got in trouble for 'taking advantage of someone less intelligent.'

I remember when we moved into the city, it wasn't a terribly large change for me, because honestly, I didn'thave that many close friends. There were two or three people I associated with, but they weren't really friends. The one person I would have considered a friend who could think on my level (some six or seven years older than I was, who made the wise decision to deliberately fail the talented and gifted testing) made it his life's ambition to get away from the small town and the psychic leeches that made up his family. I wonder where he ended up sometimes. He was the one who introduced me to the wider world of the internet, and online games, for that matter.

I don't really know what the point to writing this all was. Just needed to get it out of my system, I think.

98 Posts, 2 Status Updates

Wow, so I made it this far without skipping an update. (Although technically I think 'Announcement' means this isn't really 100 "real" updates.)

And then I need to skip an update.

My motherboard decided that it is breaking up with my hard drive, in the sense that they're no longer on speaking terms.

I'm ... just a little bit devastated.

Writing from Mom's computer.

My baby. T_T

Manic, Manic

There's a chemical in your brain
It's pouring sunshine and rage ...

Driving in the car.

You knew it was coming, could feel it building. Inopportune timing.

SHUT the FUCK up hate the sound of your voice don't talk don't say anything I hate you so much you and everyone you're so FUCKING stupid shut up shut up shut up - (we don't end up talking at all)

You aren't alone in the car, so you have no outlet.

Must drive safely.

Can't do anything.

But it's clawing up. You dig short, blunt claws into the steering wheel and barely notice.

Keep calm.

Keep control.

Every set of oncoming lights aggrivates it. Bright light RIGHT IN THE FUCKING EYES, FUCK.

(can she tell? I'm sorry about what I said before -)

NO I'M NOT DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING STUPID BITCH STUPID STUPID STUPID

Distracted as you pass road crews, the flickering lights at the tops of their trucks holding your eyes, until you catch your car in an unsafe swerve.

Keep calm. (she noticed that one. sorry.)

Keep control.

Every sound drags it to the fore. Everything grates.

HATE EVERYTHING.

There is a train in your path. You've pushed IT back enough to plan an alternate route, since the train ISN'T MOVING FUCK but that route takes you through Downtown. (where all the lights are bright)

STUPID WHORES HANG DRUNK OFF THEIR STUPID FUCKING MEN LIKE FASHIONABLE ACCESSORIES.

Stumbling across the road in loose adherence to traffic law are crowds of people in twos and fours. Friday night. Time to fucking par-tay. (we trade vague disgusted words at this)

She's gone. Wishes you good-night and walks inside her own house.

Somehow you manage to make it home.

FUCKING CHILDREN HANGING OUT OF DADDY'S CAR. HOPE YOU FUCKING CRASH YOU DRUNK BITCHES (I don't mean that ...)

You want to scream your incoherent rage, but by this point it's turned in on yourself. You don't scream, furthermore. A strangled, shrill noise rips itself from your throat, you claw at the foam roof, slam your palms into it, into the steering wheel. You claw your own scalp, trying to regain control.

It's not really a noisy tantrum, for all that. You don't make a lot of noise. Rarely talk unless necessary, pride yourself on moving silently. You don't laugh, sob, or groan out loud - it all catches in your throat. Always has.

It passes.

Eventually.

Walk inside. Food's ready.

(Mom noticed something wrong. sorry Mom.)

Hit a wall for the noise it makes on the way to the kitchen.

Calm enough to function.

Words come in the wrong order and I can't focus and I need to do SOMETHING but I don't know what.

(I think there's something wrong with me.)

Driving

TL;DR: Rant about people being stupid in cars. Typed Saturday. Still not dead. Woo, triumph.

Driving.

Who came up with this idea? Really? "Let's put two tons of fast-moving death in the hands of every irresponsible idiot who can answer a multiple choice test correctly. That'll end well!" Seriously.

"What? They're sixteen years old and their wee brains haven't yet fully developed (see 'coz that happens by the time you're twenty-five), so they're reckless and end up killing themselves and other people on the way to go get drunk at an underage party and/or on the way from getting drunk at an underage party? I don't understand how that could happen!" It's not that I don't have sympathy or anything, but seriously, this whole thing sounds like an accident (or several thousand) waiting to happen.

