Thankful Gray

I'm thankful that even in our darkest hours, humans have the remarkable ability to live.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody, I hope you spent it with someone that you care about, even if those are in short supply for many of us.  I spent it with my mom, like every year.  I don't know any of my extended family if I still have any.  Obviously none of my dad's family ever knew about me and most of my mom's family cut off communications with her when she dropped out of high school to have a child out of wedlock.  They're old fashioned like that, apparently.  That's how my mom always termed it.  But she's too kind to people for her own good.

So my mom and I celebrate alone.  I don't mind.  I love my mom and I never knew what it was like to have any family outside of her, so there's no one to miss.  It means fewer people who I can lose.  That's a good thing, I suppose.  But I don't believe in the saying 'when you hit the bottom there's nowhere to go but up'.  Thinking you're at the bottom just means that you don't have the imagination to figure out how it could be worse.  I have always had a remarkable imagination, and I know that it could always get worse.  So much worse.

We have KFC.  For Thanksgiving, I mean, that's our tradition.  12 piece chicken bucket and mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and coleslaw on the side.  Not quite turkey, but it's ours.  And we're together.  These are the moments I have to keep close for those moments when bad becomes worse, right?  Somebody told me that.  I'm not so jaded that I don't realize that even in the rainstorm that is my life there are things to be thankful for.

I'm thankful for my mom, that's she's the kindest most accepting person I could ever have the luck to live with.  I'm thankful for getting to have a good friend like Malcolm at least once before I die, and I'm thankful that he continues to tell me I'll live.  He's that kind of friend.  I'm thankful that I still have food on my table and a roof over my head.  I'm even thankful for The Kor.  Without him here, I don't think that my mom would ever have heard me laugh in this lifetime again.

I hope that you all have something to be thankful for too.  Try not to be alone over the holidays.  No one should be alone.  But I guess this world doesn't pay much attention to shoulds and should nots.

Have a good night.

Past-Tense Gray

I'm new.  Really really new.  I know people don't generally last long in this situation so it's a pretty continuous cycle of faces, but I've only even heard of Him for a few months.  So I'm not that up to date on all the blogs that are here.

There must be hundreds!  It's incredible and very very sad.  All these people, all doomed or dead already.  So many I've read about and watched disappear, so many I have yet to read.  I am nowhere near done reading all the blogs, or knowing what the current events are of all the people still alive and rolled up in this mess.  I try, I'm working my way through them as fast as I can, and considering that I spend all my time curled up in the corner of my room, I have nothing better to do.

What I'm trying to say is, maybe there's just a logical explanation for this that I was not aware of because I'm out of the loop.  For what you ask?  Well, I get back from being inside my own head to check out my blogger account and see that I have a new follower.

Morningstar.  With that same weird picture of the guy who looks like the Les Miserables cover girl as his avatar.

Morningstar psycho-killer proxy Morningstar.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that at the end of his blog he was kinda...dead?  Isn't he supposed to be dead?  Now, I don't think there is cause for alarm, there's probably a reasonable explanation for all this.  Then again, logic seems to have flown out the window these days.

Why would he follow my blog though?  I'm below a nobody.  I'm nothing he would care about.  I guess this post is more for the general knowledge of it than for any concern on my part.  I'm not worth targeting, especially by someone important enough to bring back from the dead.

I guess that's the public service announcement done.  I'm going to go huddle in the corner of my room rocking back and forth now.  Oh wait, I'm already doing that.

Stay safe everybody.  I'll catch you later. 

A Due DisKorse

Hey Gray, I know you're in there.  I want to make sure that you hear this little conversation, so I'm writing it down for you.  You could sleep through it, but I know that you read this blog so you'll find it when you eventually come back.  I thought it was high time that I had a talk with our mother, so I told her I'm doing homework in the kitchen and will be transcribing our conversation.  Time to learn where we stand.

Her: [Gray] I'm glad we have this time to talk.

