The Fire

Driving is long, boring, and annoying. Especially when you’re the passenger and your driver is constantly trying to get in your head with his constant psycho babble and opinions.  
“But you don’t see the flaw in that logic? You have to give life its worth and mea-”

I couldn’t take another moment of Fracture’s incessant babbling. I started wailing on him trying my damnedest to slug him repeatedly in the same spot over and over again until he finally shut up. We damn near fucking crashed into another car. But we didn’t so it was worth it, so incredibly worth it. The silence was so sweet… for about the five minutes it took for me to grow tired of that too. Now I can’t get Fracture to talk again. He’s such a girl.

In light of all the nothing there is to do I thought I would make a post. But now that I’m actually doing this I realize the nothing has left me with nothing to post about. So I think I’m going to take this opportunity to explain what the Fire is. I reference it enough.

I can see Fracture growing concerned as I read aloud what I’m typing. I’m really not supposed to talk about the fire. It is, after all, blasphemy to the Bureaucracy. Let’s see how far Fracture will let me take this before he starts talking again…

Let’s began with the boring part.
Fire is the essence of chaos and the element best associated with passion and obsession. It is the element most like man. It breaths like we do. It eats like we do. Fire is also the only element capable of homicide as a well handled fire can be used to extinguish another fire. In this way the flame more than any other element is truly a brother to mankind. I believe this is why fire burns us so. Brothers tend to be complete dicks.

Here is where it gets a little more interesting.
In much the same way that fire lives like we do, fire also has a mind like we do and a spirit too. The mind… well the mind isn’t too important here. We don’t worship the mind. It calls for the destruction of all things through the consumption of all things and the rebirth of all man has ever known through pain and fire. Not a big fan of the mind. The mind is an asshole.

All the flavor in life dwells in the spirit. It is the spirit of fire we worship… well, it was. If you haven’t caught on by now this is a cult, specifically a long dead proxy cult.

You should hear Fracture screaming at me to stop now. He’s such a girl.
Unfortunately for him, nothing is going to stop this post. I refuse to let the cult die in its entirety.

These embers must remain.

The spirit of fire calls forth for all to embrace their passions. It tells us to love all that we do with a fiery fervor. Let lose your obsessions and live a beautiful life in hope that your beauty may inspire others to do the same. It offers immortality through the creation of a moment so beautiful it will be forever remembered through the course of human history.  Above all else the fire demands complete freedom in which to pursue its passions and expects all others to earn the freedom to pursue their own.

It is through the flame that proxies are taught that death does not have to be an ugly affair. As a flame burns beautifully on a man as it claims his life, so too can the death a proxy bares to its victims.

It is through the flame that true loyalty to the master is taught for the master cannot make you do something if you take a passion in serving him and willingly do his bidding. This is something I find lacking in most of my ‘brothers’ who would sooner serve only when it convinces them.

Most importantly, the fire teaches you that you will die and it will hurt as no light can burn true forever no matter how beautiful or brilliant. It is through service to the master that we must find our death. If our loyalty is true, the master will usher us to a death worthy of ourselves so we may find a moment in time where our wrath will make us eternal.

I believe there were more lesions but I never learned the rest.

We were shut down.
“The Bureaucracy doesn’t understand. They don’t understand because they don’t care. The fire calls for its followers to pull away from those who would oppress us and the Bureaucracy sees that as a threat. The common desire to better serve means nothing to them. They serve their own interests before our master!”

These were the last words of my first trainer. He was brought before the class by five masked men and lit on fire in front of his surviving students to be made an example of. He uttered those words while he burned.

…It was beautiful.

A Mood Piece

I-… We…
This is fucking stupid.

I’ve been ungrounded. We’ve been driving toward ‘something’ to ‘somewhere’. Fracture got a good bruise on his arm after giving me that smug answer but I haven’t been able to get him to give me another one since. That’s not the ridiculous part though.

Fracture has me writing stuff for him to post with his account. What the hell was the point of making him a contributor if I still have to write when he posts. It’s just incredibly fucking stupid. Even now he continues to try to explain it like a broken record.

“It sets the mood. It gives context to what’s going on. Quit calling me stupid.”
He just goes on and on and on.

How’s this for mood? Did I get enough context in there for you. Stupid.

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The following took place roughly 15 minutes before departing from the motel.
I had finished packing my own personal effects and was heading out to meet subject 926 at the car. I opened the door to find 926 wasn’t at the car. He was on the walk way just outside the door staring off into the view of trees waiting for me.

“We’re heading for another test aren’t we? They still aren’t done with me yet are they? They aren’t ever going to done with me,” he said growing increasingly bitter with every word he said until he was practically growling with each word he spoke.

I wasn’t sure what to say. I’m not supposed to give 926 any indicators of whether or not the testing was done or whether or not it would ever end. In light of my orders, I suppose I did the wrong thing here.

I reached out to 926 and put a hand on his shoulder.
“… I’m sorry,” I said letting my tone tell most of what I wanted to say for me. And then after I gave that a few seconds to sink in I gave his shoulder a tight squeeze. Something I knew he would recognize as encouragement.
“You can do this. Man the fuck up.”

