Thursday 30 June 2011

Short

We don't have enough of anything around here and at times like this it really shows. Alex n' Richard were lucky enough to come back in one piece but with no supplies so I guess we're back to giving and inch and hoping we get a mile.

So far this hasn't worked.

Anybody with half a brain's looked at the class list and noticed that a ton of names have been removed. I'll tell you right now half of the people who have been marked as garbage bag stuffing aren't actually dead yet and they're in my care.

Not that that really delays the inevitable.

The kit we've got is supposed to provide for about a half dozen people with non-lethal injuries and so far we've got five with life-threatening ones hanging by a thread and we've already lost one. Don't get me started on the ones who aren't in critical condition. My policy for the last three days has basically been 'no blood no bandage' and everybody will just have to deal until we figure out what to do.

I haven't slept since wednesday or so and believe me it's beginning to show. I don't really feel tired but if Richard is good for one thing it's honesty, and when he says 'Chase, man, you look like shit' I'm inclined to believe him. I know I can't sleep until everybody's been stitched up and tended to because the last time I took a couple hours off for shut-eye Opal slipped into a horrible fever that left her completely robbed of any will to continue.

She was gone by the end of the night.

The other four aren't doing any better. While Nick is starting to recover it's pretty clear he's not in good shape and won't be doing anything for a long, long time. He's freezing cold and won't stop shaking. The others seem to have horrible cases of the shakes as well, but they're all absolutely burning to the touch. Call it fever or whatever but with supplies sparse and me not trusting herbal remedies (but sooner or later I may not have a choice) infections are common and the only thing we can do is drain the puss from wound x and pray that their bodies fix themselves overnight.

One of them is sitting next to me now. I just need a break from this for a few minutes. It's gotten to the point where I'll look around the camp, blink, and suddenly everything is a mess of blood and gibs and silent as death, like I'm the only one left and those garbage bags that seem to show up A LOT MORE THAN THEY SHOULD are hung from the trees and I know EXACTLY what's in them because there are 27 of them all strung like paper lanterns.

And I blink again.

And camp's back to normal.

I think I need to rest for a bit.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Status Report - Part Two

Because Alex and Richard are going to brave the forest after everything that's happened this weekend.


Seriously, Richard, I know you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but really?

Really?


After spending five hours cleaning organs off the camp ground and trying to put out the fires of what used to be our tents, all while the insides of your stomach seemed to have turn to black sludge?


Really?

You're going to try the forest?



Really?


Oh, but I can hear your response already.

We need medicine.

No shit, Sherlock. We also food other than squirrel and blueberries but that's not happening anytime soon, is it?


We lost five.

Five.


Plus Will.

Plus whoever wandered off on Friday morning. I'm not even sure anymore. Everything's a bit of a fog and god, I'm so tired. 


Look at me, sounding like Alex.

Let's stop bitching and get to some exposition, eh?


Welp, if you haven't gathered from Richard's post and Collec - pardonnez-moi - bitch's little post, things aren't exactly sunshine and rainbows here right now.

My little visit from Where's-His-Face wouldn't be the only one we'd get that weekend. We were lucky enough to be blessed with a most welcome and appreciated visit from Slim n' Trim himself.

In camp.

At night.

And guess what?

He wasn't alone.

Some blonde-haired punk was with him (and I can take a guess as to who he was) and he managed to fuck a few of us up. Richard's nursing a few deep cuts in his arms ("Just a scratch, Suze. Stop worryin'." "For fuck's sake man, another quarter inch deeper and you'd be bleeding out right now!" "But I'm not." "But that's not the point!") and don't even get me started on Nick. He's got three fractures ribs and a broken leg and both of his shoulders are dislocated.

I guess that's what happens when you'll pulled in five different directions at once.

A couple are in even worse condition.

Hell, we've lost one already. And Chase is not taking this well.