I bring this up because I have a half an hour drive to my work place, one-way, which means in practice I spend my share of time driving, which means I get to witness all kinds of stupid people behind the wheel. Especially since the people around here don't fully understand how to do the thing they're doing.

For an example: what the hell happened to signalling before changing lanes? I nearly got in a wreck today because this guy completely failed to signal that he was going to dive between me and the car in front of him. Not warning people what you're about to do is rarely a good thing, especially when it's going to be exceedingly dangerous to yourself and other people. Courting death in a major car accident on the highway is excessively dangerous, yes.

And this other guy, in a white van, did signal ... that he was going to drift across two lanes of traffic and nearly sideswipe me to get into my lane. Which is the only thing that kept me from getting into a wreck again, and that only because I deliberately gave him enough room to complete the lane change. I don't want to get crushed in a vehicular homicide, after all. This same fellow then went on to make a left turn from the wrong lane.

Am I the only person on the road who paid attention during driver's education?

Why are people stupid?

Gah.

Isolation

These broken walls trap me inside
I'm isolated ....


Or: This is why we can't have nice things.


I'm still debating on whether or not to post this, especially as it's become kind of a moot point, anyway.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: you can't trust people. Everyone hurts everyone else, and, ultimately, everyone is in it only for themselves. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either too naive to know the truth - or they're trying to get something from you.

This is also why I didn't get to go to Heaven for the Rapture, see?

I'm going to be honest here, since it's damn near impossible to open up in real life.

Cold words on a blank screen, no?

I can't hang onto friendships in real life. The closest I come is these near-intangible online relationships. It's just too much risk to allow anyone close to me into my heart, also.

And I'm not even a Runner. Hah.

Of course, it doesn't help any that I'm a loner-type to begin with, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do drugs. I don't go out and par-tay, so it's not like I'm terribly likely to meet people. And most of the people in this city don't exactly share my interests, either - and the ones that do, I've already happily cut myself off from as well. Bastards probably don't even know or care why. Fuck 'em.

Why is that, that I can't bring myself to open up?

Fear, mostly.

Every gods-damned time I've left the door open, left myself vulnerable that way, opened up fully to another person, I've been hurt. Every time I've seen others do the same, they've been hurt. It's a weakness and a liability, and it's a stupid, avoidable one at that.

And what benefits does it give? This weakness so many people allow themselves to entertain? You can't say procreation, because broken homes wouldn't exist if both parents were necessary for the raising of the child after that initial conception - and that initial conception often, and easily, occurs in moments of physical passion, rather than emotional attachment. One could suggest instead companionship, love, friendship ... it is true that humankind is composed of social creatures. If they do not receive enough social contact in their formative years, humans lose an enormous chunk of that spark that lends them sentience. As to the actual ties, however ... they don't seem necessary to one's survival.

Just a vulnerability. Just an avenue for hurt.

Being with, or even near, other people also compels change. Generally it's small and ignorable over any distance, but in close, physical proximity, it makes itself known acutely. Living with another person forces you to plan around them, work around them. Your defenses have to incorporate them, or you risk hurting them - and by extension, yourself. It limits your freedoms, forces all manner of unnecessary restrictions on you. And then even if they don't hurt you themselves, then they die, or leave, and you're hurting anyway.

And, for what?

All of the benefits, save perhaps pooled fiscal resources and an extra eye to those defenses, are fully intangible. Companionship, love, whatever you want to call it, you know what that really is?

"I've got a knife lodged in my back, I just don't know it yet."

Yes, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of weakness. I'm afraid of vulnerability. I'm afraid of being forced to change, and I'm afraid of things changing around me. I'm fucking terrified of forming any kind of bond with any other person, because doing so is basically synonymous with being hurt - and I'm afraid of pain.

What kind of psychotic, reckless fool isn't?



I'm here alone
And isolated ....

Not Much To Say

Same crap different day.

Rift is a very fun game. I am pleased.

Don't really have a lot of time. Not a lot going on in my head right now. Security is apparently tightening up again.

Sleepy.

Leave you all with haiku.