Only then did he start to calm down again.
After a minute of us standing there like that, he put his hand on my hand and he turned to face me. He nodded in acknowledgement… and then he slugged me hard in the face knocking me on my ass.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” he said and then headed for the car.

Analysis: We should have never separated 926 completely from his peers. Subject appears to depend on support to maintain control. I suggest revaluating our long term plans for 926.

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For the record, I don’t need support. I don’t need anything.
Fracture sees what he wants to see.

Blue Eyes

God damn it.
We’ve been grounded. Or perhaps more accurately, I’ve been grounded. Fracture says we’re not allowed to go anywhere because we’re waiting on special permissions for my next assignment. They aren’t even pretending I’m being sent out for actual work anymore.

And this town is so incredibly boring. I don’t know how Fracture was able to keep cooped up in this motel room for five days without losing it. I’ve only had to stay here for one and I’m beginning to lose it. I keep going through my list checking to see if there are any other marks I could be knocking out as long as I’m stuck here but there is nobody.

I wish I could at least take comfort in my own metal health but that was ruined for me too. I figured coming out of a mental break down was going to mean I was going to be extra stable and ready to go for a little while. I’m starting to think the opposite might actually be true. Yesterday, I… I randomly broke into tear and I don’t know why. I wasn’t sad or extremely happy, nor was I tired or my eyes sore. It was fucking bizarre and I couldn’t make it stop. The thought that I was sad about something kind of made me actually sad.

I tried to talk to Fracture about it. That got me this:

“You seem to be suffering from some deep seeded emotional trauma that your conscious mind is refusing to acknowledge for one reason or another.”

“Umm… ok then? How do I fix it?”

And then he went silent on me. He’s so incredibly fucking useless. What good does it do me to just identify the problem if you can’t fucking fix it?

And you know I could have taken all of this in strife without a word. I normally wouldn’t need a vent. But Fracture has there terrible fucking habit of singing following a session. I can hear him passively spewing out lyrics to some song as he sits there going through his notes. Most of the songs seem to tie back to whatever our discussion was about but I’m stumped on this one.

“Blue eyes, blue eyes, what’s a matter, matter…”

I don’t fucking have blue eyes. I can’t fucking take this.
I think… I think I’m going to go beat him with a marker. I hate to prove him right but I need to shut him up.

Violence and Broken Honor

Designated ‘Fracture’ here.
Reporting in to ‘Whisper’ and associated underlings. I seem to have gotten through to subject 926. He’s talking again (Although back to constantly bitching would probably be more accurate.) and is back to his old self in general. It may be possible he’s even a little better for this experience but I find it unlikely. Patients like subject 926 are slow to change and adapt.

I must admit that my method wasn’t exactly medically sound…
Even still, all subject 926 understands is violence and his own broken sense of honor. As I cannot begin to understand the twisted contradictions of his code, I found I had to appeal to him through brute violence and angry yelling. I do hope it does not reflect to incredibly poorly on me. Rather than explain what happened myself I had 926 type up an explanation so he could show case the parts of the experience that meant most to him. Subject will most likely be angry when he finds out how I reported it back to you.

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I was sitting there marking myself with a marker when it happened. I mapping where I intended to cut myself in an effort to recreate old scars. That’s about when I heard Fracture enter the room. I assumed it was Fracture at least. His footsteps were off and he was moving a lot faster than I had ever heard him move when he walked. Looking back on it, had it been someone who wanted to kill me I would have been slain. Those are all the non-visual signs of an intruder and I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I was too wrapped up in my own petty grief.

I heard him rush toward me. Still I did nothing. Not until it would have been too late. Not until I felt the sharp painful sensation of a sheet of metal being brought down on the back of my head with force. I was dazed but my training started to take over. Before I knew it I had turned to face my attacker holding my marker as though it was a knife.

That crazy fucker, he had bashed the back of my head in with a fucking shovel of all things. His casts were gone too. I don’t know why he picked a shovel. He wasn’t very good with it. I dodged every swing of it and returned it in kind by jabbing the marker hard into his ribs or gut. We went on like that till I had him back again the wall.

I started choking him. I could feel him struggling against me as he forced out words at me, angry words. But they weren’t his words. He was quoting someone at me, someone I once knew. They must have a record of the old pep talks my trainer use to give. I think they were his words. I loosened my grip on him and he continued to yell at me. Now he was using his own words.

He said a lot of things I’d rather not repeat. The gist of it was that I wasn’t a child anymore and that I couldn’t afford to keep acting like one, throwing fits and rebelling when I don’t like my orders and then moping around like an injured puppy when things don’t go my way. He explained that I could keep my rage and my scorn but that I needed to bend it into something more useful to ‘father’.

I suppose I will quote one line while it’s still fresh in my head. He was particularly passionate about it.
“For the love of god quit beating on your poor siblings because you’re a traitorous violent bastard. Your behavior is not a reflection of your peers.”

To be perfectly honest, what I summarized and what little I was able to quote is about all I got out of his two hour yelling session. I spent most of that one way conversation marveling over the fact that he came at me with a fucking shovel. Who does that? Seriously?

