Some Creative Title

So yeah, I haven't been posting much lately, partially because I don't really see much of a point in telling you all about every thing I protect Elizabeth from, and everything I have to do to put her in further danger, and partially because most of that isn't interesting enough to relate anyways.  But I suppose there's no point in hiding this, so I might as well make another post while I'm here.

Elizabeth is in the hospital.  In all likelihood she'll be fine, though, with luck she'll be a little fuzzy on what happened.  I'm here, too, waiting for her to wake up.  The doctors say it's a concussion, nothing serious but that they wanted to keep her for observation.  I know I should be concerned for her, worried if she's o.k, but all I can think about is how stupid it was that she got it in the first place, and how if she had actually thought things through this wouldn't even be an issue.  Instead she elected to take an action that could have major repercussions for both of us, when it would clearly have been safer to back off.

Right, you probably want the whole story.  Elizabeth and I had been at the library studying, because an eldritch abomination isn't really proper motivation to ignore your schoolwork, is it?  Well when we reached her apartment Phillip was leaving it.  Now ignoring the fact that Phillip was being an idiot and should have told me about his plans to leave yet another creepy message in her apartment, I'd have to say that any one's first reaction to a masked man leaving your apartment late at night should be running in the opposite direction.  That is, of course, even before you realize that said masked person is a servant of an incredibly powerful monster that just happens to be stalking you on a regular basis.  And yet, she chose to chase him.  I honestly had no idea she could even run that fast but Elizabeth almost tackled him before they reached the stairs. After barely a minute of wrestling she had gotten his mask off, and it was clear she recognized him.  I'll give Phillip this: he knows how to take advantage of a shocked opponent.  When she paused to wonder why he was behind the mask he kicked her legs out beneath her and threw her against the railing.  The sound of her head hitting the railing was not a pleasant one, but her loss of conciseness solved a lot of short term problems.  Unfortunately, Phillip, genius that he is, wasn't finished, evidently still in full on survival mode he took out a knife and was about to bring it down on her chest.  Fortunately, I had moved close enough to grab him at this point and prevent that.  I had to break his nose again, but I don't really consider that to be a negative thing at this point, in fact, I found it thoroughly satisfying.  But at the end of it all, I sent the proxy on his merry little way and called an ambulance, and now I'm writing this on a tablet in a hospital room waiting for her to wake up.  If she remembers too much I may have to have a Tall Gentleman ease her memory a little bit.


Speak of the literal dev il.  Well I guess that m eans I don 't hav e to arran ge an ythin g m yself.  I'll fin ish this later.







So yes, Elizabeth is fine and awake, and it's too late for me to care enough to go back and edit this post to reflect that properly.  Basically she doesn't remember enough to point Phillip definitively, but it's looking like she knows "her assailant" from somewhere.  I guess it's good they never actually interacted beyond being in the same class.  But he's still probably going to be receiving a visit from the cops shortly enough, so there's one useless helper down the tubes.  Not like he was ever really an effective proxy, I'm almost hoping they send someone competent to replace him.  I'm just wanting this whole thing to be over now, it's getting tiring.

One last thing: bloggers new system for writing posts sucks, someone make them change it back.

See you around

Caged

No Turning Back

After my last post I called a "meeting" of sorts out on the campus nature trail.  Fortunately for my that thing isn't used very frequently anyways, and no-one is ever there on nights when there's class the next morning.  I met Phillip at the entrance and we went to a more isolated part of the trail where the Slender Man was waiting.  He was standing under a tall tree off the main part of the trail, illuminated in the moonlight.  As soon as Phillip saw him he knelt on the wet mud, and for a surreal moment I felt compelled to mirror the action.  Just something about the scene, the light, the intensity, the silence, just the image of a fellow human knelling before something so much more powerful than him, something so sure of it's right the rule, it called to something primal in me.  You know He's old, but if you've never seen him standing over someone he owns, you can't realize just how old he is.  But I've refused the kneel before him in the past, and as long as I remain in control of my own mind I will continue to refuse.

