Rachel, again.
It seems like we're being left alone. I mean, as crazy as that sounds, it seems like we're not being chased anymore. We've been here longer than we've been able to stay anywhere else. We're getting to know the locals, we're growing comfortable in the landscape.
If it really is safe here, I can sincerely see us living here. Certainly, we've started making friends locally. Natalie's tried hard to integrate the three of us young 'uns with some of the local popular clique - she's pretty, and confident, and she blends in just fine. By comparison, she's had a hard time getting Peter to do anything social. He's awkward, aloof, and apparently uninterested in meeting new people, generally clinging to Natalie. She actually called him out on this at one point, and he backed off, but then as soon as her new friends were gone she started freaking out that he was blanking her. I guess he's not great with social nuance.
Separately to that, I've made a friend of my own, Fiona. She works at the diner we've been going to quite a bit - trashy food, but tasty - and we've been hanging out on our own. She's very sweet, and she makes me laugh. She's gotten herself a part in the parade on the Winter Solstice event; even though she considers it to be incredibly tasteless, it's paying very well. She's even making one of those meditation hoods, which she's been instructed to wear throughout the festivities. Made from a pillowcase, and deliberately mediocre, it reminded me of something that I couldn't shake the entire time. Sensory deprivation has always weirded me out, but more than that. The rough hole for her mouth seemed incredibly menacing, the lack of eye holes was alienating. And more, it made the rest of her seem oddly surreal, this gaping, predatory mask -
Okay, I don't know why I'm saying this. It was just a pastel blue pillowcase sown to fit her head. But I can't get rid of this feeling that it was incredibly threatening.
It wasn't like the assailant at all, but it felt similar.
I guess that masks are going to have that effect from now on. We've all been through a lot.
With this in mind, I told her about a story I read once, about a faceless killer and the masked people who served him, a story I heard long before finding out about the Faceless Angels. She was very quiet when I stopped talking.
Monday, 28 November 2011
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
I think they're right
He's not showing up. We've been here for ages. We're basically settled down.
I KNOW it's tempting fate, but this is something that's never happened before. It's extraordinary. Some of us have been running for years, but we've never been left alone like this. It's entirely unlike our experience of this ordeal so far.
So we're staying. We're all going to apply for VISAs, or we're just going to go off the grid. Integrate ourselves into the town. We're already making friends, adjusting to life around here. The whole cult things is kind of taking a back burner to our attempts to make a new life for ourselves.
I don't know if it's even neccesary to keep this up, but hey, it's a useful dumping ground.
I KNOW it's tempting fate, but this is something that's never happened before. It's extraordinary. Some of us have been running for years, but we've never been left alone like this. It's entirely unlike our experience of this ordeal so far.
So we're staying. We're all going to apply for VISAs, or we're just going to go off the grid. Integrate ourselves into the town. We're already making friends, adjusting to life around here. The whole cult things is kind of taking a back burner to our attempts to make a new life for ourselves.
I don't know if it's even neccesary to keep this up, but hey, it's a useful dumping ground.
Saturday, 12 November 2011
In A Hotel Room In Kansas City II
Rachel here.
It's been over a week since we got here. We've not been in any once place since I joined for this long, and it only took a few days for signs that someone was following us, or even just the heavy unease of paranoia.
And here, there's none of that. It's like this whole thing never happened.
Peter's more paranoid than ever. And since there's nothing for him to be paranoid about, it's just making him more insecure - thus, making him more paranoid. It's a vicious cycle.
Natalie's amazing. She's being amazing, I mean. She's already getting along with the locals. She's so outgoing and confident and resourceful. Her and Peter have been going off to train with the guns Roland bought for us all a lot, and combat training besides that. They've been inseparable, even though their outlooks on this situation could not be more different. Peter's sure there's something coming around the corner, but Natalie is damn near setting down roots to start a new life here. When she told me that, she looked at Peter. I felt like shit. We were really close just a few weeks ago, but now that we're here, she's getting closer and closer to Peter, and it feels like shit. I just feel really excluded.
I know that Peter will read this. It's not your fault. I'm just...She wants to spend time with you more than she does with me right now.
Ugh. I just needed to get that off my chest.
I'd imagine Peter will be posting about the findings in the library soon. You've got that to look forward to, at least.
It's been over a week since we got here. We've not been in any once place since I joined for this long, and it only took a few days for signs that someone was following us, or even just the heavy unease of paranoia.
And here, there's none of that. It's like this whole thing never happened.
Peter's more paranoid than ever. And since there's nothing for him to be paranoid about, it's just making him more insecure - thus, making him more paranoid. It's a vicious cycle.
