Day 304

I'm finally here. These last few days of walking have felt like an eternity. My goal, the military base, is smaller than expected. It sits on top of a small hill, surrounded by forest, its grounds violated by creeper vines and the low growth that signals the first stage of nature taking back her own. There is an eagle above the main entrance, holding a crooked cross in its claws. The trucks parked in the yard are old. Possibly World War II vintage. Their tires have cracked and decayed, the canvas covering their beds disintegrated into a fine dust with the passing of time. No useful supplies in any of them. I no longer recall what I came here looking for. My logs are no help. Was I searching for help? Other prisoners? Yes...prisoners. I have decided that that is what we are, those few of us who are here. We have been imprisoned. Captured. Held for some reason. I want to find out why. I want to know who I was, and why I was put here. Something...something terrible. Something I did.

blood blood everywhere the screaming of children fire fire I smell fire and something is cooking someone is cooking a mother their mother my friends put her on a spit and lit their hut on fire burned the village down ate the

No.
No.
No.

Not now. No time. Something urgent, something necessary, something to do. Have to focus. Have to...have to...

I don't remember.

I know I came here looking for something. Something dangerous. Something USEFUL. Something inside. I need to go inside to find it. It's inside. It's

focus focus focus hold it together girl we have a job to do keep it together

The inside of the facility is cramped, its crumbling concrete construction obviously built to survive outside attacks. Something important was stored here. I know, in my stomach, that I have to go DOWN to find it. Why down? Our most terrible secrets are always buried. I have to go down to find my secrets and kill them. Kill them all. Kill all the bastards all the little whiny brats nobody will miss them gonna kill them all

FOCUSFOCUSFOCUS

At the back of the facility is an elevator. There are three skeletons in front of it, still holding their weapons and wearing the tattered, blood-stained remains of army fatigues. They have all been dismembered. Each corpse's left hand is nailed to the wall with crude spikes, each mummified appendage forming a starfish shape. This was not done by the Beasts. This was ritual. This was conscious. A warning. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Down below is the thing I have been seeking, the thing that has drawn me from my first awakening. The Beasts wanted to stop me. I stopped them. I killed them by the dozen, by the score, by the regiment. They never stopped coming and I never stopped pushing. I am here. It is here. I need to see it. It wants me. It loves me. It needs me, needs me to complete it. I will go to it.

The elevator is a crude hand-cranked affair, sitting in a tunnel dug into the earth by the strength of the backs of men. The walls are lined with mummified skin, beautifully necrotic patterns drawn in human blood over every inch of the gruesome, lovely parchment. I know that I am in the right place. I feel at peace. No more flashbacks. No voices of the Beasts in my head, urging me to do horrible things with their paper-dry, alien thoughts. No more insects in my nerves, no more beetles in my eyes. Just the feeling that I am here. I am meant to be here, now. The elevator moves on its own, lowering me into the earth. I see the designs whirling past, seeming to form moving designs, telling stories of war and slaughter. Beautiful stories, stories to make the blood sing and the heart shine with light. I want to be one with the designs, but it is not ALLOWED yet. I feel this.

The elevator stops, letting me off in a small cavern. A large, shadowed shape occupies the space, its sleek curves speaking of a distillation of deadly intent and deadly power. I walk to it, running a finger along the fins, the exhaust port, the guidance array and sleek warhead on top. This is a beautiful thing, a tool of conquest. But it is not my goal. It is not the One that calls me. That lies further down.

The ground collapses under me. I fall for an eternity and a microsecond, landing in a massive cavern, larger than anything I could comprehend. The entire city above could fit into this space, but it does not. Instead, I am confronted with a THING beyond all imagining. Infinite clockwork assemblies, intertwined and interlocked, weaving in and out and through each other in dizzying arrays that the human mind cannot comprehend. This THING is alive. It speaks to me. It drew me here. And in this instant, I know something is wrong. This THING is wrong. Its assembly cannot exist, it is impossible. It leaks a black, oily substance. It bleeds, and its blood corrupts the world. Millions of the Beasts swarm out of the oil, clinging to the walls, all staring at me with their blank non-faces, all seeming to wait on a command from their God, the great infernal machine beneath the earth.