After Phillip stood I revealed my plan to them both.  I was... unsure about how the Slender Man felt, for some reason I wasn't able to read him as well as I have been in the past, though talking with him has never been easy.  Phillip, on the other hand, was ecstatic, though it's become obvious that's he's accepted his role as my subordinate and it's unlikely he'll ever appose anything I'll say.  So after a few minutes of collaboration with the two of them I left them to go walk the rest of the trail by myself.  I needed to contemplate some things, and the trail was still the safest place for me to let Cage take control for a while.  I've been keeping a tighter grip on him lately, because I can't allow myself to slip up, now more than ever, but the downside is that sometimes I need to simply give him complete control for a while, to balance things out.  Free does not approve, but he doesn't approve of much of anything I choose lately, then again, neither does Cage, neither do I.

So Friday, yesterday assuming I start typing this faster, I met Elizabeth.  That seems odd to say, because I do in fact meet her every day, as well as some others, I do have something of a social life after all.  But this time I met her with a specific purpose, one script in my mind detailing what what going to happen.  We "ran into each other" outside the student center, where Phillip had managed to delay her usual schedule to force a confrontation, and I asked her how she was feeling.  She naturally responded with deliberately vague answers about how she had been a little stressed out, maybe a little tired, how it was nothing to worry about, and then she asked me why I asked.  My response was also deliberately vague, I mentioned about how I was just feeling on edge for no particular reason, how I was tyring to figure out if there was something going around; I choose my words and tone carefully, designed them to set the idea in her head.  We walked for a few minutes, talking uneasily, dancing around the thing we were about to address.  When He showed up I started coughing, I almost ended up on my knees from putting so much force into it.  Elizabeth turned to check if I was alright and saw Him standing in the trees, watching.  When I recovered from my practiced episode I joined her in staring into the trees, still partially crouched.  Then I repeated the question she asked me not two weeks earlier: "Do you see it?" When she answered her voice was dripping with fear:

"Yes."

Then He was gone, having full filled his role in a plan he had agreed to, the Slender Man was content to leave the rest to me.  My dorm was closer, and my roommate was already gone for the weekend, so we went to my room and discussed our options.  I played some music to try and get the image out of her head and calm her down and asked what was going on.  She only told me things I already knew: She was being hunted, she couldn't sleep without having nightmares, she was receiving threatening messages and signs, and she was trying to find an answer, but I listened as though I was hearing it for the first time.  At first I pretended to join in her fear, to make it seem as though I was even more confused and lost than she was, I even acted as though I couldn't believe it was real.  Then I got angry, I told her that we couldn't lose to Him, that we would find a way to escape whatever was going on.  As we discussed options she mentioned that she had stumbled across a few blogs that seemed to be dealing with him, at first acted was skeptical, but then I had her tell me all she knew about the blogs.  I convinced her to go home for the weekend, and I told her that I would take over looking at the blogs for her, that she should focus on watching the various vlogs instead to see if she could find out anything there.  With our labor divided so that there was no risk of her finding my blog I decided it was best to wrap things up before she could suggest anything different.  I told her I had one last class I had to go to (which was, incidentally, the truth) and that she should go ahead and go home, that maybe getting out of the area would provide some relief for the time being.

So now I'm being "Hunted" along with Elizabeth, the good news is that I can keep her from finding out who and what I am, but the bad news is that I now have a much greater role in her active psychological torture.  And now she knows, for better or worse, that I can see him too.  This means that I'm now entrenched in this mess no matter what, there's no walking away to save myself and still not serving Him, the two options before me are more clear than ever before, and I'm far closer to having to choose one of them.  Somehow it seems that this happens every time I try to buy myself time, but my options beyond that are have always been few anyways.  I suppose that if I have to dig myself a deeper hole than there's something comforting about being the one holding the shovel.