I suppose I should get back to work soon though. I bet I still have more tests though…
So I guess I’m pretending to be back to work so my loyalty can continue to be questioned.
That doesn’t quite have the same push to it.
Umm… to murder!

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Short analysis: Don’t use a shovel next time. It’s apparently distracting.
Fracture out.

I Thought I was Better Prepared for This

Designated ‘Fracture’ here reporting to proxy ‘Whisper’ and associated underlings. We have a problem.

Subject 926 returned from his assignment a few nights back in a huff. He came in, threw a bag full of canned foods on the floor, sat down in the chair, posted his report, and then just sat there staring at a wall. It occurred to me that something was wrong after he hadn’t moved for three hours.

I started talking at him trying to coach him through whatever the hell was wrong with him but he didn’t seem to be listening. He just continued to sit there. At some point I realized his lips were moving though. So I leaned in to see if he was actually saying something.

“La, la la….”

That probably wasn’t a good sign. I was short on options in the way of trying to help him. Therapy does you a fat lot of good when you refuse to listen. So I started reading off updates from some of the other blogs hopping something would grab his attention and give me what I needed to get through to him. He didn’t really respond to most of it until I hit Beneath Stone Skies. I got about midway through the entry when he sprang up, took the laptop back from me, and posted his little comment.

He still wasn’t listening though. After that he sat right back down and continued to ignore me… kind of. He continued to ignore me but he didn’t stay in his seat long. He started roaming around the motel room. He was seated for about 5 minutes, got up and listened to his radio for about 5 minutes, watched 5 minutes of TV, started cutting up the mattresses for about 5 minutes….

And he’s been going on like that for about a day now and is still ignoring me. He looks like shit as I’m not sure he slept or ate in that time. I’m pretty sure he’s having some sort of mental breakdown which is something we anticipated. I was unable to anticipate just how incredibly resistant to help he was going to be. I need to get through to him.

I think back on it and the only thing that really had any effect on him was the Stone Skies post and I believe that’s because it pissed him off. It kind of gives me an idea on how I might get through to him but I really don’t want to do it. I’m probably going to have to but I intend to stave that particular option off as a last resort until I absolutely have to.

Report over, ‘Fracture’ out.

Nothing

We’ll I was wrong, yesterday sucked.

We watched that door for hours but no one came out. I was beginning to think there may have been another way out and that the mark had slipped away on us. I had the great misfortune of being wrong. As the sun began to rise I decided I was done waiting and told Fracture to start for the motel while I deal with the mark. I got up there to find piles of canned foods. It looked like the mark had been here for a while and had no intention of going anywhere. That’s a pretty cocky move for someone living on someone else’s roof. And then I got a look at my sleeping mark and realized why he thought this was going to work out for him. He was about 9 years old.

The gravity of this took a good minute to sink into my brain properly.
How did a 9 year old get his hands on this much food?
How did he sneak it onto the roof of a hotel?
Why the hell was this mark assigned to me?

As far as I was concerned, this wasn’t happening. They could send someone else to take care of this. I already did the part of finding him. The next hunter would just have to come up and slit the little shit’s throat when I was good and gone. That’s what I kept telling myself as I pulled out my phone.

That’s what I kept mumbling as I looked down at my phone and realized my vision was starting to blur.
And then once more, the world went black…

When I came to my senses I found I was coated in blood. I was holding a… piece of the kid. I had mutilated him, but my knife was clean. I had carried out this gruesome scene with my bare hands. I was in complete disbelief. I had to close my eyes so I couldn’t see it or I was going to vomit.

This never should have happened.
Not like this. Not by me.
All I could think was that this was part of my punishment. The master must have made me do it because he knew it would hurt me. That’s why I’m alive right? So I can endure further punishment for my disobedience in my last life. So the monster I call master can teach me a lesion that I can carry to my grave.

Perhaps this is what I get for making rules for myself that I put above him. If I’m going to get through this, I’m going to need to be ready hurt more children.

It’s all very hypocritical of me anyways. I always justified the killing with the logic that no one life was worth more than another. Since I have already killed someone, I was being disrespectful to the dead if I wasn’t ready to kill absolutely everyone else. I never included kids in that everyone, but I guess I should have.

It’s got me thinking though.
What makes my life worth more than my victim’s since I keep surviving but they don’t?

Closing In

I think Fracture might be a creeper. His face absolutely lit up when he heard the Doc may still be alive and may have turned proxy. Or maybe I’m misreading him and he’s all giddy because of the severely small chance this gives him to consort with another individual in the medical field. I’m not sure how many doctors exist in/under the Bureaucracy.

I’m beginning to think my overseers might hate Fracture more than I do. I didn’t get in trouble for beaming him with the laptop. I just got a short call later informing me that my conduct was inappropriate and that I was not to do it again. I swear I could almost feel the man who said it winking over the phone. This mutual distain is kind of taking the fun out of mistreating him. I need to move past my conflict oriented nature so I can properly hate him for who he is.

Putting the whiny pettiness of my day to day aside, I finally found my mark. The assigned hunter for this one is long dead. She apparently threw herself off a building jumping at another mark on a roof. I’m thinking she might have been a little new to the game. It didn’t leave me with a lot to go on. I managed to track the mark a town over and a hot lead brought me to the hotel he was hiding out at. I just need to try to keep tabs on him until tonight.