We found him with a stuttering pulse and nearly all of his blood completely drained out of the massive hole through his abdomen. How Trent managed to stand and walk towards Chase, let alone stay conscious is beyond me. Then again, the kid was always stubborn as a mule, so I guess I really shouldn't be surprised.

You ... don't want to know what happened to the other three than Slender got to before everybody got it through their heads that holy shit, we're under attack and none of us have any idea what to do.


Let's just say 'intestines hung like Christmas lights' is putting it nicely. The dark strains are still on the trees and nobody is really willing to do anything about them.

We burned the bodies.

... But you couldn't really call them bodies at that point, could you? They were more like heaps of flesh with alabaster bones sticking out of all the wrong places, drowning in pools of their precious life fluid. I'd go into further detail, but it's already been a long, long night.


All in all though, we still seem to be holding together okay. I mean, there are plenty of us left and god that sounds so sadistic and horrible, hopefully Richard and Alex will be back soon and if the gods doth smileth upon us, perhaps they've found something useful.

...


Ha.

Haha.

Hahahahahahhaaaa.


Nope.

Can't even keep a straight face.

sllee pno.w,
Suze

Status Report

No time for a full report.

The blog went down and we're all recovering from...

Well.

Let's start at the beginning.

Suze's encounter was far from unheard and noted by almost everybody in the camp. I'm not sure if it was the fact that nobody sleeps well here anymore or that we've all become extremely sensitive to even the slightest sounds.

Then, of course, William posted. I found him in his tent pale as a sheet and smelling strongly of blood and even worse of sweat. How or why I didn't really want to ask, so I figured the blog was a safe bet.

I asked him why he had created an account, but never posted.

'Don't see the point." He said flatly, as if the answer should have been obvious. "Not going to help us."

What was I supposed to say to that?

"Just one post," I urged, noting how horribly his whole body seemed to shake inside the tent, despite the humidity and heat inside of it. Jesus, when was the last time he stepped outside?

I wish I could go into further detail, but there's stuff to do and Richard and I are going to try and head out again and see if we can find the campgrounds. Five students are in serious need of first aid and the kit we brought with us isn't nearly enough.

If this becomes a weekly thing...

William posted.

Lyle flew into a rage when he read it and practically ripped Will's tent open, but found nothing inside. The entire thing had been cleaned out and was completely spotless - the only way you'd know someone had lived in there was the same stench of blood and sweat as before.

We knew we didn't have much time. If we lost another one everybody was going to be responsible. Well, we searched well into the night and found him too late. Richard did a fairly good job of summarizing what happened up until then, and it wasn't until that was posted that everything lost power.

Nobody's phones would start.

The chargers were nothing but sophisticated paper weights.

Compasses spun and spun and spun and the GPSes that were long gone... seemed to work, actually, but they wouldn't display anything other than 11° 21′ 0″ N, 142° 12′ 0″ E.

The entire camp seemed to be in horrible condition, both out of guilt over the loss of Will and the fact that headaches and horrible coughing fits and black sludge from god knows where seemed to cover everything and infect everyone.

And then Friday rolls around and everything seems to get worse.

Somebody just stood from their spot around the fire and walked into the forest. Nobody stopped them. It was quiet and the air was chilled, everybody huddled around those pathetic embers. Then suddenly one just... stood up. And walked. And walked until they hit the trees, then kept walking. Everybody just stared, unsure of how to react.

We haven't seen them since.

...Richard's shouting at me from across the camp. He wants to get moving. Now. 


I'll leave the rest to Suze. Chase is busy with... well, you'll see. Suze will have lots to say on the matter and everybody else is tied up with something.

Alex out.

Sunday 26 June 2011

//Collective// Consciousness

Is truly a wonderful thing. Not that any of you would realize it, but alas, an ode to time past, yet

I am no poet.

Today, I bring the lyrical brilliance of Chopin; The Nocturne in C# Minor. Absolute... silence, even in sound; It seems to pervade even the most secretive of thoughts.