See you around

-Cage

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

What really happened

I might as well say right now that the other post did get at least some of it right, even if those bits were still partially inaccurate.  I may as well just skip forward.

Sunday afternoon Elizabeth and I were walking near the campus nature trail, not on it, but we were going to the student center, which is located somewhat in front of it.  She was stressed, and beginning to feel the paranoia that eventually afflicts all the hunted before they realize what they're dealing with.  She wouldn't tell me exactly what she was feeling, but I knew enough to guess it.  I noticed right away when He showed up; I was annoyed, but I'm fairly decent at concealing my emotions, so Beth didn't notice anything.  Until she noticed Him.  I felt her reaction right away, she backed away and griped my arm, staring into the woods.  At that point I really didn't have much of a choice, I pretended I couldn't see anything, I tried to convince her that she was just imagining it.  I can't say I was very effective, but I did manage to calm her down a little.

After she had recovered a little we returned to her apartment.  When we got there we discovered someone (who I later confirmed to be Phillip) had broken into her apartment and spray painted an Operator's symbol over her bed.  That one's just brimming with originality, he is.  Anyways, this disturbed Elizabeth even further and so I convinced her to talk to the police and stay the night with a friend, not like it makes any difference, but it's probably a good idea for her mental state right now.  She did not spend the night at my dorm, she stayed with a different friend of ours.  I was hesitant to involve anyone else, but I thought it wisest to keep her away from me for the time being while I tried to get into contact with Phillip and confirm his involvement.

That's basically it, not much of a story, I know, but there really isn't anything else I can add.  However, just to be sure, let's recap some things:

• I was with Elizabeth when she saw the Slender Man for the first time on Sunday.
• I did  not plan any part of it, I merely recognized the situation and played along with it.
• Elizabeth's apartment was broken into.
• I was not the person who broke into her apartment.
• The break in could not be qualified as a ransacking.
• Elizabeth did go to the police.
• I was not present when this happened.
• Elizabeth did stay with a friend that night,
• That friend was not me.
• We did not stay up all night discussing our hopes and dreams, or any BS like that.
• My blog was apparently hacked.
• I am probably going to stab or shoot somebody as a result of this.

Any questions?

See you around

Cage

The Other Side of the Coin

Did you guys notice I have a title now?  Apparently I'm a batman villain now, and unsurprisingly I'm kind of o.k. with this.

Well I was, but after this week, I'm pretty much sick of all of this.  You think I would have been able to hold this off a bit longer, but no, I'm clearly not the only one playing this game, and apparently I'm not even the only one cheating.  You know what, that's not even fair, I've probably had a better week than any of you, possibly excluding some of the proxies in the audience, but I really don't care all that much.  Because this is the week I betrayed a friend.  It's not like I didn't see this coming, like I haven't spent this time mentally preparing myself for when I had to make this choice.  But then it's not like I ever really had a choice, is it?  Do or die isn't much of a choice, really.

So yes, my  good friend  the Slender Man payed a visit to Elizabeth this week.  How do I know this, you might ask yourself, well I know it because he payed me a visit shortly prior, good friend that he is, to let me know he wanted a "favor."  Obviously I'm paraphrasing.  He wanted me to introduce him to Elizabeth, or rather, he wanted me to help set the mood.  I didn't exactly have the necessary cards to say no.  Both of us know there is a line, a constantly shifting, moving, unseen line that he can't cross and another equally unstable line that I won't cross.  The day either line is broken one of us gets hurt... and I get killed.  I don't know exactly where either line is, but that wasn't it, so I agreed to his suggestion.

So Saturday I broke into Elizabeth's apartment.

That's not true, I ransacked her apartment, I flipped furniture, I destroyed her television, I stole her computer, I emptied her trash all over the floor, I made sure the place was a complete wreck.  My final touch was to add an operator's symbol to her mirror in blood.  This is a point where having a school with a good biology department is a mixed blessing.  I made sure that no one saw me entering or exiting from the apartment, and I made sure to stop by the security room and destroy all of the recordings from that day.  Fortunately not many people stay on campus during the weekend here, so I didn't have to worry too much.