I’ve been waiting for activity near the roof access door. He hasn’t come down though. He must move at night. I’m curious what this one looks like. There wasn’t a description attached, just a name. I want to just go up there and be done with this one but I’d prefer it if I could catch him freshly asleep. I’ve got fracture moving in so he can keep an eye on door while I take a nap. With any luck this will be good and settled by this time tomorrow.

That’s a knock on the door. It must be Fracture.
Nap time.

Please Don't Encourage Him

Seriously, the last thing I need is you assholes egging on that violent sociopath. I shouldn’t even be here. Subject 0926 should have been executed for half the shit he did. The rest of his traitorous deeds should have merited him getting his skin peeled off first, but at this point I would just settle for him being put out of my misery.

Oh, Fracture here by the way. That’s probably important. I’m posting on behalf of my host, stupid “ugly fuck”. Captain ass hat is out chasing his mark. I need to finish this before he comes home and notices I’m posting on his stupid little blog and breaks my ribs or something. He tells me he’s been eyeing the third one down on the left side which is incredibly fucking peachy.

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Subject 0926 Early Assessment
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0926 suffers from a marinade of personality disorders. Recent developments seem to imply that list of disorders is ever increasing.

Old Issues
Subject is extremely paranoid of those around him. He is paranoid to such an extreme degree that you cannot sit within arm’s length or make eye contact without getting slugged or worse.
 Subject is constantly on the defensive and never seems to take any downtime. I have a hard time keeping track of whether or not he is still in the house. He does not make noises when he moves. When I have seen him home, he comes in and immediately plops down on the bed. If he isn’t sleeping, he’s on this computer or eating.
Even his sleeping habits seem to exhibit a constant defensive state of paranoia as he does not sleep for more then 2-3 hours at a time. When he comes out of his sleep he literally jumps to his feet with his knife in hand braced for a fight. I find myself paralyzed when he does this. I fear movement may draw his knife to me.
Further defensive behavior is prominent in the way the subject handles our therapy sessions together. He sits there for the full hour and stares at me. At times his attention seems to be drawn to my chest. I think he is eyeing my rib. More progress is actually made in the 15 minutes following a session.

New Issues
Identity :
I don’t know who this man is. He certainly doesn’t look like subject 0926. 0926 was covered in scars from head to toe, the worst of which were on his face. This man’s skin is almost flawless. I was still unconvinced of his identity until I had spent time with him these last two days. He acts like 0926, he remembers 0926’s life, and seems to believe he is 0926. Regardless of who he may actually be, I must work under the assumption that he is 0926.

Death/Delusions of Grandeur :
Working under the assumption that this is actually 0926, I find it hard to believe he actually died. I find his explanation for his resurrection even more suspect. The subject claims that ‘the master’ not only killed him, which is the one part I would actually believe, but then immediately brought him back from the dead. When I asked him why, he explained with an analogy about breaking the bones of a cat.
“If you kill a cat it’s dead. It can’t be punished. But if you keep it alive you can make it scream and suffer. You can take your time and break every little bone in its little body. When the master was done killing me he decided I hadn’t suffered enough.”
The issue here is he believes the slender man cares enough to pull this kind of thing off. On some level he must understand how grand a claim this is.

Hallucinations :
Another reason I have a hard time believing this is really 0926 is how forth coming he has become. I caught him staring at a wall nodding his head. When I asked him what he was doing he explained he was listening to the children sing.
Me : “What children?”
Duck : “The children, the ones who are always singing. La, la la, la la, la la. La, la la, la la, la.”
He apparently suffers from auditory hallucinations. He claims it’s constantly in the background, that is gets quieter and louder but it’s always there. He’s says he’s jealous of other people because their hallucinations are more fun. They see things or hear screaming.
“I just hear them singing.”
I tried to ask him more questions about it but I seem to have lost him entirely for a little bit there.
“La, la la…”

Schizophrenia :
I’m unsure of this one but the condition lends itself to paranoia, delusions of grandeur, and hallucinations. The concern here is that this condition can be purely mental in nature but it can also stem from the brain decaying. He is going to need to have himself tested to determine if this needs to be treated.

Blackouts :
The subject has been suffering from blackouts. The trigger for this is apparently the act of killing. Be blames the slender man for this claiming this condition was inflicted on him in an effort to punish him for his disobedience. I believe the onset of this condition is what the subject was referring to when he originally reported in claiming his one love had been stolen from him following his ‘death’.
Given the fact that blacking out does not stop him from carrying out his kill effectively, I believe this condition is dissociative in nature. I believe the act of killing weighs far heavier on the subject then he lets on and when forced to face his own mortality following his own ‘death’ he disconnected himself from this part of his life.

Final Assessment
Is unchanged. The subject is still a dangerous sociopath and he’s going to kill me. Please for the love of god let me go home. Kill this man and be done with it.
Assuming that’s not going to happen though, he needs various brain scans and regular therapy sessions from someone else. He was gotten significantly worse since I first assessed him four years back and I have no reason to assume he will get any better.
I would also like it if we could confirm if this is really subject 0926. I am unconvinced.