Do we aim to wound, or to kill with our words? Measured, spoken, burned, and broken. How is it we determine their significance? Words can confound and excite and amuse and entertain, and yet... They carry our lies, our "What if"s and "Can be"s. That which is. That which is not. It is impossible to define them, give them meaning. Some are cut from their sharp edges, and some take solace in their embrace.

It's foolish.

The black tendrils arch across the sky that is obstructed by the bed of shadows and black leaves, a whisper of both unadulterated joy and the dullness of morphine. Screams echo throughout the impassive bodies of birch bark and grassroots, a maze of their own design.

And so they observe.

Some are converted into red flowers arching among the ground...

(In Flanders fields the poppies blow,
between the crosses, row on row,)

And some only start to bud, webs of intricate crimson spreading across their skin, acting only as the canvas, marked.

(That mark our place, and in the sky,
the larks, still bravely singing, fly;)

Some hold back, statues, their visages unmovable, their feelings, unperturbed. Their willful blindness will not save them. Some others are used to the Court Jester that invades their thoughts;
arching, growing, deceiving
until there is nothing left of what they where;
was there anything in the first place?

(Scarce heard amid the guns below.)

Suffer, repent, and be forgiven.

Because you're all still keeping secrets, aren't you~?

Friday 24 June 2011

Goddammit!

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.

We couldn't find him. We couldn't find him, goddammit, didn't find him before The goddamn FUCKING Collector got to him, shit shit shit. What the fuck was that last post about? And we stumbled on the clearing and we looked at that damn bastard in that goddamn fucking hoodie and he just didn't even say a FUCKING word, just stood there over the body, and Lyle went FUCKING INSANE and nearly beat the shit out of that asshole because he was just caught by motherfucking surprise and then Slender showed up and dear god, you idiot, what the hell did you do? I can't stop seeing the leaves now, you fucking douchebag, Lyle, god, at least I think before I do something stupid but now you've gone and.... fuck. William's dead. Fuck.

He was a good kid, too, probably followed a long time and he never cracked, took a shine to White Elephants and was constantly lurking on there. God. He was quiet and didn't say much until he found his voice this year and shit why did he run off, and why did Lyle know to go after him and fuck my head is fucking pounding. Elliot has been on the ground moaning for what seems like hours and I have to stop typing every two seconds to puke this really nasty looking black shit and our little enigmatic friend can speak for his fucking self.

Fucking hell. I'll post later when we're not all in such a mess. All quiet on the home front, at least for now.



We're going to burn the body tonight.



Rest in peace, Will. God knows you deserve some sleep.


Fight 'till the end,

Richard Battle

Thursday 23 June 2011

-Prophecy-

All what we do is watch the cycle continue
They say that history repeats itself,
but that's only because everyone says that
They say that history repeats itself,
but that's only because everybody says that

They say that history repeats itself,
but that's only because everyone says that

They say that history repeats itself,
but that's only because everyone says that

They say that history repeats itself,
but that's only because everything

never

stays

the

same.

We're forced to stumble
blindly
no rhyme or reason or even a farce of
dignity
atone, repent, dethrone, resent

the king is dumped from on his perch
the kingdom in his head, besmirched
and we're just on the edge, the verge
of nobody being there to find them.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down, and broke his crown
And Slender came to slaughter

Destroy the edge of the sidewalk
destroy the edge of thought and reason
destroy the edge of the blade which fells you

Sacrifice.

Judgement.

Death.

and rebirth.

Full circle.

All what we do is watch the cycle continue
All what we do is watch the cycle continue
All what we do is watch the cycle con

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Everyone's First Time is Different

And don't go letting your minds wander too far into the gutter; I'm talking about none other than Tall, Dark and Slender.

More specifically, meeting none other than Tall, Dark and Slender.

In the woods.

At night.

Alone.

