-Spencer- On the outside looking in

Being in the House is bringing up bad memories. Well, not... there's some good ones too. But staying in one place for too long, it just gives you time to think, you know? And I never think of good things once I start thinking.

I'm not sure exactly what stance to take on everything that's been going on. All of us couriers have been far away from all that lately, and it doesn't seem like that's going to change. Hopefully. There's been a few minor deliveries, but that's exactly what they've been, minor, so I guess nobody really felt the need to report them. We're back to the way things used to be, before... well. Before we started blogging, really. Not that I think anyone is going to complain about that. Even Writer's gone quiet, caught up in the mess his Squad has made, not that I’m complaining.

I guess it just feels… strange. Strange to have the House acting like a regular House again. Strange to have everyone sticking to their own business. Strange to not see Matt Harper Writer Slender around every corner. Strange to not… be in pain all the time. I guess it means that everything… I’m improving? I feel lighter. Less tied down. He’s not as loud. I can breathe again. We all live day to day, half expecting everything to go horribly wrong. But it hasn’t, and that’s just sort of starting to sink in.


I dream sometimes. Don’t usually, really, haven’t dreamed since I was in the desert all those years ago. But now, I dream of skirting over rooftops like nothing in the world matters. Sliding down drainpipes and skidding down grimy brick, feet landing easily on the asphalt of alleyways. It all feels so real; I don’t hurt, and my heart pounds in my chest and the air rushes through my fingers like I’m catching handfuls of smoke. I don’t have to worry about my staples popping or my fingers breaking or anything else. I’m free.

Free. Ha, that’s something that a lot of us dream of being, I’d bet. I’ve never dreamt of it before. Not having to worry. I always figured the fog was a bad thing, like drowning, like giving up, but now I’m not sure if it’s that at all.




… In a Loop, a few hours can be days. Years. I guess you could almost call it dreaming; entire lives flashing before you in seconds. I’ve only been in a Loop like that once; three years ago, when I wanted to leave Writer, he stuck me in one in a last ditch effort to get me to stay.



I woke up.



Slender wasn’t real.

Writer wasn’t real.

The cult wasn’t real.

None of this was real.

The only thing that was real was the hospital and my parents and the coma.


That’s what they said it all was; a dream. A dream made up of action movies and T.V. shows and some stupid little picture on a forum. And you know what? I believed them. I figured that the dream I had in the coma had just been my brain’s way to cope, that it didn’t really matter that I couldn’t remember anything from before I had been injured. This whole thing was too fantastic to believe anyways. I had a family. The world was simple and normal. I had friends. I had a life.

My name was Jonas Switchman, and I was twenty-two years old. My best friend was named Matthew Saxby. My “abusive ex girlfriend” had been a children’s storybook writer. And I had been her editor, writing a few stories of my own. At least until the incident. She had pushed me in front of a truck. So it goes.
By the time I woke up, she was locked away for a long, long time. And I… I guess I sort of moved on. Matt was there for me every step of the way. My parents were too. I got back to writing, back to forums, back to “my old life”. Found a girl. Married her young. Had a kid. A daughter.




her name was Sam




And we had a dog and a House and a white picket fence and everything that everyone is supposed to have wanted and it was perfect.

Perfect.

And then one day HE showed up with his Cheshire grin and wrong, wrong, wrong green eyes and then


and then

and then the sky started falling.



It was all a lie. It had been a lie the entire time, and Writer had just been watching, observing, waiting for the right time to wrench it all away, forming the world around me so that it all went right, so that I would think that I was…



…




I think I’ll make a few stops along my travels. Some of you haven’t had your dose of asshole courier for a long, long while, and I’m just going to have to fix that. If you need any supplies, just drop me a comment; I hardly mind bringing with stuff to drop off along the way.
But I just have this feeling that things are changing, and maybe we’re not quite aware of them, but something big is going on. Something is going to happen that’s going to change everything. We’re going to stop dreaming, and everything is going to go to hell when we wake up. I hope that’s… not the case. Let’s all hope that’s not the case, because a lot of you can’t afford for this all to get any worse.

… Us. I mean us. We. Us. You get the point.

See you lot soon.








(And right before I had to go back, right before my entire life fell from the sky, I could feel my back pressing to a tree, and my eyes closed, like a poet in the Parthenon. My attention began to swing grandly through the full arc of my life, passing into death, which was violet light. There wasn't anybody else there, or anything. There was just violet light – and a hum.


That was the first time I died.)