There we go. I’m all done, yay done.
Typing with a cast on is draining. I’m going to go take a nap before captain ass hat gets back. I’m going to need my strength for when he sees this and comes after my ribs.

Another House Call

I talk a lot of shit about my overseers but everybody’s got redeeming traits. In the case of my onlookers that trait is their unique blend of uncaring distance mixed with concern over my unpredictability. It causes them to do things like show concern when I threaten to go into a fit of rage but at the same time make no real effort in fixing the problem.

That may sound hard to pull off but it’s simple really. Today a man with two broken arms and legs showed up on my doorstep. I couldn’t help but laugh at that poor unlucky bastard.

“Hello Doctor,” I snickered.
“I have a name you know. It’s F-,” he started before I socked him in the face. Then he started yelling and complaining about a broken nose. I had to pull him inside to keep him from making a scene.

Apparently it’s been determined that I need constant psychiatric aid to ensure I don’t do anything unnecessarily stupid like trying to find and hurt Moriarty over someone I don’t know.

“So does that mean I’m not allowed?” I asked.
“It means good fucking luck with that you stupid tit,” he yelled back trying to keep pressure on his nose with a cast on.

He went on to lecture me more on how impractical I was being and how incredibly poor my reasons were, or rather he tried to go on to do that. It’s hard to understand what someone is saying when they got a cast pressed to their face. But he just kept talking like the broken freaking record he is. He couldn’t even bother to change it up by saying it in different ways. Same stupid words over and over again… probably. Like I said, he was hard to understand. I finally started agreeing with him until he settled down and stopped talking. So for the time being I promised to work on my list. So whatever, I guess its back to business as usual.

I’m told the good doctor will be with me until such a time comes when I can be trusted not to do stupid things so he’s probably in for the long haul. As a compromise for the inconvenience of have to drag around a cripple, I’ve been permitted to give the doctor a temporary designation. I went with ‘Fracture’ because by the time all this is over I’m willing to bet there won’t be a bone in his body that I haven’t broken at least once.

Shifting to the topic of my list, I spent the last two days looking for my mark. I had no luck. This one is shaping up to be everything the last one was supposed to be which leads me to believe this maybe another canned scenario. I just don’t remember which yet.

So I got a mark to find and therapist that requires I spoon feed him every five hours. I should probably get back to that.
Laters.

Of Fear and Fire

I have not known fear for so long. Now I just don’t know how to deal with it.
I didn’t even leave my shitty little motel today. I just sat here paralyzed. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go. Just another afternoon trapped in my head. There was nothing but my memories to escape to. Nothing but old memories of a time long ago when I last felt fear like this.

I was fourteen. There was a falling out in the proxy command.  One of the handlers got a little too ambitious and rallied together a small army of 50 disgruntled proxies and left the bureaucracy with them. The superiors were not amused. But it wasn’t enough to just ruin their traitorous underling. They needed to destroy and humiliate him to ensure something like this wouldn’t happen again. So where the enemy had fifty, the overseers sent twelve to deal with them, two squads and two lone wolves.

Every other day one of my squad mates died. By the time it was over every one of them was dead. There was just me left. The doctor believed this was the root of my more serious issues. And I can’t deny that it did hurt. Not that I cared about any of them mind you. I hated them. I wanted to kill them. But they were mine to hate, hurt, and kill. No one else’s.

The point is I lost it when I lost four assholes I didn’t care about and started cutting down anything stupid enough to stand in front of me. The master himself had to show up and put me down. Moriarty, if you take my only friend from me I will burn this world to the ground just to make sure you go down with it. You will bleed.

…All that side. I’ve arrived at my marks last known location. I should probably actually do some ground work before it gets to dark.

Until then, fuck the world. I’ll kill you all.

Oh, and stay positive. You know who you are.

Refresher Course

Oh dear master. How could I have forgotten? This has happened before.
I should probably actually report what happened before I get into that.

So I had to go see the assigned hunter about the unusual comfort his assigned mark was permitted to live under in the year he was supposedly chasing her and that meant I was going to have to be within arms reach of another proxy which… typically ends in violence for me.
I do believe I have mellowed out a fair bit in the short time I have been writing these but… I just can’t not hurt people and for some reason that goes double for my masked brothers. I knew if I went to see him someone was going to get hurt and if it couldn’t be him that meant it was going to have to be me.
So I remade a teaching tool my trainer use to use to encourage use to try harder. He called the pin glove. It’s quite simple really. You just take a glove and have sharp little pins come out of each finger tip. And then you wear the glove. Whenever someone needs encouraging you give them a tight little squeeze on their shoulder to inform them that they need to try harder. It works wonders and I was going to need a little self encouragement to get thought this.

Once the glove was made and ready I went to see him at the crappy little motel he had been operating out of. I called ahead, naturally.  I knocked on the door and as soon as I had I could feel myself starting to panic so I forced the gloved hand into my sleeve and I gave myself a nice little squeeze on the arm. Fortunately I was done cringing by the time he answered the door. The conversations went something like this.

