Thanksgiving

I was thankful out of spite this year.  I am doing many things out of spite this year.

I was thankful for my baby, even though she's starting to be something of a hassle.  I am starting to wonder what sort of dementia I have been suffering wanting a second chance at pregnancy.  I was thankful for Erika, even if she is just about the worst person to have on hand while you're pregnant.  I was even thankful for this lovely bouquet I received.  I am not going to cower ever time I get some flowers.  You're stalking the wrong girl to get that reaction, you monster.

I am sort of worried about the end of my term, though.  What happens when I have to stay put?  It's going to happen sooner rather than later.  My second trimester will be over in roughly a month's time.  I won't be able to run, soon.

No, I'm not going to dwell on that.  Erika's been looking for a safe place.  In her own way, I suppose.  I need to focus on moving forward.  Protecting the baby.  For Tam and for myself.  I will see this through.

Whirlwind

Have you ever had a day you were certain was a dream?

That has been today.

When I looked into the main room, I saw a man there.  I didn't recognize him.  He didn't see me, at first,  but I heard him call out.

"I gave you the warnings!  I left the codes!  You should have listened!  It's too late, now...it's too late for both of us!"

I waited until he was looking the other direction and slowly closed my door.  I turned towards my window and prepared to open it.

Then....I saw

I'm not sure what it is.  What it was.

It was shaped like a man.  It had wild, messy red hair, the sort of red no person's hair actually is.  It wore an oversized, blood-soaked shirt that covered its hands with over-long sleeves.  It must have had eyes, but I never remember seeing them.

I just remember its smile.

It was so wide, so impossibly wide.  Full of teeth, an impossible number of teeth, more than should have fit in an already impossibly wide smile.

And then it was in the room with me.

I scrambled to the door and flung it open, and tried to run, but the man in the room grabbed me, held me down no matter how hard I struggled against his grip.

"See, see what you're making me do!  It's your fault.  You should've run!"  The man cried and that...that thing walked slowly towards me.  The grin never left its face.  It only grew larger.

It knelt next to me.  Blood dripped off its shirt, onto the ground.  It held out a sleeve covered hand towards me, and I felt a cut slowly open across my  cheek, seemingly with no source.  I saw...I tried to look at its eyes, but I couldn't.  I could only see that horrible mouth, that horrible grin get wider and wider.

I realized it was going to torture me.  It was going to cut at me and bleed me and make me suffer.  And then it was going to take my heart.  It was going to kill me, and my baby, like it had killed Tam.

There was nothing I could do to stop it.

And that's when the man in white saved my life.

He burst in the room and stabbed the man holding me down in the chest with a butterfly knife.  The creature looked casually up at him, and the man in white wrenched the blade out of the man's body and slammed it into the monster's chest, right where the heart would have been on any human.

He then grabbed me and pulled me up, kicking away the now gasping for air man in the process, and pulled me as fast as he could us out of the building.

We had bolted out the front door and were starting to rush down the street when I realized that the "man" in white wasn't a man at all.

It was Erika.

Police cars pulled to a stop in front of us, and police  rushed out, pulling their weapons and ordering us to freeze.  Erika did so, as did I, mostly out of reflex.  I had no idea what was going on....I had no idea how I'd been saved, or what I'd been saved from.

I almost began to ask when the police in front of me were suddenly torn into ribbons by some invisible force.  From behind their cars stepped the creature, knife still protruding from its chest.  It walked slowly towards us.  Erika shoved me behind her and stepped forward, as if to meet it head on.

The thing cocked its head slightly, and reached both of its hands to the blade.   It pressed them to the weapon and slowly pulled it out without gripping it.  It then slowly held the knife out, as if offering it back.  Erika did not accept it, and the beast just let it topple to the ground.

It leaned to the side, and looked right at me.  Its grin somehow got even wider, now substantially wider than the face it belonged to, and then it vanished.

In its place was a bouquet of Forget-me-nots.

"Erika.  Erika, what was..."

"My name is not Erika."  She said.  "And we need to get you away from here, quickly.  You will live only as long as you provide decent sport for that--thing."

"But what's going on?!"  I asked.  "What was that?!  Who are you?!"

Erika--or whatever her name was--flipped her knife closed and placed it in her trenchcoat.  "I picked the name Erika because it is...similar to what I have been calling myself.  You should call me Extra.  The Extra Piece.  As for what that thing was...some call it the Smiling Man.  I try not to call these entities by their actual name.  I have thought of it, in the past, as the Where the Wild Roses Grow."

She has told me...substantially more, since we've been fleeing.  This is the only moment of respite I've known since the hellish whirlwind the day started as.

That..thing will follow me.  It will torment me until I stop being interesting to it, and then it will kill me.  All I can do to survive is...make it an interesting chase.

It is one of many, many creatures of its kind.  She won't tell me how she knows any of this, or why it didn't just kill her, too, when it had the chance.

We're at a diner.  Erika's--I cannot think of her otherwise--telling me we need to get moving, to find a place to sleep.  Before something comes and finds us.

I will post when I can.

Right now...I feel as though I need to sob myself to sleep.

Mary....Clayre...don't worry about me.  I think...I think I'll be fine, for now.  I think we'll be fine.

