Shalott's Journal - Episode 26
To stop moving is to die.
I have a hard time expressing what is happening in my mind right now. I feel an overwhelming sense of joy, of loneliness, of despair, of camaraderie. I feel a bubbling fear in my gut and a desireâno, a necessityâto protect everything around me with a steel shield. I feel detached from them, like Iâm far off, and at the same time, itâs like I was one with Zephyr not moments before, and then with everyone. A singular unit. A new existence.
Every moment bleeds into the next right now. I can smell blood. I can smell cum. I feel the overwhelming heights of orgasm and the unbelievable helplessness of being unable to find my other. How would I describe such a time in mere words on a paper? When I spoke to the therapist who sat with me for hours, she asked what I thought of the sexual situation I had been in. She wanted to change the subject, perhaps, or maybe steer my mind to better things. I can see it in the way they look at me. Iâm the baby. Zephyr even muttered her worry for me the entire time. Iâm weak.
I need to wean myself of this dependency I feel for everyoneâno, thatâs not right. I donât need to feel independent. I need to look independent. I can lie. I can become a great liar. I can protect everyone around me and they wonât all think that Iâm weak. I donât mind them wanting to protect meâI mind that they all seem to want to protect me more. If Thaddeus and I were both falling from a cliff, I would want them to go for his hand. I would be more likely to survive, and I want them to understand that. The instinctive need to protect me because I am a small girl is not appropriate. Iâm powerful.
I donât know how I feel about the sex. The more I think about it, the more it boggles me. Itâs divided. The moments laughing with Zephyr, getting embarrassed by Grief, the time she spent with meâit was a different time. So different, in fact, that were I to levy a simile I would call it akin to Heaven, with the nap I had beside her being Earth, and the time when I awoke would be definitively Hell. I havenât stopped drinking yetâthe unsteady walls and swirling images keep the demons at bay.
Iâm sitting beside a Hound of Tendalos. Iâm not sure if Lancelot is a hallucination. Iâm selfish for shutting myself out from everyone else; Iâve not got the strength even that Zephyr does. While she is sitting, tormented, she thinks about meâsends people to check on me. I can barely manage to spare her the moments between etching circles into the ground. Self-loathing is a sign of weakness, but for right now⊠Iâll just let myself be the way I am for a while.
I think I kissed Grief a little more.. passionately.. than I expected. I think the whole thing kind of .. turns me on? Shit. I donât know. A strictly calculating analysis of the situation would have me deduce that I have a more sexual reaction to blood than I did a few days ago. That doesnât mean that I found what had happened to be anything less than terrible, but just that I feel some desire attributed to the sight of blood.
Zephyr says I hurt Alaun, but thatâs impossible. I wouldnât have harmed my familiar. I couldnât hurt anything so close to me. The worldâs still tumbling. I donât want to come down off this high, even though Iâm fully aware that I need to.
I masturbated for the first damn time tonight.
Iâm not very good at it. The experience for Zephyr must have been mediocre at best. I wonder if it would be appropriate for me to practice and try to give her a better experience in return for mine, or if that would just terrify her. Oh.
I wonder if they think it would terrify me? Does it?
I guess I wouldnât know until I tried again.
I miss my father. I donât feel as lonely as I did before, but his absence is still unpleasant. I wanted to attach to someone in that way, but I canât without giving up my claim to adulthood. Speak of, I still havenât talked to Grief about not thinking of me as a child. I guess that still connects to my need to seem more independent. Nobodyâs visited since Lancelot showed upâhe seems to unsettle them, which means that he must not be a figment of my imaginationâeither that, or theyâve given up attempting to talk to me in this state.
That reminds me; did Vintage get more concerned, or is that another figment of my imagination?
Guess the sight of someone in Zephyrâs stateâll do it to anyone.
It wasnât the same, you know. Killing half-sentient slime wasnât the same feeling as Grief must have gotten when he got to kill the real thing. Iâm not really angry at him for doing itâfor stealing that satisfactionâbut Iâm jealous. I wanted to do it. Iâm sure Zephyr did, too. I want to wrap myself up in a caccoon and come out a different person. Metamorphosis has never before seemed so enticing.
But I am not my tager. I am not even close.
When I put my hand on that thing; when I told all of them to back offâthat it was my killâThaddeus and Bane didnât really listen. Noble did. Grief did. Perhaps they didnât hear me, or maybe it was less important to them⊠or, perhaps they were overwhelmed with the same sort of rage I felt and couldnât stop themselves long enough to consider what I had said. I got him, though. The feeling of pulling him below the surface, and then, without hesitation, releasing him to atomize and become displaced within the groundâŠ.
I can imagine, in my mind, his face. The fear, the pain, the torment. Yeah. That would have been.. delicious, if it were more than just an image I had painted in my mind.
