One more thing

Clayre.  Mary.

I've gotten your emails.  I'm sorry I can't tell you where I am.

I hope you realize it's for the best.  Don't try to find me.

I don't want you to get more wrapped up in this mess than you already have.

I love you both.  Even you, Mary--you're like the sister I never really wanted, until I had her.  Whereas Clayre actually is the sister I never really wanted.

...but I'm making too light of it.  Please.  Take care of yourselves.

And don't follow me.

My baby

You are, perhaps wondering why I'm putting myself at such risk for this child.  I know Erika is.

The answer is simple.  There are two parts to it.

The first is the obvious one.  Maternal love.  It needs no real explanation.

The second, and stronger reason, however?  Spite.

I am going to have this baby.  I am not going to let anything stop me from having this baby.

I can tell Erika really, really wishes to argue with me, but for some reason, she cannot argue my reasoning.  Perhaps spite is a powerful driving force for her as well.

I had better get back to bed, if for no other reason than the stop Erika's constant moaning that I should go back to bed.  I imagine it's more fun for my little parasite if the sudden urge to pee wakes me up than if I'm up already.

...I wish Erika had better sleeping bags.  Yes yes, I know, poor pampered pregnant city girl.

Flowers

Today I woke up and resting on my chest was another bouquet of forget-me-nots.

Erika says this means we have to keep moving.  This is simple for her to say, as she is not rapidly gaining weight, nor does she have to urinate every ten seconds because a tiny freeloader is growing inside of her.

She tells me it would be in my best interest to have an abortion.  She tells me this at least once a day.  She even offers to perform it herself.

I will not.

I will carry this baby to term.

Whether I will keep her, or whether she will go up for adoption is another thing, but she will be born into this world.  I will have her.  Nothing that monster can do will stop me.

I suppose I should sleep.  I'll need all I can get, so I can wake to a bright, sunny morning of vomiting my guts out once again.

Erika

I have  a little time.  Not much, but a little.  Erika--she has lost the war on preventing me from calling her that--wants us to get as far away from where we were as possible.  She doesn't want to police finding us.  I tend to agree--I doubt I would be very interesting quarry--if that is indeed what is keeping me alive--from protective custody.

She won't tell me much about herself.  She says she was watching me because I remind her of someone she lost.  She also says she was once a victim of these...creatures, herself, in the past.

I want to trust her, but...I don't know what to think, anymore.  I long for a time when I could blame the death of my fiance on the evils of man.  But now?  The world is so much darker than I knew it to be.  Can I afford to trust someone like her when literal creatures of darkness are out to get me and my unborn as well?

I should sleep.  I have a long day of being homeless and on the run tomorrow.

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.

I came out of the bathroom and the police are gone.

I can't see them outside, either.  Just their car.

If you don't hear from me again...

...I'm sorry.

I'll try to fight but, if I die...maybe I get to see Tam again.

Someone's in the main room.

The police have been keeping secrets from me.

They haven't released me because I've been getting bouquets.  None of the other girls did.  Just me.

They've been throwing them away, but I got one today.  It was in my closet.  Just waiting for me.

I didn't recognize most of the flowers, but I did a couple.  Bulrush.  Red chrysanthemums.

There was a card with the flowers.  There was just one word on it.

"Soon."

The police almost have a full squad here now.  Erika and Mary want to be here but they're being kept away. Probably for the best.  For their own good.

It won't be long now.

I will hurt him for you, Tam.

Wish me luck.