I run. The Beasts do not pursue, not yet. I find another tunnel nearby, the sweet scent of surface air flowing down, but I do not leave just yet. There is a body next to this tunnel, a man, perfectly preserved and mummified by the environment. He carries a book. Something, some small remnant of sanity, forces me to take the book with me. I run up the tunnel, expecting at any moment to be caught by the Beasts and dragged back. I know their true purpose now. They do not want to kill me. They want to feed me to their master. The Clockwork God. It is sentient, and it is older than any number can describe, and it is malevolent. It wants nothing more than the destruction of all, that it might be and encompass the entirety of existence. It wishes to consume and grow, and the Beasts are naught more than its agents.

I am the only person who knows this. I cannot stop it. But I will try to find a way.

Day 298

Still walking. That military base is further away than I expected. I had a dream last night. I was wandering through a landscape. It was bleak, and hot, even though this was at twilight. Dust filled the air, and a smell that I recognized. Some kind of explosive. My mind says C4, but I don’t know how I know that. There was a song playing. Or maybe I was singing it. I’m not sure. I remember it, so I’ll sing it for you:

As I lay here dying in my hospital bed
I think of my life and all the things that I've said
I wonder if you'll come and see me, but I don't think you will
I sigh and then I realize I need another pill
I call the nurse, she doesn't answer when I say her name
I stand, I stagger to my door but nothing looks the same
I wish I knew just what this meant, just what is going on
Will I die alone tonight, have I already gone?

Because I, I don't understand
Don't comprehend, I don't get this plan
And I, I don't wanna leave
No, not tonight, I still believe
I just can't, I can't deny
That I destroyed both you and I
And if I have, I have to go,
I want you to know, to see I know

The walls are writhing, pulsing to the rhythm of my heart
And as I think about your face it's tearing me apart
I know that I will die tonight but I don't really care
All I want is to hear your voice once more upon the air
I wobble and collapse, my breathing coming hard and fast
And as the nurse comes I see there is no face behind her mask
I yell and scream, but still she brings her needle full of pain
And as it cuts into my heart, I see you once again

And I know, I know that I'm gone
Know that I'm done, no moving on
And now you, you kill me inside
You crush my heart, and I can't hide
The nurse, she smirks at me
Says "Now you know, I see you see
All the pain, the hurt you made
Falls back on you, the debt repaid"

I'm gone for good and now I know I'll never see you again
My very last breath fills up my lungs with one last stab of pain
And as the darkness closes in the nurse gives me a smile
"Have fun in hell" she whispers as she throws me on the pile
My burning flesh, it turns to ash and floats up to the sky
My last regret is that I'll never get to say goodbye.

(Spoken)
The nurse stands and smiles as my soul burns
Her mask hides a demon's smile
As my mind burns away, I realize:
The dark nurse was you all the while.

 

I don’t know what it means. I don’t know where I was. Even my memories from the time I’ve spent here are becoming dim, blurred. It’s like I’m slowly losing myself. I need to find an answer….but I need to know the question first.

Day 296`

I’m cold. The sun finally set, and it’s been raining constantly since then. Three days now without a break. I had to leave the place I was staying. The Beast kept coming. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t breathe without wondering if I would wake up again. This…this place is getting to me. I can feel it inside my head, especially when I stop moving. It’s like…like little sparks behind my eyes, but the sparks absorb light instead of radiating it. It’s a sibilant whisper in my mind, carrying no words but more meaning than any poor human could hope to understand. I can feel that indefinable spark that is me beginning to wear away. Is that what this place does? Is that how it claims its victims? I can feel my energy getting less and less, slowly. Last week I was able to lift large rocks by simply willing it. Now, I can barely keep my recorder floating in front of me as I walk. I feel….grey. Lifeless, like the stones all around me. Is that it? Am I becoming a stone?