Gold rains from the sky
In a very subtle plot
Coins cause concussions

Deceive everyone
With the new wardrobe feature
Mage in miniskirt

Death rains from above
Seeping in from foreign planes
The world in peril

Arachnophobia

Tap.
Tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
"Hey, look!" My coworker finally gets my attention. I trail off in the middle of explaining that no, I can't help him; he's got entirely the wrong company to help him, why the hell was he calling me?
Spider.
Small, black, probably harmless, size of a thumbnail.
Everything freezes. Can't hear anything.
Calm. Calm.
Pick up large flat plastic pattern-piece.
Slow, still.
Thwack!
Crumpled up, broken, tiny.
Thwack-thwack!
Dead, crushed.
Sound returns.
Can't focus.
More of them?
No. Probably not.
I don't care about your problem, there's a spider.
Don't say that out loud.
Finish explaining who to call.
Under my chair, no, under the desk, no, behind the computer, no, no, no.
He's gone, type something basic, don't care, going to lunch half-an-hour early, need to calm my nerves. Don't even care.
Spider.
Fuck.
So, hey, I'm a bit of an arachnophobe.
Yep.

What Do You Mean It's Not Symbolic?

A note from the author-thing: forgive me: on reviewing this it's really, really choppy. And I really didn't check out the symbolism, it pretty much just wrote itself from memory. Oh - next week is going to be hellish, for my work schedule, so I may not post much or lengthy. Starting Friday.

The mind wraps its secrets in symbols.

I don't really like bathing much.

Everything's a symbol, you know?

Sword's a symbol. In this case, it's protection - the best defense being a good offense, you know? One sword.

Water's a symbol. Usually life. In a cup, overflowing, it's emotion, and the connections between people. Three cups total, counting the sing which leaks and therefore never gets used.

Nudity's symbolic. Why do you think "naked in front of a crowd" is such a common recurring dream?

Know what that symbolizes? Vulnerability.

I really don't like bathing.

Three wands, for use on my ears, and with my pentagram that's a full representation of the suits, isn't it?

Single lightbulb? Thought, idea, knowledge, reason, action. "It is better to light a single candle than curse the darkness." Two burned out bulbs. Only one left. Alone in the end.

Everything's a symbol.

Hell, even the hair caught in my brush is a symbol - think, "personal effects for creepy voodoo ritual." Squick.

Ceiling's red. Rage, fire, power, life.

Claustrophobic, tiny little windowless room. Cramped mental space.

Locks and doors are symbols of protection - but you never know what's on the other side of a closed door.

Mirrors, obviously.

Reach far enough and the massive skin irritation from hard water can even be symbolic. Say - let yourself become unguarded against the onslaught of raw emotion and get hurt/inconvenienced/annoyed.

The handprint on the foggy mirror? (Still there from weeks ago, incidentally.)

It's already inside the room.

Y'know, or something.

This Last Weekend

Or - if you don't like a certain Internet meme, you can stop reading here and come back Wednesday for the Tarot motifs.

The Black Rook fell, and when he went, he went to Retirony.

I feel like I've lost a friend, which is ... odd. I've never met the man, never done more than trade words in passing. But the world seems ... slightly less safe now that there's one less Player in the Game.

I've got this odd ... belief system that's sprung up without me being fully aware it's happening. The idea is, the more people the Tall Man is following, the safer nobodies like me are - even if we actively choose to taunt Him from our safe, sheltered homes. (This whole thing being moronic anyway. I'm well aware it's just a meme gah.)

I wouldn't be a very interesting protagonist anyway. I've got no friends IRL, I don't remember dialogue, and the "Runner slowly goes insane while ignoring The Rules" plot looks to have been pretty much done to death. No? Yes.

I dunno. Finished actually reading The Tutorial, and then I finished Vivere Disce and left a nice little comment or something. Now there's a happy blog, though, isn't there. Didn't I mention somewhere that the idea of Proxies was more chilling to me than things which should not be?

My sense of time, location, and balance are all already fucked, what's reality itself thrown into the mix, anyway?

But humans are bastards. That's unquestionably true. And giving someone who's already a bit unhinged a reason to target me seems ... unwise.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: there's really nothing the Slender Man could do to me that a particularly determined psycho with a grudge couldn't - and there are lots and lots of those running around, while there's only one of Him.

There's a reason M warns against the other homeless people.

Oh. And the other night some fucker got into and rifled through my car. Thanks, asshole.