At first you can't believe it. You can't comprehend this ... this figure, this presence standing before you. You blink and suddenly you get a face full of what looks like a suit from afar, but up close seems to be something all together more alive, restless, shifting, breathing below an oily, black skin. It's only after you crane your neck that you can fully realize just how tall this creature is, how his head rests on his shoulder, bent like it's crafted of plastic, seemingly broken because this figure is just so ... so ... human and yet wrong in so many unfathomable ways that it fills you with a sense of an almost ancient recognition and the even more ancient fear that comes along with it striking your very core.

And then it hits you.

It hits you like a fucking semi.

And suddenly everything around you is screaming and the trees are screaming and the wind is screaming and those inky tendrils are screaming from his back and you wonder, when did those get there? - and your mind is screaming and you're screaming and run, run, oh god you've got to run but your feet are stuck in place because you can't get past the sheer wrongness and yet alien beauty of that perfectly blank face - like porcelain, maybe, you wonder if it'd be smooth and cool under your hand and -

nononononosuzeyou'renotallowedtothinklikethat!

And so you run.

You run so fast that the soles of your shoes rip off and you trip in the undergrowth and crawl the remaining fifty feet back to camp, praying to god that everybody is asleep and you can inch your way on your knees back to your tent without having to answer any questions.

And that's why I haven't been sleeping.

Tuesday 21 June 2011

Status Report

There really isn't much to report. Other than the blackout on the weekend, nothing has really occurred over here in Camp Slenderland (Richard's nickname. It has a nice ring to it, in a Friday the 13th sort of way.) aside from Jennifer and Josh.

Suze told you about them earlier. The couple who managed to get away long enough to seal their own fates before Collector got to them - or worse. You almost envy them. I'm by no means the type of person to say suicide is okay, but considering the alternatives? They're lucky. Some of the girls found them this morning, and the commotion woke up the entire camp. Suze was, obviously, distressed, and went straight for Jennifer's tent.

She emerged a couple minutes later, a paper in hand.

"God of power and mercy, you have made death itself the gateway to eternal paradise. Look with love on us, and make us one with Your Son in His suffering and death, that, sealed with the blood of Christ, we may come before you free from sin. 


Amen."

It was fairly obvious what we had to do at that point.

Lyle and Richard looked over the bodies and Walter agreed that they had to be given a funeral just as the others did. But by the time they had returned to cut them down... well. Nothing was there to be cut.

The nooses hung empty.

Lyle is now off in a corner somewhere, freaking out as usual. But is he really to blame? Everybody's freaking out. Everybody except me, it would seem. And to be honest, that's freaking me out. Walter says I'm just trying to block it out, and eventually it'll reach the point where something will snap.

Great.

So now we're sitting at camp and it's late at night and we've got a bonfire going.

The summer solstice.

Midsummer's night.

Back in the medieval times, people would create great fires on midsummer in order to ward off evil spirits. I wonder if that's why the fire seems so big tonight? We've got a viking funeral going - minus the swords and the boats, of course. The bags are sitting in the fire and pouring out wicked black smoke and the entire camp smells like burnt hair. How hot does a fire have to be to turn a human body to ash? I wonder if being cut up helps it any.

Wow. Now that's pretty screwed up.

Anyways.

I'm not sure if we're doing it out of cleansing or out of the fact that nobody's got a shovel and is willing to dig a hole. Or maybe we're all just a little too into the idea of the summer solstice - this isn't the first time it's shown up in this Mythos, afterall - and the local Quebecois (William. He's got an account but hasn't posted yet. I wonder if I should talk to him about that... might be interesting to see what he has to say.) tells us about midsummer celebrations back home. Says we should find marigold and throw it into the fire to purify the camp.

Personally, I think it'll take a lot more than a few flowers to cleanse us of what we've seen, and even more to wash the blood off of the camp floor.

Who knows. Maybe under all the ash you won't be able to see the stains.

Alex out.