“Hello are you-” he started.
“Yes. It’s… Duckie,” I quickly responded pushing in the pin on my pinky finger just a little deeper at the irritation of my own designation. I dug the rest of them in deeper as he started laughing. It was all I could do to fight the urge to give his neck a squeeze.
“I’m sorry. Sorry. That’s probably not cool. What the hell did they send you here for,” he said pausing to snicker some more, “Duckie?”
“I’m a collector here about your elusive mark,” I grumbled out. I could feel blood starting to soak into the glove a little.
“Oh,” he said pausing. And then he studied me. His look confirmed my every suspicion that he had not been doing his job.
“Can you maybe do me a favor and not hunt this one, Duckie” he asked. I could see he was tense. The door knob made a noise as he clenched it.
“Why?” I asked trying hard to keep my cool. I wanted more than anything to have my damn mask on so he couldn’t study my expressions. “Got a personal grudge with this one?”
“No, I-,” He started pausing. “I’m kind of seeing this one. Could you have not found her for me?”

He looked so desperate. He was risking his life for this girl. He didn’t seem to know I had already ruined those efforts. That stupid shit had barely bothered to hide her. I had to fight back a laugh. It must have caused me to smile because I could see him calming his stupid ass down.

“Ya,” I said biting my lip a little, “I think I can do that.”

After that I said my good bye and left. I hadn’t even gotten the glove off and my phone out before I started looking over the immediate area again in preparation for the planning stage of killing this man. First thing was first though; I needed to get permission from my overseers. I sent my handler a text informing him of the relationship between the mark and the assigned hunter and requested a recommended course of action. I was curious if they might have shown leniency. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t and she was ready dead but I still wanted to know.
I got a text back from another number, which is how this typically works, informing me to kill the girl and leave lover boy to stew in his punishment. I stilled planned on killing him at this point. I don’t need enemies that I can’t actively stalk. Regardless, I sent them back a text reading ‘Already done.’
Their next text, ironically enough, sparked a memory. It read, ‘I see you remembered.’

I stood there for a bit reading that over and over again. I remembered? What am I remembering? And then it hit me. I had done this before. This entire situation almost pound for pound was the same as my first hunt as a collector. This was a canned scenario. A recognized, harmless, and intentionally ignored situation they kept aside for such a time when they needed it to break in new collectors. My records must read that I’m new. More than just testing my willingness to ruin someone’s life, this situation was coordinated in such a way to create an enemy for me. It gives them someone to send after me when they decide it’s time to put me down. Realizing this meant I had to kill him.

And then I thought about it. I’m pretty sure I can take that wuss. Let them have their little ace. It will do them no good if I know about it. So this is me daring you assholes to play the card. I’m waiting for it. Idle threats aside, which is another habit I’ll chalk up to the masters will, that concluded the investigation. Well technically this report does.

Anyway, after that I started hitting up pawnshops and smelting businesses to get rid of all the jewelry and the TV. I was sad to see the TV go but there really is no place for one in the car or in the life of a drifter for that matter.
I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a revolver from one of pawnshops. The man at the counter kept insisting it wasn’t for sale but he found the little wad of cash I was sitting on at that point hard to resist. He even threw in some bullets to go with them. Guess he didn’t need them without the gun. That purchase didn’t leave me with much money left after food and gas. Even less after medical supplies for my arm but it should be enough to hold me over for a little while.

Death waits for no one, time to get to the next state. Once again there are no more marks listed in this one. I got to wonder if I’m heading for another canned scenario.

Something's Off Here

I love traveling. The thought of all the things I’ll never have to see again has always been a comfort for me even if it is a lie, revisits are after all inevitable. I got to spend about a day on the road. For some reason there wasn’t a person on my list in the same state I was in. It’s not unprecedented but it is odd.

After a quick nap the hunt was on. My target had been marked for death for over a year. She was apparently very good at not being seen. Her assigned hunter had various observations from his many reported failures. I started with the locations from those reports and fanned out. I had no luck. I was about to call it a day when a lead came in.
It was a street address and a time. So I went and waited and sure enough there she was but she wasn’t what I was expecting. She was well dressed. She smiled and waved as she passed. After a few seconds I took up a spot behind someone and followed her.

From there she went to a bar, worked for a few hours, then walked back to a bus stop, and took the bus to what is apparently her apartment. She had her last name on a plate beside her door. Through the window hanging out on the roof of another building I could see that she spent the night watching television before going to bed. Something was terribly wrong. This was not the life of a runner who had managed to evade a hunter for an extended amount of time.
Making as little noise as possible I broke into her house. Up close I could see she had a nice fully furnished place. And her TV… it was huge. I snuck into her room to find her sleeping peacefully in a rather large bed. The comfort this person was able to hide away in was absolutely sickening. This would have been a most satisfying kill but once again it was not something I was allowed to enjoy.

From there I must assume that I killed her. My knife was still in her. It seems I had forced it in between two of her ribs and stabbed her in the heart repeatedly. More than that though, I had been violent about it. It looked like I broke a lot of her ribs. I was kind of angry after that and flipped the mattress she was on. I was hoping when I became a proxy again killing would stop being a joyless burden but I guess I’m still being punished.
When I finally calmed down I took another look around and figured I should ransack the place. She can’t use any of this crap now. So I took her radio/clock, jewelry, and was even fortunate enough to find a shoe box with a few hundred dollars in it. Oh and I took her TV. I don’t know that I’ll ever use it but there was no way I was leaving it.