After that I returned to my dorm and waited.  I just sat on my floor and waited for what was going to come, I might have passed out at some point, but I honestly don't remember either falling asleep or waking up at any point in all that time, so maybe I didn't. maybe I've been awake for almost 48 hours now.  I'm going to sleep after I finish typing this.  It was around two in the afternoon when what I was waiting for happened: Elizabeth called.

She had just gotten back from visiting her parents for the weekend, I can only imagine what went through her head when she opened the door to her apartment and found the chaos waiting for her.  The chaos I had left for her to find.  She called me before she called the police.  Is that ironic or just sad?  I ran there to make sure I arrived before the campus police did, the ones I told Elizabeth to call.  I found her in the apartment's parking lot, waiting for me.  She was holding herself and shivering, even though it was probably the warmest day in a month.  I don't even remember what I said, but somehow I calmed her down as quickly as I could, and I got her to tell me what was wrong.  When she told me someone had broken into her apartment I rushed up there as quickly as I could, telling here to stay behind.  She didn't, just like I knew she wouldn't, but when we got to the door and I went inside she waited outside, just like I knew she would.  I should have made a mistake, I should have thought up a worse plan, but I didn't, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do and I did it.

I made a big show of flipping over the furniture, burying through piles trash, and looking in ransacked cabinets. I made sure to put my hands as many places as I could, to leave as much of a mark behind as possible.  To contaminate the crime scene.  I found a wrench where I had left it in my original mess, under the last piece of furniture in the room.  I picked it up and held over my shoulder like a bat and moved towards the bedroom door.  Elizabeth called after me nervously, asking what I was doing.  It wasn't difficult to make my voice nervous and uncertain, it may of been for different reasons than she believed, but I was barely holding myself together at that point.  Have you ever had to destroy the very sense of security and peace of someone you cared about, then had walk through the shattered bits of their happiness while trying to convince them you're just helping?  It isn't easy.  But I told her I was going to look in her room to make sure whoever did this was gone, and I said it with a straight face.

I didn't have to do as much to her room, after I opened the Elizabeth couldn't see me any longer.  Still, I made a point to move the bed and open the closet, just to make it clear that I had examined the room.  However I tried to avoid wasting any more time than I could afford, in my mind I could see the campus police pulling into the parking lot, and preparing to take control of the situation, the real police right behind them.  I exited the bedroom and moved to the bathroom, making sure to gasp loudly enough for Elizabeth to hear.  I heard my name called from the doorway, then the voice of a man asking what was going on.  I quickly touched the blood on the mirror, completing my claim that any evidence of my involvement happened after the crime.  The blood was mostly dry, but I still managed to get enough on my hand for what I needed before the campus police officer came and piratically dragged me out of the apartment.

After we got outside he turned to say something, and stepped back after noticing my eyes; for a brief moment I was acutely aware of how easily I could have pushed him over the second floor balcony.  But he recovered and proceeded to ask what I was doing in the apartment and give me a lecture about disturbing a crime scene and going into a potentially dangerous situation that lasted until the real police showed up and took over.  Elizabeth and I both had to answer several questions before we were allowed to leave, and by that time Elizabeth was even more uneasy and scared.  This was the plan, she had to be as vulnerable as possible, she needed to be scared and confused and hopeless, and I needed to be there to save her.

So I suggested we go somewhere to calm her down.

I suggested the campus nature trail.

I walked one of my only friends into a trap I had meticiously laid out for her, and I did it knowing full well I would have to watch her lose every shred of hope drained from her eyes, and I did knowing that I would be lieing to her and pretending I was really helping her all the while, and I did it anyways.

Because the nature trail was where it happened.

That's where the Slender Man made his move.