Fucking drug neighborhood.

Fuck. 

So Quiet

 

I wrote all of this deliberately. Did you think I'd miss out on swapping out pens?

Dunno why I'm sharing it though. Guess that's what keeping a journal is for.

Hell, it's about time, isn't it.

Break A Leg

This is my place. I have a T-shaped hallway, though only the top crossbar and the very bottom of the T are ever meant to be seen. The colors hardly matter, as my vision shows in gray.

The lighting here is predominantly green, save for the comforting red glow of the EXIT sign that hangs overhead.

I'm tucked into an invisible corner, writing by glowstick. I have a minimum of costuming, consisting of a plain, tattered, hooded black robe. This, and simple black-and-white face paint, mark me as an actor.

I have no fancy props, not even a nearby animatron.

"Make it scary," they tell me. "Startle them." So, I do.

The first of the two wholly independent spots they expect me to hold is a simple wooden fence, rather broken - one plank missing entirely, another snapped off at the top and hanging by a single screw. A little demonic bust is impaled on a third, and there's nothing especially un-fence-like about the other four. From my hidden corner, I can see partway up the hallway that comes before me. It is utterly barren, save for a door that can no longer be opened, with a large, flat, styrofoam skull nailed to it, some pipe-work that may or may not still function, and two distressed skeletons, hanging by their arms and resting on their knees.

My area is lovingly misnamed a cemetery, for the skulls and shattered tombstones that litter a cold, cement floor only partially obscured by ragged, twisted, clothy blankets, masquerading for a time as rugs and tripping hazards.

Across from the fence is the centerpiece of my area - a massive stone that reads H. Delbruck, while above it hangs Mr. D. himself, sadly without his legs. Atop his tombstone is an inverted V I have been assured is not a spider's leg, but rather a skeleton's arm, the rest of his body too dark to see.

Beside Mr. Delbruck's stone stands my fellow gravekeeper, a withered old man in a bowler hat and a long, muddy coat. His left hand rests eternally on the topmost of his twin belts, and a cigar droops from his lips, teeth bared in a wide, macabre grin.

The wall behind him is obscured by a ropey net. Though I can barely see the pipes behind the netting, I know they extend into the room itself from the hallway.

To the right of H.D.'s tomb stands a sawed-off tree stump, probably plastic, a skull resting atop it. Behind that stands a much-abused Christmas tree, undecorated. It's easy to miss, probably there only to lend an organic feel to that corner. Anything to hide the fact that it's indoors.

To my right stands a "stone" figure, cowled and holding what appears to be a carving of a corpse. Some kind of Death personification, perhaps.

Down the hallway no one else may travel, a line of gravestones stand on the right, while a massive, rubber rat (rats? I hate rats. They drive me crazy - ) lies curled up on the left.

At the very end of the hallway stands another set of tombs, the names impossible to make out. A demonic bust here, too, is found, this one life-sized as though it were trying to claw its way out of the ground. A "tree" rises behind this bust, while on the floor lies a a chain, next to a sadly-headless skeleton.

Between the rat and the demon are the twin archways. One is open, to the left, and it leads out of the haunted house. Fresh air occasionally blows in from that direction. The other is covered by an opaque, shiny black curtain made from five thick sheets of plastic.

I wait in my hidden corner for my first cue.

Somewhat distantly, I can hear Brain-Guy and Hook-Guy from Mom's spot, their cries almost inaudible for the high dentist-drill whine of the chainsaw.

About five minutes, then.

I hear, during a brief lull in the loud ambiance-fueling music, the old-school video projector sound of some kind of air machine whirring to life.

A moaning wail - just part of the music. Giggles punctuated by shrieks is a different part - the human part.

Still waiting.

The Shaking-Man alerts me, with his hydraulic-fueled thrashing.

Two hallways, barely a minute away.

Loud rattles as a group of feet trample a catwalk. It's from the other haunted house; irrelevant to me.

The second high whir of the chainsaw means it's time to stand up, as our fine patrons discuss their most recent experience and just how much they dislike chainsaws.

Their shadows creep across the wall, then the skeletons, until I actually see one.

I've learned to wait to jump out.

The first four dutifully yelp, and dart to the left, through another plastic curtain.

The last two are somewhat more distant, the man holding an obviously intoxicated woman off the ground.