Monday 20 June 2011

. . . The Collector is on our blog.

Incoming shitstorm in three . . . two . . .

Oh, You Son of A ...

BITCH.

The blog was down all weekend. Not that any of would have known, seeing as somebody has been posting in our abscence.

Collectorfucker.

Mmm ... no. Doesn't have the same ring as Slenderfucker.

I'll come up with a nickname yet.

Bitch.

... Yes.

I quite like that.

Bitch will do nicely.

So, the sumbitch who decided that we needed to be 'punished' decided to do so by trapping us all in a dead zone. No internet, no service.

As if we weren't lacking in those already.

On top of that, we had cases of what I will now refer to as Slendersickness up the wazoo. Lyle locked himself in his tent and is currently coughing up two lungs and a liver's worth of blood and bile, (as black as the fucking night, of course) and Alex has this splitting headache and has curled up in a ball somewhere in the middle of camp and Walter has been ... well, he's been Walter, but a wall emotes more than that man and that's only because you can paint a wall.

Two more people are dead.

As Elliott puts it.

FanFUCKINGtastic.

Not by Slender, oh no, not even at the hands of the little bitch who thinks it's cute to

Calm, Suze, caaaaaaaalm ...

TL;DR suicide. Lucky bastards got out before Slender could get to them.

If only we could all be so lucky.

They were ... in love. Deeply so. Disgustingly so. Goo-goo-ga-ga eyes and 'I wub you more' 'no, I wub you more!' and promises of being together for as long as they lived and bluh bluh huge waste of time.

Well.

I guess they were right about being together for as long as they lived.

But what they got was far from what I'd consider a fairytale ending.

But that's what you get for being stalked by an eldritch abomination, isn't it?

Sometimes there are no happy endings.

We found them hung with belts on the other side of the thicket around camp. I'm not the first and certainly not the last one to tell you this forest is a maze, so I'm not going to lie to you when I say that I doubt that they actually decided to ... end it there. Judging by the note we found in Jennifer's tent the morning of, (Saturday, thanks for asking.) they didn't want to be found. She rattled off some Bible verses and said something about being 'together in paradise' and I really couldn't care less.

But maybe I'm just bitter.

Well fuck me me with a rusted railroad spike you didn't read this post expecting anything less than a rant and a cluster f bomb to put every Michael Bay movie ever to shame, did you?

Recaps are Alex's job, if I recall correctly.

Come to think of it, I should ask him about that. Somebody needs to be able to deliver in this shitstorm of panic and angst and god knows what else.

Quickly losing patience,
Suze

Sunday 19 June 2011

//Collect// Calling

You just never learn, do you?





"No secrets." I believe that was a rule of good ol' Zachariah Hanna Lewis. A rule you all knew well, hm? Yet you all chose to ignore it, and I can not fathom why~!





Walter Bishop Reeves. Your innocence is overshadowed by your desire for answers. You plead, and yet you've known what was going on all along.





Susan~! Isn't it easy to play the victim? Yet you've known something was wrong with "Zach"for a long, long time. Never was easy to ask about, but you didn't even attempt~!





Lyle, oh, good sir /Lyle/! Your attempts at self preservation would be amusing if you didn't actually care for your comrades~! Quite the issue, isn't it?





Alex Dearbone, oh poor, poor Alex. Losing time yet? The fog that you find yourself in is one that downright terrifies you, yet you don't say a word!





Elliott, are you going to hide behind a facade of sarcasm forever~? Your attempts to quell your fear only prove as canon fodder.





Richard Battle. Oh, Richard Battle. You are going to die if you don't make a plan.


Follow the Philosopher's advice.





Maybe I'll be so kind as to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. But know this...





You have no idea what you're dealing with.





One by one.














Mary, Mary, quite contrary,


How does your garden grow?


Lined with corpses, blood and ashes


And so they wait their turn to go.