He's back

Twice, this week, I've seen the man in white.  Always when I'm alone in the house--save for the police.  He always disappears before I can call them over.  I wonder...is he the Chrysanthemum Slasher?  Could I have stopped this before it happened?  Is Tam's blood on my hands?

I can't stop thinking about it.  I've talked with the others about it, and the police.  I haven't seem him since and the police are setting up more patrols to look for him.

I should be scared.  But I'm not.  The void inside me is finally fading, after weeks of suffering, of numbness, I've finally found my true response.  The emptiness is gone.

In its place is now rage.

I have been sulking around like a wounded animal.  Like a dog that can't get over its master's death and has decided to waste away rather than live without him.  That will not be how Ashleigh Torn is remembered.

It's time to get mad.

I won't cower.  I won't simply walk into death.  I am not letting my baby die.

If this bastard comes for me, I will be kicking and screaming.  I give my word on that.

There was going to be a party

My very first comment.  I was so excited.  There was going to be cake and everything.  I hired a DJ, and we were going to have  pizza, and it was going to be absolutely wonderful.

I hope you feel happy for yourself, whoever you are that was, what, hitting refresh on my blog every ten minutes, waiting for me to post?  We had to throw the cake away, and the party clown went home crying.  How is he supposed to feed his wife and kids now?

From that other comment, it's some kind of code?  I don't know.  I don't know who would put something like that up, and I don't really care.

Probably one of Mary's idiotic friends.

Oh well, regardless, more about my day.

Erika did indeed come by while I was at work, and she stayed for my entire shift.  I'm not entirely dissuaded on the "she's attracted to me" front, though she did entertain herself when I was busy, so maybe she's just lonely, kind of like how I have been.  It's no secret that I'm not very personable.  When I say that Mary is my best friend, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, beyond my fiance, she is my only friend.  It's good to have someone who's so instantly taken with me that they would sit around a coffee shop for four hours entertaining me.

I'm kind of excited for tomorrow.  I want to see if the man in white is back.  I sincerely hope I chased him off with my little wave.  If I haven't...maybe I'll go talk to him?  Of course, I won't do it alone.  I'll bring my fiance or Erika with me, and see if we can't find out what's going on.

I can't wait to move

But more on that in a moment.  I had a breakthrough of sorts today.

On my way to classes, I turned to the man in white and waved at him.  He moved away as quickly as he could.  I didn't see him when I left class two hours later.  I'm sure he was absolutely mystified at my ability to suss him out in such ingenious camouflage.  Hopefully, that takes care of that problem.

When, after work, I finally made my way to my apartment, however, a new one made itself known.  One of the people who lives on my floor decided to make his presence known.

His constant amorous attention was cute, if pathetic, at first...but he's seldom failed to try to drag me into whatever manner of boring smalltalk he has on hand.  It's quickly become somewhat creepy and sad.  And I know it is amorous attention, because he gives the dirtiest looks to my fiance when he sees us together, and he thinks we're not looking.

I got him to shut up today, though, when I showed him my brand new ring.  He mumbled something about congratulations and then made his excuses and left.  I'll admit, it was cruel of me, but not without a delightful measure of satisfaction.

Still, I doubt it will last for long.  Both Mary and I are regular targets of his fumbling overtures, and we're both rather tired of them.  I can't wait until the day I can move in with my fiance.  It should just be the end of the summer.  We've agreed that it would probably be best if we both waited until we were both graduated before we moved in together, for the sakes of our grades if nothing else.

Speaking of my paramour, it looks as though I'm going to be a thesis widow this weekend.  I may go to a bar or something with Mary and  some of her work friends.  She's been trying to get me to go out for weeks, and I may as well humor her.  Who knows, I might meet some new friends in the process.

Perhaps my vanity is besting me

My fiance has offered to escort me to classes.  I've declined so far.  Maybe I'm just being vain.  He could just be standing there, watching everyone go past.  I doubt I'm quite so special as to deserve my very own stalker.  As long as he does nothing but watch, what is there really to fret about?  It's kind of flattering, really.

It's a blow to my pride to remember that I am not, in fact, at the center of the universe, but I'll endure, somehow.

Something unsettling has been happening

I'll postpone any of my usual ranting and raving and get straight to the point in a way that feels both wrong and profane.  I'll admit, I am a bit nervous about this.  I imagine my fiance is going to want to take some sort of action after hearing this, bless his testosterone-driven heart.

Over the past few days, while on campus, I have noticed someone watching me.

It has always been at a distance, but it has happened too often to be coincidence.

From what I can see, the person is dressed all in white.  Long white coat, a white hood of some kind over their head.  Yes, even in summer.  Yes, this person was getting odd looks, though they stayed mostly to the shadows.  I think it was a man but I can't be certain.

Maybe I should go to the campus police tomorrow?  This might just be a misunderstanding.  I do have a fairly regular pattern when at my classes.

I could also just wait it out.  My classes last only last until early August.  After that, I will have little reason to frequent that portion of the quad.  My only requirement to be on campus will be to go to work as a coffee slave, and I may not even keep at that job come the end of summer.

Perhaps I should invest in some pepper spray.  Just to be safe.

I hope my fiance doesn't do anything stupid when he hears about this.