Running Interference

You know, throughout my life I've found several things that should require effort or concern are in fact relatively easy for me to do.  Murder, for example, is easy, you just stand there and push the blade into someones chest, you don't even have to know their name.  Lieing is incredibly easy, you just need to imagine that you truly are speaking the truth, and false information flows from your lips without so much as a waver of the voice to betray your dishonesty.  Running is far easier than some of you make it out to be, you just forget what you had and who you were and go.  Manipulation by itself is not all that difficult, identifying a target, predicting a persons reactions, leading them where you want them; these are all things you can learn without too much difficulty.  However, doing any of those things becomes difficult if your goals include not letting anyone know you're doing them, and when you're trying to exert complete control over someones life, over multiple people's lives, without anyone realizing that you're trying any harder, that isn't easy.  Though I suppose that when one of those people is Hunted and the other is Hollowed that helps.

Every Tuesday and Thursday I go to a class that I share with both Phillip and Elizabeth.  I sit maybe 15 feet away from either of them, and spend the majority of my time trying to figure out how to trick them both into staying away from each other.  Honestly it doesn't really help that things are accelerating faster than I had planned.  Elizabeth pretends that nothing is wrong, she hasn't mentioned the Slender Man or anything resembling him to me or any of our other friends, yet, but I can tell she's already seeing him on a regular basis.  Phillip, on the other hand, is very vocal about his plans and schedules and ambitions.  He can talk for thirty minutes straight about how much work he put into the letter he slipped under Elizabeth's door (I retrieved it before she saw anything), or how honored he is to be working for "Father," but beyond that he seems incapable of casual conversation.  I've had him go on at length about his agenda, but as soon as he's done he just stops talking and stares off in the distance, unable or unwilling to react to anything else for a very long time.  Sometimes I'm really glad I can't see what he's looking at, I promise I'll never envy anyone whose mind has gone through that much trauma.

It's complicated keeping both of them at arms length while trying to make sure neither one is ever within arms length of the other.  I have to monitor my calls with either of them, and I try to never interact with Phillip when Elizabeth is around, if she ever figures out what he is then I don't want her jumping to any conclusions about me.  I've found that as a neutral party I'm not capable of being a very effective buffer, but I'm still faced with my original dilemma of being unable to directly show support for Elizabeth.  This has ended up with me doing a lot of very minor sabotage of Phillip's activities, of course because my role in our perceived partnership is to keep a closer eye on Elizabeth and gauge her reactions I'm able to convince him that the notes he's been trying to leave around have reached her.  The good news here is that Phillip is very easy to manipulate and deceive, he's a predictable element with nowhere near the amount of creativity or depth your average human should posses.  The bad news is that Elizabeth isn't, even with as much as I know about her I can't prepare for her every reaction, and being Hunted makes her much less predictable.

Also in the bad news pile is the fact that she's started doing research.  A couple of nights ago we were with a few friends at her apartment for a movie night.  I'm never very comfortable in groups, but I went anyways, both for the sake of seeming normal and to use the opportunity to keep an eye on her.  Throughout the movie I saw her look out the window several times, even though her antagonist never made an appearance.  Part way through the movie I excused myself to go to the bathroom and covertly checked the search history on her computer.  She had been looking up Slender Man.  If she finds the blogs I'm in trouble, I haven't said anything here that could guarantee she would know it was me, but that's not something I'm willing to risk, I have to find a way to control what information she gets.  I have a plan set up, but it's not one I'm excited about putting into action.

I haven't been Hunted in a long time.  It hasn't been long enough.

See you around

Cage