I saw him standing off behind the trees, and I saw her see him.  I watched the color drain from my friends face, I felt her grab my shirt.  I heard the fear in her voice as she asked if I saw what she saw, as she asked if the monster she only knew from a fictional series on youtube was really standing there, watching her.  That's when I did the most despicable thing I did that entire day: I smiled.  I gave Elizabeth the calmest, most reassuring smile I could manage, and I told her nothing was there.  I pretended convinced her that what she was seeing was just stress or shock or anything but what she thought it was.  I told her she was the only one who could she the darkness about to consume her mind.

I told her she was alone.

I took her back to my dorm, I convinced the RA to let her stay the night, and I told her to get some sleep.  I got online and looked at a few things, but it wasn't even an hour before she woke up from her inevitable nightmares.  We spent the night talking, neither of us slept, even though my roommate passed out long before dawn.  We both saw the man in the window, I'm sure, but neither mentioned him once.  We talked of life, fate, the future, hope, dreams, we spoke of these things as though we had them, we acted like they were obtainable for us, rather than just illusions that would ultimately serve to crush us even further.  I even spoke like I meant them, even though I didn't.

When the sun took to the skies I left Elizabeth in my room to get some sleep, to descend further into the madness of her nightmares, and I went to class.  When I got back she was gone, so I sat down and typed this up.  I just betrayed a friend in the worst way possible, and I wrote it up to put on a freaking blog read by a mix of stupid victims that don't even realize what's going on, and egotistical psychopaths who live to hunt down the victims.


I can't publish this.  I'm erasing this and going to sleep.

This needs to be seen.

Insects of Stone

Hey there, I know I haven't been around much lately, but to be fair, the most I'm used to on this end is classes and tests and the occasional social obligation.  Lately, however, I've found myself running interference between Elizabeth and Phillip (fortunately the run away mannequin from Men's Warehouse hasn't gotten involved just yet).  I've already talked about my first technique to buy myself some time: introducing Elizabeth to Marble Hornets.  So far that has worked about as well as I had predicted it would: Beth has admitted to me that she has felt a bit paranoid because of the videos, and even experienced a nightmare based on them.  I was concerned at first, but after listening to her description it sounds like something concocted by her own mind, rather than a dream implanted by, well, I can't think of a clever moniker right now, but we've all read some version of this sentence before.  We only got to about entry #18 before she decided she was too creeped out to continue watching.  It's not that surprising, considering we were watching it at night, some of those videos even creeped me out a little, despite the fact I've dealt with the real thing.  Still, I think we might watch some more entries this weekend, Elizabeth said she wanted to see where it was going, so I guess I have no choice but to ride this decision out, hopefully it won't backfire too terribly.

On the other hand, this seems to have given me a little leverage when dealing with Phillip, which is now an almost daily chore.  I'm going to be honest, Phillip isn't that clever.  I suspect he's been hollowed (or whatever term you want to use) enough that he can't think that creatively, on the whole he's actually been inclined to believe whatever I've told him.  When I told him about Marble Hornets it was enough to convince him to back off his own plans (breaking into her apartment and leaving cryptic messages, like I said, he's not that clever).  Right now he looks at me like I'm a superior, he was led to believe that I was going to be his partner and handler for this assignment, and that it was my job to train him.  He's still a little upset that I broke his nose and forced him to walk a mile to the nearest road, but "infecting" Elizabeth has convinced him I'm on his side (thank goodness he doesn't actually check this blog).  He remains loyal to me and what he knows of my plans, and I can use that to my advantage in the future.

I've considered talking to Him about all of this, but right now everything is still fairly safe and simple, and I'd prefer to keep it that way, at the expense of potentially finding out more on the situation.  Look at me, taking the safe route, aren't you all so proud.

I know I haven't been active much lately, but I'll try to get on more often in the future.  Hopefully I'll even get better about making posts about what's happening, even though I haven't gotten much practice at that until now.  You know, I always knew this was coming, I had just never let myself believe it would be happening so soon.

See you around

Free