Fun, I think sarcastically.

I do my level best to scare these two, already knowing it's hopeless.

"Look," the man exclaims. "He wants a kiss!" It isn't very obvious in this dress, but I really am a natural female, boobs and all.

The man drags the woman over, presumably for her kiss.

I growl out, voice already ragged, "No touching!" Naturally, she grabs for me, pouting when I dodge away, still growling.

Eventually they turn away, and inaudibly, I mutter a curse. I don't even like drunks at parties. That's part of why I rarely attend parties.

Time passes, as does another, less obnoxious group.

"Chainsaw, chainsaw!" echoes from the exit, as a group from the other house finishes their trek.

No, really? I think, still a bit annoyed. The man at the exit has a chainsaw that runs on gas, and an angry roar escapes it.

Delighted screams of fear follow.

I hear another roar, then, followed by the a slightly different tempo to the battering, a slightly different tin wall. Yelling, indistinct at this distance, accompanies it. Minute and a half.

A handful of seconds later, there's a bang, and the Shaking-Man begins his inarticulate rant.

Fuck.

You see, I am incapable of teleporting. Even if I could, I can't be two places at once ... and now I need to be. Fifteen feet. I can cross it in five steps, about two seconds.

First scare's more important. Barren hallway. Doll Chick doesn't really have the talent either - there's a reason I didn't mention her earlier; she never does anything. She creeps me out, but for reasons that have nothing to do with actually doing her damn job.

It's a split-second decision, which place I choose, and I lunge out a little early. Still scare them though. It's a group of maybe ten, so I back up a bit, lunge again.

Demonic roar, metal on bone on metal.

In my rush to be there now, I trip over the cloth and nearly faceplant on the rat. I have time, only barely.

I yell something incoherent at the person pushing through the plastic curtain, and he jumps. I lean to the right a bit, so he and his can pass.

Drunk Chick is now behind Tall Guy, and it's satisfying to see her cringe away now.

Half of them tripped on the slight drop, so as they ascend the staircase to freedom, I growl a loud, vindictive, "Watch your step!"

Doubt any of them heard.

"Chainsaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwww!!!"

I hate my job.

Chainsaw Good

I have a small, triangular room.

It's a kind of haven, a sanctuary. It is framed by two countertops. I'd guess each of them is about six feet long, and across from me is a shelving unit. I'd guess that to be maybe three or four feet across. To my left, I see a line of three heads - one of them still has flesh attached, and has been nailed to the counter.

Beyond that stands a man, his face cloaked in shadow, the proportions seeming wrong. I can't see his eyes - he has no eyes. He is dressed casually, with a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans.

Beside him sits a cooler filled with loose body parts, all wrapped in plastic, many of them identifiably human. Across the front of the cooler is scrawled, in big, friendly letters, "Cannibal's Meat Market."

To my right, the counter is more sparse.

I can see a human head, hair still attached, rests on a meat scale, while a skeleton partially obscures a fire extinguisher I have been warned not to use, "unless [I] see flames shooting out of something."

Outside the confines of my small lair, two other figures rest. A man whose brain lies exposed sits naked, save for his briefs, the copious blood that runs down his shoulders and chest, and some medical implements still clinging to his opened scalp.

To Brain Guy's right looms an open archway, covered by shiny black sheets of plastic, and further to Brain Guy's right - my left - a man hangs from a set of three vertical bars by hooks shoved through his back. This man is dressed in greenish rags, cut through and showing bloody wounds. When the flashing strobe light illuminates him properly, I can see that the right side of his face has been pulverized.

In front of the shelving unit hangs another, crimson skeleton, clothed in an apron just like mine - a myriad of faces sewn together. Behind him - or her, is it a her? - are body parts, too ill-lit to see in detail.

Everything is spattered with blood. I'm spattered with blood. Even the chainsaw across my lap was bloodied, until I came and scrubbed the handle at least off.

I sit on a barstool, waiting on my first prey, and behind me, in my corner, stands a special horror just for me: a wildly deformed lunch-lady no one else could possibly notice. I try to ignore her, but it takes some effort.

The "music" in this place is eerie and disorienting, false screems warring with true terror for my attention.

Three raps against a tin wall, and a chorus of gleeful, panicked cries.