Natalie's amazing. She's being amazing, I mean. She's already getting along with the locals. She's so outgoing and confident and resourceful. Her and Peter have been going off to train with the guns Roland bought for us all a lot, and combat training besides that. They've been inseparable, even though their outlooks on this situation could not be more different. Peter's sure there's something coming around the corner, but Natalie is damn near setting down roots to start a new life here. When she told me that, she looked at Peter. I felt like shit. We were really close just a few weeks ago, but now that we're here, she's getting closer and closer to Peter, and it feels like shit. I just feel really excluded.
I know that Peter will read this. It's not your fault. I'm just...She wants to spend time with you more than she does with me right now.
Ugh. I just needed to get that off my chest.
I'd imagine Peter will be posting about the findings in the library soon. You've got that to look forward to, at least.
Thursday, 3 November 2011
In A Hotel Room In Kansas City
Ugh. We ate at some diner - big, greasy burgers and fries that take as much of your life as cigarettes. Gloriously unhealthy, but I am so stuffed I'm pretty sure that beef is going to start filling my sinuses. We're all back at the hotel, reading or checking up on their loved ones over Facebook and the like. There's something soothing about getting lost in a TVTropes binge or spending an irreverent few hours on Tumblr.
That said, almost as unnerving as the presence of our assailant is the absence. We've all spent months, if not years, with the constant paranoia of attack, and yet nothing whets that paranoia's edge like...nothing. We're surrounded by an epicentre of his activity, and yet there's not a trace of the tension in the air. It's like we've been out in a vicious storm, gale-force winds pushing us this way and that, and suddenly the storm subsides and we're no longer moved by some invisible force. It's calm.
We're prepared to uproot if needs be, but if this is the end...
Everyone's feeling it. They're mellowing, opening back up. Rachel seems more vivacious, more animated. She'd retreated so far inside herself after all that death that to see her re-emerge...it's good to have her back. Shannon and Roland have gotten easier-going as well, cracking jokes and having a much more carefree attitude about them. Natalie's still coping the best of all of us - I've never seen her so optimistic. Exactly what she thinks has happened to deter the aggressor, she has yet to share, but she seems halfway convinced that, as we are now, we aren't under threat.
I'm the most restless one of the lot of us. Whenever things get better, they always come back worse than ever. That's what's happened so far. Every day, I practice with my knife a little more. I'm planning on practising with the guns Roland has on order. I don't trust this lull.
Rule 1. It's never over. There's always another nightfall coming. Always.
Right?
That said, almost as unnerving as the presence of our assailant is the absence. We've all spent months, if not years, with the constant paranoia of attack, and yet nothing whets that paranoia's edge like...nothing. We're surrounded by an epicentre of his activity, and yet there's not a trace of the tension in the air. It's like we've been out in a vicious storm, gale-force winds pushing us this way and that, and suddenly the storm subsides and we're no longer moved by some invisible force. It's calm.
We're prepared to uproot if needs be, but if this is the end...
Everyone's feeling it. They're mellowing, opening back up. Rachel seems more vivacious, more animated. She'd retreated so far inside herself after all that death that to see her re-emerge...it's good to have her back. Shannon and Roland have gotten easier-going as well, cracking jokes and having a much more carefree attitude about them. Natalie's still coping the best of all of us - I've never seen her so optimistic. Exactly what she thinks has happened to deter the aggressor, she has yet to share, but she seems halfway convinced that, as we are now, we aren't under threat.
I'm the most restless one of the lot of us. Whenever things get better, they always come back worse than ever. That's what's happened so far. Every day, I practice with my knife a little more. I'm planning on practising with the guns Roland has on order. I don't trust this lull.
Rule 1. It's never over. There's always another nightfall coming. Always.
Right?
Avondale: Kinda Not What We Expected
So, in the days since we've been here, we've been exploring the town. If anyone asks, we're staff and kids from a UK foster home - nothing invites less questions than parental abandonment. Talking to people, playing the tourist.
We decided we could be kinda open about the book - it's for sale everywhere here, and has been bringing tourists to town ever since it came out. It turns out, the church disbanded almost 25 years ago, after the Derosier insanity got to the at-the time minister Caleb, who killed his family and later immolated himself in an insane asylum. Everyone north of thirty-five years old has a story to tell. Most books, TV, modern music - anything they felt could bring in the inherently sinful culture of the outside world was banned. Most people couldn't work within the city limits, so they had to go outside, but the general agreement was that no-one under 18 should do so, leading to generations of children who grew up never seeing anything but a fraction of a square mile of Missouri. Church gatherings were held daily, though they were largely social events.
