Blackouts

“Exactly, we bleed when we’re hurt.
When you hurt your body, you bleed blood. When you hurt your soul, you bleed tears.”

-Sierra

My blackouts were called into question recently. I thought I would spend some time discussing them and pour in some lies with the truth while I was at it; see if I can bait more snakes to leap out of their pots.

I in fact… am still suffering from blackouts. They certainly aren’t as bad as they were before. When I first crawled out from the rubble and discovered I was still alive I couldn’t so much as draw my blade without putting out someone’s flame. About the time I figured out how to get back in touch the bureaucracy, I had figured out how to hold back well enough that I could stop the blackouts as long as I had not made the decision that the person I was dealing with overly deserved physical and permanent harm. Although at that point I often had to dig into my own flesh to bite back the fog.

And then along came Firecracker, a living embodiment of my failures, and the order to bring her in alive. She was, and quite frankly still is, a monster that deserved to get thrown out of the tallest building I could find. But I owed her more than that and I had my orders. Something changed after I took her down, which consequently took me cutting into nearly every square inch of my exposed skin in order to pull off. I swear I almost bled out that day and considering my condition that is quite a feat.

After that I found I had gained much greater control over myself. I no longer needed to dig into my own flesh to fight back the urges, although I will admit I still find it calming and it does still kind of help. Fracture seems to think that’s a matter of habit or a way of exerting control over my own life. I think that’s stupid personally, I’m already well in control of my own life and if I wanted to inflict violence to prove I had control I would just break Fracture’s legs again simple as that.

I think I started rambling somewhere in there.
Now I only blackout when I go to perform the actual kill and it doesn’t take as long as it did before for me to snap back to reality. Although I have found that I have a new side effect that I experience following every blackout now, the incessant Fucking crying. Every. Single. Time.

It pained me to cry for that weak fuck Nemesis. He deserved every second of his slow death and if I thought I could draw it out any longer without him dying on me I would have. I want to remember slitting his fucking throat but it hurts to try. All of them fucking hurt to try to look back on although the fucking black fucking blood thing is still by far the most painful of any blackout to try to remember anything about. I should probably mention that trying to think back on a blackout also induces fucking tears.

I swear to god I am the biggest cry baby I know.

I’m tired of talking about this shit.
Swan out.

Squad Member 3 - Firecrackers in the... Fog?

It’s so foggy… I don’t understand… am I killing someone right now?
I should be covered in blood if I was…
Why am I…?

…

Firecracker… I’m supposed to be talking about Firecracker.

La, la la… FOCUS.

… la la, la la, la la la, la, lala, la la.

She’s my new squad mate. She is not new though… although she stopped… trying to kill me. She’s still so angry though. Her furious grimace when she looks at me… is piercing.

Blah, blah, blah. Fucking spit it out already. It’s Picasso. Fracture showed up with her earlier at… some point? She said she forgives me… I was afraid she had lost her fire.  I said… something, and she punched me so I’m pretty sure she still has it. To keep tradition with Fracture, I renamed her Firecracker after… that cold angry bitch. Fitting…

I should explain why she glued pieces of her mask to her face when she was hunting me…
It’s a practice the Maskless had instead of wearing masks… there was all kinds of symbolism and rules and other stupid shit to it. They could tell… if you were really one of them based on how the pieces were attached… Even told them your job and purpose and shit…. So she did that to try to piss me off. Guess that’s my fault for telling her about them before the incident with her brother…Fucking words… ruining faces…

It looks good on her I guess… scary… kind of… maybe…?

She punched me again this morning…

“YoU LooK like sHit,” she said.
“Fuck you too.”

And then she punched me. I don’t know that I deserved that one…? Maybe I said it wrong?

Never got along with the last Firecracker either…
I can remember us fighting. I was so much shorter then… right?

...

“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked. Her tone was different. I thought she had something serious to talk about.

“Uh,… sure I guess?” I said from behind my mask. I was still ugly then. My face… so torn. I had to wear my mask at all times. Felt cold without it… I followed her out into the hallway.

She thought for a few seconds and rubbed her arms. It looked like something was wrong. “I was just thinking… could we go out? I’ll even let you do that thing you do with marking masks if you promise not to ruin it.”

I had to study her for a minute… she was so pretty… but I knew better. People are ugly. “You're fucking with me, aren't you?”

She stopped for a minute… that piercing scowl… “Of course I am. Who could ever like your fugly ass Mr. Ugly fuck.”