I can hear the Beasts following me. I think there’s more than one. I know I killed at least three in the last few centuries I’ve been here. The thing in the room in the Tower told me so. And she said I was a horrible person for doing it. It’s….maybe she was right. She was me…she knew me. She knew everything I had ever done. Even the things I didn’t remember. But the things she said were so Strange and biZarr#. She told me things. Horrible things. Tales of the murder of innocents and the corruption of the holy. Stories of blood and slaughter. I could see my hands, coated in the gore of a thousand dead children. I could see the great, monstrous entity that is the universe, just a single cell in a larger being of pure, unadulterated Evil. That is the truth of the universe. There is no justice. There is no love or light. The universe truly hates us. It wants us to die, and we manifest its wish in ourse€ãð)á@-éè0Ÿå  “å ]á Ѓ53 ã<ƒâ  “å"à   ã â"  ‚â â  ‚â â  ‚â â  ‚â â  ‚â  â  ‚â@ â  ‚â â
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im sorry

 

for

 

everything

 

don’t tell the vicar

 

the virii wouldn’t understand

 

goodbye

Day 293

The shadow knows. I am the shadow but I know nothing. I know things that I do not know and I do not know things that I know. I can hear the voices in the leaves. They tell me that it’s alright, that I’m meant to be here. They love me. The leaves are my friends, and as the dead wind carries them away they cry. They don’t want to be separated from me.

I love them.

I wish my friends would come back.

I am a shadow of the Beast, and the Beast is a shadow of me. I know when he is near now. I can almost hear his thoughts, like a cloud of iron-cast mosquitoes in my mind. His thoughts are strange, alien. They speak of gods of brass and devils of elysiate. They speak of the circuitry of the heavens and the clockwork of a molecule. The Beast knows the true nature of the world, the nature that he lies and tries to hide from me. He knows I am here, and he is afraid of me, and I am afraid of him. The circle of life. Join hands, everybody, and sing along. We all fall down as the dead wind blows. The Grim Reaper is in the wind, his insect legs and glittering prismatic eyes skittering along the ethereal motions of the rare gases and the scents and sounds of a world he has already picked clean. This world is his paradise, and I am the last prey he has. He is watching me, but not coming for me. I cannot hear him, but I see him sometimes, hiding under the dead houses and in the dying trees and grasses. His form is multitude, his voices are as a legion, and yet he never speaks. Words, like all else, perish before him.

I am going into the earth. I seek the heart of the monster, the dark secret spoken of only in the dead of night when this world is at its stillest. The Insect and the Beast whisper of it to each other, speaking of It in reverent tones. I want to see what they see. I want to love what they love, know the truths that they know. Then I will be equal to them.

Then I will survive. Then I will transcend. Then I will become more than human, and be able to return home.

Then I will know who I am.

 

[TRANSCRIPT: Obtained 1/20/2012 from primary source. Transcript edited for structure and ease of reading. Return source to owner immediately.]

Day 281

Oh god I hope this thing is still working.

Its batteries are finally starting to wear down as the sun sets. It works less and less often. I need this. I need to record what happens to me. I need somebody to know, some proof to remain that I existed. I…I promised that I would record what happened to me in the Tower. The memories are starting to…fragment, with time. Become unclear. So I’m going to record what I can remember right now, before it’s too late and they’re gone for good.

I approached the tower cautiously, sidearm out and ready. Nothing attacked, though. The only sound was the wind, blowing some dead leaves across the ground. The Tower doesn’t have a door. Just an opening. I stepped through it. The inside was pitch-black. When I turned to exit, I found that there was no exit. The darkness was all around me. I tried to light a match from my backpack, but it fizzled as soon as it lit. I could hear…things. Slimy things. Things with no bones, creatures of pure malice slithering in the darkness. I had to move, but I had no idea where to go or what to do. I ran, blindly, praying that I could find an exit before the things caught up to me. Finally, ahead, there was a speck of light. It grew into another opening as I approached, and I leapt through, crying with relief. When I finally looked up, though, my relief vanished.

I was in an operating room. White, clean, sterile. The gurney in the center of the room, though, was covered in blood. Fresh. I could smell it. I could see drops of it forming puddles on the blindingly white linoleum. I tried to scramble back, but the door had vanished again. The OR doors on the other side of the room opened, and…and….