I'm on.

It's a small group, four people. I wait for their passing to trigger Brain Guy's agonized, gurgling roar, as, pained, he pulls himself upright and looks around.

Then, I strike.

It doesn't take much - I barely rev the chainsaw up before the group catapults forward through the curtain. Long after they're gone, Hook-Guy is still roaring impotently, thrashing against his restraints. Staccato hydraulic pumping is clearly audible - almost annoying - as I wait for my next cue.

Looking up, I can see something I'd missed before - a shrunken head in a little birdcage. Turning my head to the left, behind the counter of heads I can make out two hanging barrels, spewing odorless smoke and red light.

My next cue comes in the form of a startled yelp hidden almost entirely by panicked thrashing and roaring. The cracks of air come at an even more frantic pace as a man assaults a tin wall.

I see the light from the group leader's bright orange glow stick long before I see him. I stand, legs spread for balance, heavy chainsaw held firmly in my hands. A gap between the shelves and the counter of heads lets me get in close - uncomfortably so, but never touching, not if I can help it. All four of them flee back up the hall, so I wait for them until I can strike again. It's the same group from before, just come a different way, so it's my job even as I play with these poor souls to stay on high alert for a rapping invasion of Brain Guy and Hook Guy's room. It's slow tonight, so no one comes before, one by one, I let my playthings pass.

I can hear their passing through a good deal more of our treacherous maze, but beyond here they become meaningless racket to me, as I wait for my next cue.

I love my job.

Injury

Humans are such frighteningly fragile, warlike creatures.

The average person, it seems, has never actually been deliberately harmed by another human being, which is comforting, to realize, in its way. But no one is immune to the hardship of injury.

From a child's skinned knees to my Mom's fabulously bruised hands (she got special boffer-sword fighting training this last Saturday, I gather), everyone has been hurt at least a little bit, on occasion. In fact, not feeling pain is treated as a grave medical condition: if you don't feel pain, you don't realize when you're grinding your poor, fragile body into dust.

The games I play tend to treat injury and even death as nothing particularly noteworthy. Of course, having your hit points fall to 0 is generally treated as being "knocked out," rather than dead. But still. I had a character get turned to stone in my last D&D campaign, and she pretty much just dusted herself off, no worse for the wear. A shiny red potion later, and most injuries are rather suddenly nonissues ... then again, the point is to have fun. It's very, very hard to have fun if you're too busy contemplating how much pain your character is going to be in, or how even a minor head wound can lead to a major concussion or lifetime debilitation if not cared for properly.

I've got a scar on my leg from running carelessly through a friend's house. There was a radio with a busted antenna just lying on the floor. It cut through skin and muscle, so that there was "white stuff" showing underneath all of the blood.

Oh, dammit - I'm bleeding again.

I keep picking at scabs, without really thinking about it.

Really wasn't going anywhere with that, though - just realized I needed to post something.

AFK, NuSkin.

A Sense of Darkness

Hell, why not, this is why people keep journals, right?

Tonight is Saturday night. I leave work the same as I always do, a little later than most everyone else, but not terribly so. There's a woman waiting for a ride, so I briefly chat with her. I've been given a kind of honorary ... thing which grants me better parking spaces than most of my coworkers, so I look for the allotted parking space before I leave.

As I reach my car, I am nearly overwhelmed with the sense that I should not take the Interstate. As I mentioned, I tend to listen to my instincts, even if they make no sense. The weather isn't bad; there's no reason to take the other route, but I feel like I should. Pulling out, I turn right, and am torn between two options. For no discernable reason, I turn right, taking the slightly longer path out of the lot, past a stand of trees. Everything looks like the stray limbs of some eldritch horror, but if something was watching me, I could not say. Night driving takes a toll on me, not because it is so dark, but because of the brief flashes of intense light.

There is something off. I am on edge the entire trip home.

When I cross the train tracks, near to my work, I am confronted with a red light, and there is a man in the center of it all, directing traffic. This is unusual. To my right, along the side of the road, there is a vehicle with lights flashing, though I can see no cause for this disruption. It does not hinder me terribly.

It is hard not to see the Tall Man in the many stands of trees, though truly I doubt He was there.

He is after all so busy elsewhere, is He not?