That was really my fault for thinking… she had something important to say to me…

And it was really her own fault she fell down the stairs. I mean, who is stupid enough to pull that kind of shit in front of a stairway…? Just took one quick push…

She wasn't nearly as pretty with that gash on her face… although it left a pretty scar later… cold bitch…

...

WHY THE FUCK IS IT SO FOGGY!!

I need to lie down… sleep it out. Fog is a disadvantage… can’t see them coming…

Mr. Fugly Fuck out… or something…

Squad Member 01 - The man I named 'Fracture'

What is in a name? Is it a mold by which an identity is shaped and formed? Or is it simply something that we call something by?

Does it not become something more when we refer to new things in terms of old names? Are people more apt to fight the nature of a title they are branded or are they more likely to mold themselves to fit the title they have been identified as? Are they not both molded in different ways than regardless of how they chose to react?

These thoughts… these, dreams… these are the dreams I dream when I am left on my own.

I have a confession to make, one I’m sure Fracture himself is already well aware of since he has access to my file. There was another Fracture before him. A man I fought for and would have died for if I had only ever been given the opportunity. A man whose mark I still bare on every mask I wear long after he died a lengthy four years ago. He was my squad leader and we called him Fracture much like I call my demented shrink Fracture.

It was not a name I wanted to give him but that first day he showed up with his broken little legs and tried to tell me his real name he managed to get out the letter ‘F’ before I could shut him up with a good punch in the face. Eager to shut him up I branded him the first ‘F’ name that came to mind.

At first I was mad at him because he was this weak sniveling wimp who in no way deserved the title I had branded him. Now I hate him because he is an evil twisted farce of the original Fracture. At least, that is why I hate him as far as the name I gave him is concerned. I hate him for a lot of other reasons too.  The biggest reason is because of this fucking smile. It irks me to no end.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fracture has been in and out of our hotel room a lot lately. He says he’s been trying to setup all the finer details of my squad’s formation to make sure it goes through properly. I don’t know why he keeps stopping by to see me though. I figure he must be checking up on me.

Fracture is apparently going to be a ‘subordinate’ in my squad for the duration of its function. That conversation went a little like this:

“What the fuck are you going to be able to bring to the squad exactly? Are you going to pull up a chair and psychobabble at them mid hunt? I’m sure that’ll do us loads of good.”

“Besides being a therapist for you and the other members, I’m going to be your guy’s watcher. It was my primary function during my time spent with a squad before I was promoted to handler.”

“The fuck is a watcher going to do for us?”

“Find, track, and feed you information on a mark until such a time that you or one of your squad mates can make it to the scene to slice them open.”

“Why the fuck can’t you just slice them while you have them in your sights?”

“Because I’m trained to keep tabs on people, not to bring them down. I’m not a talented violent tard like you. Killing may come naturally to you but not everyone can do the things you do. If an opportunity presents itself I’ll take out the mark myself but on the whole that’s really your responsibility.”

At that point the conversation became a lot less vocal. I slugged him for calling me a tard and was about to leave to end the conversation on that note when suddenly he slugged me back…

I slugged him again harder and he slugged me back harder still. At some point we just started beating on each other. He certainly looks a lot worse for wear than I do. He may find he regrets his decision to punch me back but I’m proud of him. Because it’s not whether or not you win a fight, it’s about the fight itself. Fracture comes off as far too much of a snake to really work with on a hunt, but it’s good to see he has at least a little fight in him. Unfortunately, he’s a wimp and is going to lose all of his fights.

To bad he can’t creepy smile his opponents into submission,
Swan out.

Squad Member 00 - 'The Ugly Duck'

“H-he’s controlling you! You have to fight it!”
- A Runner

“Do you see an arm up my ass? This is me stabbing you! This is me laughing!”
- A Younger Swan

Ah, fond memories from a simpler time. I’ve really mellowed out since then, although I’m sure it’s hard for anyone reading this to imagine a more violent less stable me…

So I decided I’m going to introduce each squad member for Mask Squad with a post detailing my thoughts on them. Then I realized I was going to need to make a post for myself since I am going to be a part of my own squad. Not that I actually care to share who I am with a bunch of random assholes. Fracture says everything we say screams volumes about ourselves. So instead I’m just going to ramble and talk at you all.

First, I’d like to take a moment to declare the farce that is the united union of proxies under the bureaucracy. Hehe, that immediately got a yellow light. My greatest problem with it, with the exception of the people themselves because proxies are a bunch of bastards, is the name we’ve taken to. Proxy. It sounds so technical, just like the rest of the world has become in my absence.