Now, the final step of this process is the evaluation. I’m supposed to put my thoughts in on whether or not the failed hunter deserves punishment for their failure and under sketchy conditions I’m supposed to investigate further into why the mark survived as long as they did. I usually just fill ‘Hunter was clearly incompetent’ in that field but that is a gross understatement in this case.

I’m going to have to investigate this further. Tomorrow I’m going to go talk to the assigned hunter.
If I don’t like his explanation I may very well run him through.

Cleared to Hunt

I do believe it’s time for an update. I wasn’t going to write another post until I had started on my marks but I was looking over old writings and realized I was updating every 2-3 days. Some idle habits are works of the master so it might be best that I don’t break tradition. Perhaps I’m being superstitions.
Bah. I’m rambling. I need to keep this short.
Hmm… idle rambling. I caught myself in a trap.

Moving on, I finished the stacks of papers. With this act I do believe I am officially a proxy again. Not that I wasn’t before but now my file should reflect this. I already have my hunting list. Not too surprisingly, I’ll be operating under the guidance of my old handler again.
I suppose I should be referring to him by his stupid designation, “Whisper”. I think mute might have been more appropriate. Because he refuses to communicate in any fashion, (speech, text, or otherwise) I’ll also be operating under the requests of interested overseers. Otherwise I’ll be moving across the states looking for people on the list.

I’m also being cleared to ‘take requests’. Cleared is such a funny term in their vocabulary because they use it when I have to do something. Apparently I’m obligated to take on the burdens of my brothers on the grounds that my sole duty is to steal their marks, which is odd because my solo job has always been to be the asshole claiming overdue marks. It’s possible they are trying to socialize me in light of my condition but it seems far more likely they’re still trying to kill me.
Oh well. I don’t foresee this coming up anyways.

On another note, because everyone in the circle I watch has at least mentioned this, some named August died. I really didn’t know him but I was happy to hear he died an angry death. I hope that fire lights his way.

In any event my list calls. Laters.

Paperwork

I’m told other cults don’t have paperwork. It’s not surprising when I really think about it. It’s hard to picture the master sitting down with reading glasses to go over all this, mostly because he doesn’t have eyes.
I wish I could say I was jealous but if there was not a system in place to regulate us, I would have nothing to abuse. And I’m afraid I must admit to having abused it, perhaps even more than was my fair share.

…We’ll, it wasn’t me exactly. I use to have a guy for that. I could ramble. The short of it is he died and I’m nowhere near intelligent enough to manipulate these papers like he could. I was pretty sure they were in another language. I ended up confessing to my various abuses in hopes I could get someone to explain what I was supposed to do with all this crap. That just netted me a second stack of paperwork in order to rectify said passed abuses.
About every hour I get a call scolding me about the various crap I was pulling. I’m anticipating punishment of some kind but they keep beating around the bush. I don’t have time for their shit though. I have to translate this stuff before I have to fill out another form explaining why previous forms were late.

I miss the doctor, I could use a punching bag about now.

Hurt and Betrayal

So this was interesting.

After much time spent waiting around, reading, and commenting I was finally approached by my would-be executioner. I figured they would try to cheat me out of the kind of death I would have wanted but for some reason I didn’t think they would go this far. They sent something they knew very well I would not personally kill. I would not be sharing this now were more of you following me so here’s a special treat for you seven remaining readers. They sent a child.
And I do mean a child. The poor thing couldn’t have been older than eight. The mask they gave him didn’t quite fit right. He must have adjusted it four times in the minute I sat there staring at him. The knife they gave him must have been too heavy for him because he was holding it in both hands. Perhaps the most disappointing thing was how he was shaking like a scared cat. I figure I must have been intended to be his first kill.

I suppose there could have been some beauty in that death. I must have looked like he did then when I made my first kill. It certainly had a full circle kind of feel to it and while I wasn’t really satisfied with it, who is when they die? At least that’s what I told myself to reassure myself of my desire to see out my sentencing. So I stood up ready to let the kid have at me. I might have even instructed him on how to do it properly if it had came up but we were interrupted.
When I stood the kid panicked. He must have thought I was going to try to hurt him. He stumbled back into a second masked figure as it came through the door. This one was a man. He grabbed the kid and in one swift calculated motion slit the poor things throat. The poor little shit made a bunch of desperate gargled noises and crumpled to the ground. When he hit the ground his mask finally came off. He had this haunting look of pain and betrayal in his eyes. A part of me wanted to try to catch the kid and cradle him off into the darkness… and the rest of me had stiffened in an effort not to vomit.

 I stared at this second person for a few seconds trying to understand.
Was he actually to be my executioner?
Was this an effort to fire me up for the death I had requested in a way I would not have wanted?
And then I recognized that soulless stare in his eyes. I knew this man. This was yet another person I could not kill. This one was not a secret though. I actually liked this man. At one point in time, he was my handler.
He’s a cold man who nearly never speaks but that’s what made him so appealing. I never had to talk to him, argue with him, or deal with his shit. There was only ever silence. There was only ever silence and the mission.