*NOTE: About names...we have one of course.  A birth name.  No I am not going to use it, and not even for stupid security reasons like Gray.  The boy who owned that name is gone.  I am not him and Gray is not him, we are two new individuals.  We deserve our own names.  I chose my own, but Gray was stupidly attached to the original.  It wouldn't be fair if he went by it, though, that would make it seem like he was more real than I was.  I am not a figment of his imagination, we are equals.  So I named him Gray.  Seems like I have more right than this uninvolved woman to determine his name.  He wore the mask of that dead boy's name for so long, I thought he'd forget, but look.  He comes on this blog and slips so easily into MY name for him.  You know it's who you truly are, Gray.

So of course in this talk my mom was using THAT name, but since I refuse to say it and she thought that she was talking to the Gray side of us, I will transcribe it as if that's what she said.*

Me: Yeah.  Me too. 

Her: It feels like we never get to talk anymore.  Even though I spend a lot of my time working I want you to know that I'm here for you if you need to talk.  Whenever.

*GAG by the way.  How fucking sappy can she get?  But I need to act like Gray...act like Gray*

Me: Yeah, I know.  I've just been busy with school and stuff.

Her: I'm sure it's a lot of work.  How are those friends you brought over anyway?  Are you making sure Mari is fitting in?  It can be hard moving to a new school.

*The fuck?  Oh, those courier idiots who gave Gray the paint to cover over my beautiful love notes.  Best to change the topic*

Me: Yeah, she's doing fine.  Listen, I wanted to talk to you actually, about that notebook of mine you were reading.

Her: *She noticeably stiffens.  Oh, this is fun!* The...Slenderman ones, was it?  I looked that stuff up on the computer, it doesn't seem like it's appropriate for a boy your age.  Especially not with your condition.

Me: The kids at school are really into it.

Her: I thought you didn't even like that scary stuff.  

Me: It's not all that scary.

Her: Well I think it's awful.  Taking children, tearing people to shreds, chasing people through forests?  Certainly it can't help you sleep at night, living where we are.

Me: *I can't help laughing.  That gets her attention, Gray NEVER laughs.  He's a real downer* I'm not worried about nightmares.

*Ooh, look at her, she's sitting down across from me at the table getting in her 'we're having an intimate and serious talk' pose.  This is bound to be SO much fun*

Her: Do you want to talk about it to someone more...qualified than me?

Me: What, you want to send me back to an asylum?

Her: No, it doesn't have to be that serious.  We could get you set up with a therapist.  I know money's a little tight, but we have enough if it's what you need.  Or you could talk to the guidance counselor at school.

Me: You think I'm crazy.

Her: I think you're still delicate.  That notebook was...disturbing, [Gray].  Please tell me if there's something wrong.  I'm your mother, you can trust me.

Hey hey hey, look who's back?  Yes I feel your sensitive little heart reaching out to your mommy, Gray.  Glad to see you've pulled out of your slump.  Yes it was necessary to talk to her, don't give me that.  Sometimes you have to face problems head on.

Her: [Gray?]

*Whoops, guess I was quiet too long*

Me: I'm really okay mom.  You know I'm a big art geek.  Well I came across this Slenderman stuff and it was really cool looking so I doodled it in class.

Her: I'm glad, [Gray], really I am.  I was worried that you were taking this all a bit too seriously.

Me: It's serious business.

Hee hee, stop panicking Gray, I'm just gonna have a little fun.  Besides, you wouldn't have to worry about whether or not she knew it was real if it was a fact that she knew.

Her: What do you mean?

Me: Have you ever thought what it would be like if He was real?

Her: Don't say such things Gray, you make me worried.

Me: Slenderman out there, taking children, stalking adults.  I've see-

Me: I've seen movies about it.  But personally I find it all silly.  It's just a popular fad, nothing more.  I'm just trying to fit in at school.  Be a normal kid like you always say, mom. 

Yeah, yeah, complain all you want Kor.  I may be weak, but I have the drive to keep you from telling my mom that it's all real.  I can do at least that for her.  So you just cool your head inside for a little bit.  Thanks for breaking me out of that slump.

Mom: You know that you can talk to me about anything, right?  And try and stay away from that gruesome stuff.  I'm sure there are plenty of kids who have other interests that you share to talk with.

Me: Yeah, I'm sure mom.  Listen, I'm going to finish my homework in my room, okay?

Mom: Okay sweetie.  I'm glad we could talk.