(sounds of crying for approximately 2 minutes)

I…I’m sorry. I used to have better control than this. I used to be able to face ANYTHING without fear. Now…I’m just….I’m just not that person anymore. This place DOES things to you…it saps all the happiness, all the bravery out of you and leaves you a husk.

I think it FEEDS on you until there’s nothing left and you end up like Sage or his followers. Begging for death and smiling when it comes. But…but I have a story to tell. I owe whoever finds this that much. I want them to know what broke me.

The OR door opened and a surgical team came in. At first I though they were wearing masks, but they weren’t. They just….they had no mouths. They had no mouths and I had to scream. And I was still screaming as they strapped me to the operating table. The first incision….I could see it. I saw the scalpel go in and the flesh part and the blood flow and they were SMILING THEY WERE SMILING BUT THEY HAD NO MOUTHS AND

Day 231

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know what I’m a shadow of now.

Day 224

I’m safe for now. I found an apartment building whose door was unlocked and snuck inside. I’m in an apartment on the top floor. There’s no power or heat, but it’s out of the wind and I don’t think the Beast will find me up here. I miss Sage’s house. Too bad the place burnt down. I should’ve checked the oven over before using it…stupid move on my part. Oh, well. At least the car was still running, though I’ve now lost that as well. I’ve been here so long…at some points, I think I can feel the atmosphere seeping into my skin, turning it grey. It’s cold and still, like a missile solo in the split-second of absolute calm before the engines ignite and thermonuclear doom is catapulted into the stratosphere atop raw plasmic fury.

It’s like death. This entire world is dead. Living things are the anomaly here, including me.

(quiet, tired sigh)

I’m getting off-topic. My shoulder’s healed from the bruising it had just a few days earlier. My ribs and leg are still sore, but I can walk alright now. It’s slow, but enough for me to get around. I’m planning to stay here for a little while. I can see the Tower from this apartment’s windows, its weathered rock exterior jutting from the destroyed city center. It just…erupted there, a few days after I found the city. At first I thought it was an earthquake, until I heard the rock beneath me literally tearing apart. I never knew a thing like that was possible. It sounded like the earth itself was screaming in pain as this…this EDIFICE rose slowly out of the ground, the city blocks around it buckling, buildings collapsing. I was frozen in place, even after it stopped growing and the noise died down.

I think it took me around three hours to recover enough to continue. I didn’t head for the Tower right away, of course. I explored the city first. Judging from newspapers still sitting in the newsstands, this is a city called New York. The newspapers are dated "January 14, 2019”, and most of their front page stories detail rising tension between two countries, the United States of North America and the apparently Communist superstate of the Southeast Asian Economic Cooperation Zone. None of this meant anything to me, though the name New York seems familiar. I may have visited it at some point in my past. In any case, the newspapers didn’t tell me how the city had arrived here, so I moved on. After almost two weeks of exploring I was forced to conclude that there was nothing here. There were no bodies, no new information, nothing useful aside from a few new weapons I found in an abandoned police station. I’m still using the gun I arrived with as a sidearm, but it never hurts to have backups.

I eventually found my way to the site of the Tower’s emergence. It appeared to be sitting in the center of what was once a massive, level dirt field. The dirt itself was a greyish-brown, a powdery lifeless mass that had probably never held a plant. The Tower itself was surrounded by jagged, broken shards of earth, making it look like some sort of naturally-formed fortress. It was easily taller than any of the skyscrapers in the city. It seemed to absorb what little light there was in the air around it, and I could feel something inside myself drawn to it. For a moment I was reminded of Sage, the sick insanity shining behind his eyes as he stared at my naked body. I couldn’t help it, though. I…I started walking toward it.

(sound of quiet crying and breath hitching)

What I found inside was…was something I’m not ready to talk about right now. Maybe later. For now, I…I need to do something. Something that doesn’t make me think about what was in there…

(sound of tape recorder being dropped, gun cocking. Quiet) Something’s outside.

(sound of quiet, slow steps. A door slides open. A scream, several gunshots in rapid succession. A bestial roar. Recording ends)