I spent four years in what was roughly self isolation after my squad died. I came back to a world where my brothers somehow trusted each other enough to operate under one name and the assholes on the other side of the phone had taken to calling themselves the bureaucracy. Our heritage and traditions twisted further than they ever were before into business practices and an agenda…

I my day, we called ourselves masks. There were others, brothers all the same, who called themselves other things. They were Knives, Agents, the Hallowed, the Black Leaves, his Gentlemen, the Children, and those assholes, the Maskless. That’s just to name the few I had actually heard of. It’s funny now that the name Hallowed is synonymous with the hollowed. I don’t know that it’s true, but I just picture those self righteous assholes doing something so bad that the Master hollowed out all of them.

Back then some runners, as I’ve seen some of them that don’t blog still do, kept journals. They were little trophies to be claimed for our kills. I remember sitting down and reading them with our squad mates. That was how we found other runners and figured out how runners were changing as we changed. How they were adapting so we could counter adapt. People still had code names then. It was interesting seeing how often a runner would find another runner. It was funnier still when they fought with each other.

Although I guess the same could be said about us, both then and now. I knew proxies who kept journals. I personally thought that was the stupidest thing in the world… now I keep one online for the world to fucking see. Oh, how far I’ve fallen. And of course we fought and still fight each other. I don't imagine that will ever change. I don't know that I would want it to.

The point is, I can’t let go of the past. That time when we were not this thing we have become is very much still with me. That’s why I’ve named my squad the Masks, in honor of my old squad.

Ramble out.
Swan

Cake Day(?)

I wasn’t going to post this information today but subject 926 insisted there had to be a post today so I figured I might as well. Apparently we are celebrating something he refers to as… cake day.

I was pretty sure he was messing with me at first, it being April fool’s day and all, but he has been very adamant about it. I had to go over his file to find the significance of this day for him. Today is apparently the day that marks the anniversary of his first kill. His file even has a little speech clipped to this detail in which his trainer informs him this is the start to his new life.

Subject 926 took this very literally from what I have been able to gather from him. Apparently he doesn’t celebrate a birthday. He instead celebrates this cake day.

“It marks the date I found my own fire and became a proxy!”

He is so committed to this he insists his age is 8.
When I asked him why he calls it cake day he informed me it was because it’s the one day out of the year he gets to eat cake…
His claim of eight year old has started to look rather appropriate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Enough about ‘Cake Day’ though, I believe I promised some information about myself. The request cleared so here goes nothing.

My career as a proxy has always been in some manner of management position. Looking back on it I’m pretty sure I was fast tracked every step of the way. Within weeks of being flipped I found myself leading a squad. After devastating events left the squad mostly dead and in shambles, I was promoted to mentor. I did that for a while, until they finally saw fit to move me up to handler. And then I was as a handler  for a solid ten years.

It was a good run. I was well respected and well looked after. I had friends, what amounted in my eyes to a family, and even a house. Never expected just how quickly those I held closest would abandon me.

Things first started visibly crumbling about a month back when I sentenced subject 926 to death prematurely. I had never had my authority questioned by my superiors like that before and they were very harsh. For speaking out of line and failing to consort with my superiors before trying to proceed, I was suspended of my duties indefinitely. Just like that. But I was assured it was a formality and that I would be back to work soon.

But that’s when the ‘Casey’ scandal came to light. Casey was another handler and a close peer for me. We spent a lot of time over my ten years as a handler talking over e-mail passively discussing everything: Love, life, family, work, you name it. But shortly after my suspension it was discovered that Casey was dead. She had been for a long time. But the emails had never stopped.

And that last email ‘she’ sent after that was discovered…
Sorry I died neighbor. See you around.

Suddenly I was under a proper investigation. It was determined that information discussed with ‘Casey’ was the direct cause of numerous proxy deaths. Everything I owned was taken. I was fortunate that their investigation determined me not to be a traitor but that did me a fat lot of good. All of my so called friends and ‘family’ abandoned me. Most of which refused to look me in the eye. It was decided that my suspension was never to be lifted. I was never going to be a handler again…

I begged. I pleaded. I needed to work. I needed to rebuild my life but I was being completely shut down. Someone finally offered me job evaluating and monitoring an asset.

Much to my great dismay, that landed me here.

Hmm… I have to go now. Subject 926 is calling. Apparently he gets to slug me eight times as a part of cake day tradition. I’m pretty sure he’s just making shit up now.