Me:  Me too.  I hope we can spend a lot more time together.

So I hugged my mom and now I'm back in my room.  I'm also back in control of my body, that's fun.  The Kor and I are falling into a more regular rhythm.  Used to be we could switch back and forth rapidly, but it seems we're rusty cause it takes more effort now and the switches take more energy.  It's getting easier, though.  I don't know if that's good or bad.  For now it's me.  I don't think I'll be going back to Hakurei Ryuu's blog.  This way I can pretend she lived happily ever after, as if that was possible.

Oh look, it's snowing outside.  I like the snow.  It turns the sky and the ground the same color until the world looks like the inside of a pillowcase.

Catch you on the flip-side.

HaKorei Ryuu

Have you guys heard of this chick?  I suppose you have since she was one of those sages and those were a big thing or something.  I've got to thank her.  But she's probably dead or something, right?  She hasn't posted in a long time.  I don't know and I don't care, it was Gray who was reading her blog.

And then he just stopped reading her blog.  The kid like, curled his consciousness in on itself and refused to keep interacting with the world.  I had been asleep and woke up in control.  He seriously just gave the reins back to me.  Maybe he's learning.  As far as I can tell it was from some positive bullshit post he read on that Ryuu's blog.  He's refusing to talk to me other than to say that he refuses to read that post.  I can feel his little ball of self pity from out here.  Poor thing, he's too reliant on playing the victim to even listen to arguments against it.

Well, that's what I'm here for.  To protect him from anything that hurts him.  And if protecting him means being in control of our body so much the better.  So while I'm here, I'm going to be cleaning up some of the other blemishes on Gray's happiness.

No not Tall Mr. Brain-smash, as much as I'd like to wipe that piece of shit off the face of the planet I think our last run in has made me realize the need for some preparation before dealing with Him.  I'm gonna be keeping a close eye out for him while I'm out and about, last thing I need is to be broken again.  That shit HURT.  I pulled myself back together again, but it took longer than I'd like.  And explaining the randomly broken arm to our mother wasn't a walk in the park either.

SPEAKING OF THAT WOMAN: she is first on my list!  :)  Gray's been worried sick about her getting infected and it is just not good for him.  He's gonna have some kind of aneurysm if he doesn't calm down.  So I'm gonna have a nice intimate chat with her and determine how we can fix that problem.  For Gray <3 

By the way!  It's snowing here.  How pretty.  I love the snow.  Makes everything black and white.  Maybe I'll make a snowman!  I think I'd love snowball fights if I had anyone to play with.  Maybe someday I'll land one right in His big faceless face.  XD

At least I still have my Gray.

Have a nice day!

Memorial Gray

Hi guys.  Been a while, I guess.  I'm still down an arm, so I guess typing hasn't been the top on my list of wants.  But this blog was supposed to be my eulogy, and after my brush with death I don't want to abandon it.  This blog could be the only thing I ever contribute to this world.  Might as well talk about someone actually worth your time, for example, anyone who isn't me.

I'm gonna tell you about Graham.

Graham was twenty when I met him and when he died.  Five years older than me, but we were still the closest in age of everyone in the Hospital.  We were all crazy, but he looked....haunted.  I guess hunted is a better word for it.  He looked like the generic patient you see in horror films about insane asylums, the twitchy kind who look over their shoulder all the time and whisper about people following them.  He was a walking stereotype.

We're not really supposed to know what all the other patients are in for, but everyone kind of hears anyway.  It's hard to describe the community built in one of these places, I've never been to jail, but I'd say it's a softer version of that.  We didn't get much time out of our cells but we all had the same psychiatrists and the same nurses so we had a sense of unity.  Us against them.  But a lot of the guys in there were pretty terrifying, not the kind of people I wanted to hang out with.

So basically what I'm trying to say is it took all of two days for everyone to know that Graham was arrested standing in a pool of blood with a machete, surrounded by body parts, shaking and screaming that they were coming for him.  A walking stereotype, as I mentioned before.