I would have liked to see it actually happen. I suppose thatâs what itâs like to feel utterly consumed with vengeance.
When I woke up that night, I wasnât sure what was happening. The guy couldnât have been much older than me, but the way he looked right through me, it was as if he didnât see my face, but something behind it. Being handcuffed to the bed would have been alright in my mind if I had known this person, but I didnât, and so I started to try and talk to Zephyr. She wasnât awake yet, and I couldnât touch her. Sometime I had rolled away into the covers, I supposed. No matter how loud I yelled, I could barely hear my own voice. What came out was murmurs, when I wanted a scream. It was as if the air was thick as water.
So he moved around, took her hands gently, and then she woke up. It didnât take her more than a second to react. But that guy. He was stronger than me. Iâm stronger than Zephyr. She was placed in the same position and so it began.
He occasionally muttered something about monsters. I donât know why I gave up screaming and just watched. Perhaps because I thought that if I screamed and nothing came out, Iâd just be adding to the desperation we both felt. She didnât stop. Of course, if she had, weâd both probably be dead.
Can you possibly comprehend how terrifying it is to know someone is screaming and crying and hear nothing but a dull hum in your ears while you watch the display go on right in front of your face? Itâs like watching a recording with the volume down low, but knowing that itâs all very real. So real, in fact, that the blood thatâs draining from her body is causing the bed to become warm and wet beneath your back. I couldnât help but wince each time he hit the other side of that wedge. Her open belly showed the damage it was doing. She never looked at me. Iâm so glad she didnât.
I couldnât have taken that look head on.
Monsters, monsters. He must remember that they are all monsters.
The boy was nuts⊠but at the same time. Does that mean he believed ALL those women were monsters? Does that mean they might have been, or is it an accident that he targeted us correctly? There isnât enough alcohol in the world for this line of thinking right now. I dropped my absynth on the bottom half of the pages, so Iâm gonna hang the damn journal up now and see if it dries. Itâs time for bed. Iâll talk to Zephyr sometime tomorrow.
I appreciate the therapist, and Iâm sure whomever she will suggest my case to will be phenomenal. Would you like to hear how our investigation went? I think Iâll give you a serious debriefing just in case anyone else leaves out some of the details.
We had looked into your murder investigation, as asked. We found 2 dead that we investigated before we tracked a friend on the list of their contacts straight to a Jjia-Sen-Dumash. Assuming this was the murderer, as he was linked in such a clean and convenient way and this isnât the movies so plot twists arenât common occurrences, we took him out, rescuing about 30 hostages in the process. Prepared for our trip to Cairo, we returned for our last few days of awaiting the replacement unit to arrive in Athens.
Zephyr and I decided to have some bonding time, and off we went to Raverâs mansion. It was fairly secure, and we knew this, because we had spent time there on a few occasions. Grief tagged along, sneaking behind us, probably to play a little cat-and-mouse and probably to check up on us because I appear younger. It was a good choice on his partâmaybe it was just him being more wary than we had noticed before.
We were downstairsâZephyr and I, and after a long talk and a few drinks and some food, we had fallen asleep together in the bed. The door was locked, and the area was secure, we thought. Apparently whatever attacked us didnât find the place as secure as we thought it wasâwhat abilities he had, I donât know. He was in the room, with no signs of forced entry, so I can assume he can teleport or perhaps he can phase in some way Iâm not familiar with.
He caught us while we were asleep, and when I woke up, I could not transform. Unaware that this was even a possibility, I began to panic, but something kept the air heavy. Iâm not sure he had a spell up at the timeâand honestly, he seemed as together as a Zoner. Iâm not sure he wasâIâll leave that identification up to those that are doing research on him. Â
After tying me and Zephyr down, he proceeded to start cutting away at Zephyrâs stomach. The knife was not sharp, you could tell by the way he had to jerk it through her flesh. Grief had been sent away, but I assume he came back, because he was the only reason we werenât both skinned alive. He drove something into herâit was a large object, with a smooth but dull spike on the end. Down its sides were blades and hooksâit looked like it was made out of home-made objectsâlike someone had superglued shaving razors and fish hooks to it. He drove it up into her until I could see it beginning to displace her intestines and stomach. She screamed, but very few times did it rise above a whisper.
Grief burst in and, without hesitation, killed the boy. He turned him to soup, which in retrospect, seemed quite appropriate. He untied us and ran us back in widow form, dropping us off on a comfortable couch in the mainstay while he ran to get Noble for medical attention. Shortly after, we had stabilized Zephyr somewhat with the help of Noble and Teikiri, the Zoner. Upon secondary investigation of the room and tools, Grief noticed the soup he had left was no longer there, and with a combined effort of occult backlogs, there came a conclusion that the plasm might have solidified itself with its left-over will. We were dispatched and summarily executed it.
After that, we returned back to the base, where we still await transfer to Cairo.
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