Most bizarre are the masks. One of Lucas Derosier's adapted mad scribblings was an emphasis on, of all things, sensory deprivation and meditation. Every few days, it was encouraged that everyone place these individually decorated cloth masks over their heads. They were little more than cloth sacks, but the children would scrawl and paint the masks with all kinds of designs, as long as they were minimalist in nature. And they would place them over their heads, and a black inner lining would block out light and muffle sound, and entire families would sit together in their front rooms and get lost in their own meditation. One store-owner showed us a photograph he had of one such family, sitting at the dinner table in their Sunday Bests, their heads covered in white hoods, staring at nothing in particular.
Marcus Stonehall's accusations that the "angel"'s murders were committed by church members wearing the masks is something that makes the townspeople very angry. While they do blame the Derosiers, or rather the Derosiers' insanity, most are either ex-members of the church or the children of ex-members, and the idea that their loved ones can be implicated in the murders is defamation in their eyes.
The townspeople have, until recently, viewed their personal connections with the church with some embarrassment - the churches in the area even skew more liberal than the in similar town simply to distance themselves from the extremism of the Faceless Angels. However, in light of the tourism it's bringing in, they're rather warming to it - an imprompteu museum was set up collecting old stuff that most people had lying in the backs of wardrobes and in attics, and most people are aware that talking on the subject will bring in money. They are rather taking liberties though, tying it all into paganism rather than christianity. They're even going so far as to claim that the patterns on the mask were pagan symbols and the like.
In the meantime, the library was, even before all this, full of documentation about the church. We're gonna go trawl through there, looking for information. We're hoping to stick around for a while. On the 22nd, they're putting on a big tourist drive, getting dressed up and the like. Everyone's making their own sensory deprivation masks, putting on a whole-city event for out-of-towners off work and school for Christmas.
And it's pretty plausible that we can stick around. It's odd, but since we've been here, we've had complete peace. No sign of any proxies. No sign of him. Bizarre. We're all the more on our guard, after what happened to Steven when we stuck around in one place for a long time. But there's...an odd sense of optimism.
We decided we could be kinda open about the book - it's for sale everywhere here, and has been bringing tourists to town ever since it came out. It turns out, the church disbanded almost 25 years ago, after the Derosier insanity got to the at-the time minister Caleb, who killed his family and later immolated himself in an insane asylum. Everyone north of thirty-five years old has a story to tell. Most books, TV, modern music - anything they felt could bring in the inherently sinful culture of the outside world was banned. Most people couldn't work within the city limits, so they had to go outside, but the general agreement was that no-one under 18 should do so, leading to generations of children who grew up never seeing anything but a fraction of a square mile of Missouri. Church gatherings were held daily, though they were largely social events.
Most bizarre are the masks. One of Lucas Derosier's adapted mad scribblings was an emphasis on, of all things, sensory deprivation and meditation. Every few days, it was encouraged that everyone place these individually decorated cloth masks over their heads. They were little more than cloth sacks, but the children would scrawl and paint the masks with all kinds of designs, as long as they were minimalist in nature. And they would place them over their heads, and a black inner lining would block out light and muffle sound, and entire families would sit together in their front rooms and get lost in their own meditation. One store-owner showed us a photograph he had of one such family, sitting at the dinner table in their Sunday Bests, their heads covered in white hoods, staring at nothing in particular.
Marcus Stonehall's accusations that the "angel"'s murders were committed by church members wearing the masks is something that makes the townspeople very angry. While they do blame the Derosiers, or rather the Derosiers' insanity, most are either ex-members of the church or the children of ex-members, and the idea that their loved ones can be implicated in the murders is defamation in their eyes.
The townspeople have, until recently, viewed their personal connections with the church with some embarrassment - the churches in the area even skew more liberal than the in similar town simply to distance themselves from the extremism of the Faceless Angels. However, in light of the tourism it's bringing in, they're rather warming to it - an imprompteu museum was set up collecting old stuff that most people had lying in the backs of wardrobes and in attics, and most people are aware that talking on the subject will bring in money. They are rather taking liberties though, tying it all into paganism rather than christianity. They're even going so far as to claim that the patterns on the mask were pagan symbols and the like.
In the meantime, the library was, even before all this, full of documentation about the church. We're gonna go trawl through there, looking for information. We're hoping to stick around for a while. On the 22nd, they're putting on a big tourist drive, getting dressed up and the like. Everyone's making their own sensory deprivation masks, putting on a whole-city event for out-of-towners off work and school for Christmas.
And it's pretty plausible that we can stick around. It's odd, but since we've been here, we've had complete peace. No sign of any proxies. No sign of him. Bizarre. We're all the more on our guard, after what happened to Steven when we stuck around in one place for a long time. But there's...an odd sense of optimism.
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