I don't know if he gravitated to me because of the age thing I mentioned earlier, because I certainly never tried to approach him.  I didn't make friends there, I hadn't hardly made more than casual acquaintances in all the time I had been there.  Maybe he was attracted to me because he felt like I was a potential stalked.  Do you think that there are specific people destined to be stalked?  Maybe He guided him to me.  He jumps by infection, so He controls His victims like vehicles to make His way to His preordained victims.  Or maybe it was just me being unlucky.  

Either way, Graham decided to open up to me.  He told me about his whole life, how he had been in college when his friends showed him those videos.  Marble Hornets, I think it was.  I personally have never gotten up the courage to watch them, especially since I went into my research about Him knowing that He was real.  The videos just seem far more terrifying than these blogs.  In writing there are no jump scares.  I'm terrible at jump scares.

Basically, Graham and his friend Tony got infected together, through the videos I guess.  Sometimes he was incoherent, I'm sure some real insanity was mixed in with the Slender stuff that society deemed "insanity", and I didn't think then to ask follow up questions, so the story is patchy.  He and Tony started seeing Him around campus and they fled together.  He talked about finding what I realized later are these blogs, part of what helped me find them, and he read about the strategies you guys have compiled.  They latched on to 'keep moving' and made it their mantra.  They made it almost across the country evading both proxies and the police since their parents sent out missing person reports pretty immediately after they skipped town.  Graham used to get almost calm looking remembering those days.  Sometimes he would forget about telling me his story at all, instead just lapsing into college memories.  Or what his mom looked like.  Or when he met Tony.  Or Liza, who I gathered was some kind of crush though I don't think he ever worked up the courage to ask her out.

They kept each other sane for a pretty long time, Graham and Tony.  It was months before there was any  serious sign of trouble.  They were crashing in an abandoned house and Graham woke up in the middle of the night to see Tony missing from his lookout post.  When he went downstairs he found him, with two other  men all carrying machetes.  At this point Graham gets a bit gibber-y, and so I had to work out most of the story myself.  He just kept repeating the part where he saw them and asked Tony if he'd found more runners.  

"Did you find more runners?" he kept saying over and over until he would start shaking and rocking back and forth.  "I saw him there and I said 'did you find more runners?' and then...and then' and then he'd start screaming or convulsing and the orderlies would sedate him and drag him back to his cell.  With the limited amount of time we had out of our cells to talk, it took most of the months we had together to get past this part.

From what I can gather, He had told Tony that He would protect him and his family if he joined Him.  I wonder how He asks people things like that.  Does He have a voice?  I wonder what it sounds like.  He's never spoken to me.  The trade off was that Tony had to kill Graham.  I don't know how the fight went down, but from the police report it seems that he somehow got one of the machetes and killed all three.  Then he was too freaked out by it to move, and the police had been called about noise disturbances and they found him there.  Crying and covered in blood.

I wonder how many of us end up that way.

I had known Graham a while by the time that he finished his story.  I still thought he was crazy, but it was scary nonetheless.  I had never heard of Slenderman or anything before this.  It was the day after he finished his story that everything came apart.  I have to wonder if He was waiting for the end of the story to do it.  Like Graham had outlived his usefulness once he told it all to me.  Maybe Graham knew that, somewhere in his heart.  That's why he was so reluctant to complete it.  Like he knew that He ruled his life, and all he had left to do was pass on his story and then die.

Our Hospital, you have to understand, was more than a mental institution.  It was for the criminally insane.  This wasn't padded rooms, this was guns and bars.  It would take someone seriously skilled to break into one of our cells.  To break in with a weapon and spend the time tearing someone to pieces.  To then break in to another cell and leave pieces of the first victim.  To make the security cameras in just those two areas fuzz out.  So when Graham showed up that morning as a pile of his own organs there was mass panic.  I was the lucky winner.

I got his right foot.  On my bed.  I woke up to it just being there.  I have never been more terrified in my life.  Even the first time I saw Him.  And I immediately believed everything Graham had said.  It just wasn't possible for a human to do something like that.  Graham had been so sure that he wasn't safe here, that He could still get him, and he was right.  