When I enter town proper, there are more flashing lights, and a siren. As I pull up to a red light, a fire truck speeds through, going from right to left across my field of vision.

There is not much else to report; my sense of dread seems to have been unfounded.

Of course, when I finally arrived home, there was a wild, swinging party going on at my neighbor's house, and no parking to be found the entire block. This was unusual only in that their gathering made any noise at all; in months prior, it had been deathly silent in the house located at the epicenter of the lost parking, and only the leaving visitors were any indication of where to lay blame. Tonight I had to use a back alley, and come through the back fence. Every shape seemed ominous until identified. Even the large tree was vaguely threatening.

I have no tolerance for gatherings, even at the best of times. I am not invited to such parties because I have no interest in such parties. I must confess I do not like people very much, and I have grown very tired of having to solve their problems over the course of my employment. Except that I am still in need of revenue, I cannot say that I will be displeased to become free from my tether.

Every day I am forced to think because another person refuses to, I find the façade cracks a little bit more, and I care a little bit less.

I am just so tired of people.

The Sky is Purple

The sky is lit purple as I grip the wheel tightly, all of my senses on edge. Every few seconds, lightning splits the sky all around me, briefly illuminating a world made dark.

The highway is soaked, rain whipping at my car with its punishing lash as the wind threatens to push me off the road. I have taken a different route than normal, tonight: I felt when leaving work that I simply shouldn't take the Interstate, and I listen to my instincts when faced with the very real possibility of death.

I can barely hear the radio over the roar of the elements outside, but the high, mechanical shrill catches my attention: three short beeps, and then a fourth, longer tone. I turn the radio up, and I can make out the words now: deadly lightning ... destructive hail ... tornado warning continues until 1AM ....

The windows have all fogged up, protesting the sudden cold shower compared to the relatively mild temperatures we've been seeing these last few weeks. I turn the defrost up, keeping my eyes firmly locked ahead. I can make out the center line mostly by its reflection in my headlights - it's slightly different than the rest of the shiny water. I can still barely see.

I am relieved when I finally pull up to my house and park. Mom's car is already here, and she's climbing out of it. I dart ahead, opening the door and turning off the alarm so she doesn't have to worry. The light doesn't turn on immediately, but that's okay; I unplugged it last night because it wasn't cooperating.

On the news, we learn that tornadoes have touched down all across the area, demolishing buildings and devastating several cities - one town will not allow any traffic inside beyond emergency vehicles.

And one of many storms is inbound, with slight rotation already started.

I'm okay now.

I'm okay.

Job and Joblessness

... hilarious.

Remember that whole job business I got employed at?

Yeah, so. Through literally no fault of my own, that's no longer a ... thing. As of May 15.

Very depressed over the whole business. Been crying on and off, feelings of worthlessness, that whole jazz.

Deciding if the weather's actually nice for once to go out to a park, go walking around and such. Day off tomorrow regardless.

Note to Self

Do Not Taunt Cthulhu.

So, I mentioned a while back that I was going to purchase ( X ) contacts, and also that I work at a call center, right?

So, Wednesday I forked over the $170 to buy the contacts as a kind of joke/taunt, because apparently, I don't like life, or living, or continuing to not be dead/insane (perhaps one, then the other?)

Right, so I should also mention here that all calls at my call center are recorded. All of 'em.

So, finally, I set Slendy as my background pic on a whim, since the last person who had my computer was a massive XBox fanboy, specifically Halo, which I don't like enough to want to see every day. Still question the wisdom of that decision every time my screen saver goes batshit fucking insane while I'm out on a lunch break.

So, I come back from lunch on Friday, March 4, and I get pulled pretty much immediately to do a meeting.

When I get back to my desk, I find I've been logged out, so I log back in and take a call. About two minutes in, there's massive audio distortions in the phone line, followed by a disconnect.

This continues for the rest of the day, and for select computers even into today, Saturday, March 5.

Shortly after all this started?

The satelite radio sees fit to play: "I always feel like SOMEBODY'S WATCHIN' MEEEEEEE!" just for emphasis.

All I could manage was a kind of horrified giggle.

Now, I'm willing to chalk this up to the phone people being there and fucking around.

But still.

Creepy ass coincidences freaked me out.

Still no Slender Man SIGHTINGS in Iowa though~