“So what is this?” I asked him. “Come to see me off?”
He just stared at me. So I stared back. We did this for a good little while before he pulled out a knife and a mask. They looked like my old ones. They had all the same curves and markings. The mask even had the same crack in it. And then I understood. Or so I thought I did. I thought he was disobeying orders to try to help me.

“But the-” I started. I started but was made to stop. He put a finger up in a shushing gesture. Then he pointed to my waist. I looked down and saw two long stretched arms around me, the 'arms' of the master. I turned as fast as I could but in the moment he was out of my sight he disappeared on me. Not that it mattered really. His brief appearance made handlers point. He was here on behalf of the master, not for me. But that suited me just fine.
I turned back to handler. I still had questions. I had so many things I wanted to know about these last few days.
“Why am I still alive?” I asked.
“Why was I not allowed to kill that runner?” I demanded.
 “During what cold day in hell did the master start forgiving anyone for anything?”  I yelled getting more and more desperate with each question I asked.
And then I remembered who I was trying to talk to, a fucking mute.

And I fell silent again. There were no answers or explanations… only silence. For the first time in a long time, that just wasn’t enough.
He must have grown impatient with me while I was muddling around in my thoughts because he forced the knife and the mask in my hands. And then he spoke. He spoke and for that moment that’s all there was. The world went black and his one word drowned my mind putting all my concerns to rest. When I finally came back to earth I knew his word and it was the only answer I needed.
He said, “Proxy.”
I am a proxy and that’s all I need to know. I serve the master and there is only the mission.
Then he nodded at me and I nodded back to assure him that I understood. And then he left.

My mind was racing. Flying at 100 miles an hour at all the terrible things I was going to do for the master. I started for the door. I was too eager to wait and wanted to start practicing on the people outside.
I tripped and all my thoughts came crashing back to earth. I had tripped over the kid and I was reminded of the gravity of those terrible things. His haunting eyes… they reminded me of what it really meant to be a proxy. He reminded me that proxies are monsters only capable of hurt and betrayal. He reminded me that people in general were monsters like that. He reminded me that I was a monster like that.

He reminded me of so many things that would have been better off forgotten. That cowardly little shit took away my peace and left me with my confusion and my rage.
… But the more I thought about it the more I realized that was something I needed to thank him for. Things just would have been so much easier the other way.




So I buried him out in the woods. I made his mask his tombstone and I came back and wrote this. I wrote this in his memory as a thank you. It feels wordy but there really aren’t enough words you can put to an honest thank you so these will just have to be enough.
Here’s a little summary for those struggling with the underlying message: Thanks you little shit head.
I’ll keep in touch but I have a life of hurt and betrayal to readjust to.
Not that most of you seven care.

Waiting...

I must be on the brink of death. I must be because I’ve never quite been this lively.
I passed out at ten o’clock last night exhausted from being up for over thirty hours. I woke up about two hours later feeling fiery and refreshed. I figured something had to have woke me up for me to come out of a dead sleep like that so I went on a little patrol to find the culprit but no one was there.

I feel as though I’m being fucked with.

I’m not sure why I haven’t been attacked. They have to have someone in position. It only took the doctor twelve hours to find me and that was after I pissed them off so I’m assuming they had him take his time getting to me.
 I bet I’m at the bottom of a pile of paperwork designated low priority. Had I declared myself a runner I bet someone would have been here before I even tried to cross the street.
I would hope they are planning something but that would be for my pride more than anything else.

But at least I’m alive.
A friend has been hard at work trying to convince me that my life can mean something. Not that I’m not convinced or anything, but I cannot deny my sentencing. Were I a better person I might fight it.

Even now, I find myself looking down on the people walking the street drooling. I haven’t killed anyone in so long. I crave it but I know my bloodlust can’t be satisfied. I try to keep myself distracted but there is so little else to divert my attention to. I want to hear them scream. I want to feel them struggle. I want to see the hope fade from their eyes as they slowly bleed out. I miss it.
I look down at my hands in an effort to read my scars and revel in the murders I have already committed but I only find further frustration. I had not realized just how much the master had stripped from me. The life lessons my actions had carved into my flesh removed. I frantically checked every part of my body that I could see but the scars are all gone.
I became so desperate for a distraction I felt up for my face so I could relive my childhood trauma, but what I found instead was smooth. Smooth like I could only imagine a normal person’s face must be. I ran down to street level to look at myself in a car’s mirror. What I saw brought me to tears.

I have a face. I have an entire face and not one inch of it looks like someone took sandpaper to it. I’m fucking normal.
Ha ha ha.
I could have never imagined that’s what my face was supposed to look like. I look like such an asshole.
… Ha ha ha.

Blessed as I was to find myself with a face, after the novelty of looking at myself wore out I was alone again, alone with nowhere to lock myself in my own head.
I’ve found I’m poor company. I wrote all this so I wouldn’t have to deal with my own shit.
I think I’m going to go steal a book or something so I have something to do while I wait.
Be well strangers… and Ember.