I was removed from the Hospital and put in protective custody.  I was going to be released soon, anyway.  Since I had received the special message, they assumed that I was next.  I guess they were right.  He came to my new cell.  I saw Him.  But he didn't do anything to me, he just let me know that this was my life now.  What had been Graham was now going to be me.  I knew better than to tell anyone.  They would just lock me up again, and I'd be a sitting duck.  But I also knew that running didn't help.  It hadn't saved Graham.  It won't save me.

There.  I've told his story.  It took forever and my arm hurts.  I'm going to sleep.  

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you this.  I'm pretty much damning you with every word I say.  I just have to.  You have to know.  I'm sorry, He's coming, and we'll never be saved."

-Graham Piers    

Failure Gray

So I promised a 'what happened' post and here it is.  But I guess to fully explain all this I should probably start from the actual beginning and explain about The Kor and all of that.  He's here now, in my head, just like old times.  I can hear him when he's awake in there, just like he can hear me if he's in control.  He's asleep now though, which is why I'm posting.  I don't feel like having his commentary on what I'm going to put here.

The Kor is an alternate personality of mine that was formed when I was seven.  My dad wasn't very nice to me for...extenuating reasons.  Most of which were his fault.  I don't want to get into that.  It's hard to type with just one arm and I can see this getting long.  I'll just leave you with this: my mom is 31 and I'm 15.  If my dad was alive he'd be in his 50's.  Do the math.  I didn't even grasp what an asshole he was back then, I just wanted him to come live with the family, help my mom out financially.  My mom refused to blame him.  He wasn't exactly receptive to my criticism.

That was when The Kor was born.  Made?  Whatever.  He took the hardships for me.  We worked well together then.  He just dealt with all the pain that I couldn't handle.  But I didn't realize how far he would go and he burned down my father's church killing him and two of my classmates.  He said that it was to protect me.  I mean, I think he really does believe that he's just trying to help.  But it did land the both of us in a hospital for the criminally insane for eight years of our life.  Where I was cured, I guess, if you consider getting rid of him a cure.  I'm not a hundred percent sure I do.  Either way I was released after he was gone for three years straight.

Though he's back now, that's self-explanatory.  And I have this feeling that He doesn't like him too much.  The Monster I saw through The Kor's eyes was not the Monster that looks at me.  And while The Kor was posting that last time the computer started freaking out and he turned around and The Slenderman was right there behind us, in my room.  I had never seen him that close before.  Though I complain because I'm weak, He hasn't actually done anything to me directly.  Other than the mental stress and the slendersickness, He hadn't done anything.

Well I could never have imagined the fear and pain.  He was not smiling anymore.  He didn't waste a second with staring like he is sometimes prone to do.  Those tentacles were out and then we were across the room hitting the wall left arm first (which is why this message comes slowly through one-handed typing).  I really thought I was going to die there.  The Kor was still screaming insults at Him through the blood he was coughing up and I was screaming for him to stop inside our head and I thought that was it, He was going to end us.  But instead he reached out (God, his arms go on forever, don't they?) and he touched our forehead and I felt The Kor get shot back.  I can't really describe how that feels, but suddenly I was back in control and The Kor was broken or something and I could feel his pain and my head was filled with screaming and I don't know if any of it was mine, but I must have been making some noise because my mom came bursting in and I was crying on the ground with my arm all wrong and surrounded by blood and now I'm in the hospital.

The Kor is slowly pulling himself back together and swearing for all he's worth.  I'm sure he's in a lot of pain, or whatever he could possibly feel, I don't know how we work.  I don't even know if he's what he used to be.  From what I've read being around Slender makes preexisting mental conditions worse.  I guess I'll find out.  Or maybe we won't.  I don't know why I'm alive now, but I am teetering on the brink of losing everything that means anything, and it seems like He takes his prey as despairing as possible.  So I'm not long for this world.

My mom wanted to know if I was being bullied.  She had found some of my notebooks, and she wanted to know if I was adopting this Slenderman stuff to try and cover up for other things.  She started researching about it.  She started researching about it.  I am a failure.  I just wanted her to be safe.  But I guess that we're both going to die painfully now.  I'm a terrible person for thinking that it would be nicer to do it together.  I'm stuck in this hospital for a while.  I'll probably post again.  Or not, if I'm dead.  Either way, I've lost any small amount of hope I had.

There is no way to escape this fate.