Friday 17 June 2011

Role reversals

Because it seems that being the bearer of bad news no longer falls exclusivly on one person. I have mentioned to some others that I am no longer sure if I exist outside of my own mind; something rather strange for someone like me, (Maybe it is more normal for me than I realize. It is hard to judge oneself, and even harder to realize what oneself truely is. "Self" is a whole concept that I'm not currently willing to delve into). But what would spark such a strange concept?

It would be easy for me to assume that I /had/ proof of my continual existance. My friends, now my allies, the blog itself, the responses from others. But it's come to the point that I'm not even sure that this proves much of /anything/. Strange.

I decided a short while ago that it was time to try and contact the outside world. Sure, it was obvious that the cellphones would not work; obviously the result of some sort of jamming signal (Emitted by what?). Yet there are other was to contact the outside world.

"Cogito ergo sum." I think, therefore I am. Despite the terror we had been subjected to, I was determined to prove that, above all, logic would prevail.

Now, this held a few problems. There's many possible reasons for our continual inability to navigate this place; hallucinagetic gasses, strange fauna, even medications being introduced to our enviroment. Regardless, it's impossible to get out of here by ourselves. So I tried for more... conventional help. Police, the campus, and, more importantly... our families, my family, in fact. My Mother; a good, strong woman, intellgent and kind. My Father. Tall and giant and loving and who instilled my love of philosophy and logic. And my younger sister. Innocent.

....

I digress.

Using a jury-rigged system, I managed to make contact with the outside world.

Of course, I may be lying. It's easy to garner sympathy, isn't it? Logic is useless. Especially when I'm keeping secrets~

The Police, I presume, only looked up from their poker game for a few seconds before writing me off as a hoodlum. The campus denied any such trip, in fact, the campus denied that Class 123 ever existed. And as for my family?

My sister answered the phone. She's fairly young and my parents don't tend to leave her alone, so this troubled me, even moreso than the previous responses.

I could barely even hear her voice over the downright /incredible/ static, but it was apparent what she was saying.

"Wally, they're saying that you were never here, that you're never comming home, that you'll keep The Tall Man away. It doesn't make any sense..."



Over. And over and over and over.

Getting into contact with other people's parents was very much the same. Either they refused to take me seriously, voices high with denial and... fear; or whispered something cryptic regarding Tall, Dark, and Slender and then hung up, quite rudely, if I may add.

[REDACTED]

He's... following my sister. Or maybe he's stopped. Here's my only problem....

If //it// thinks, does //it// exist as well?

...I'd rather not get into that one.

There have been some other things troubling me as well. A strange comment in the post by Lyle, by me... a comment regarding something about health...
That post. The one describing Zach's death in all the gory detail. Why would I berate him for getting it all out? Another point; our location is clearly stated in the subtitle of this blog. Why has nobody mentioned it or noticed?

The only hypothesis I can provide is that we are being censored. Someone is watching our ever move.

Well, I can play mental chess as well, good sir.

Your turn.




Because he's been quite naughty, hasn't he? Going behind my back, collaborating. Don't you see, Sir Bishop? I only want this for your own good.

Just kidding~

You have no idea what I can do, and I look forward to the day that it dawns on you. Sleep well, Subject.

Thursday 16 June 2011

There's screaming in the camp.

[REDACTED]

Special Delivery

There are only about seven of us awake right now. With slenderman (no funny nicknames, sorry) and whoever managed to post on Zach's account everybody is sleeping during the day and staying awake at night.

Really it's only me and the "peroxide blondes" but really they're not too bad. I don't know what Suze has against them. They're not the sharpest knives in the drawer but a couple of them know their stuff about MMOs. I guess it's because their boyfriends play it? I don't know.

Anyways, only a few of us are up in the day. A lot of people have their days backwards, waking up an hour after sunset and then going back to sleep when the sun comes up. We only really see them during the day if something happens and me or the girls wake them up, and even then Lyle is as much as a bastard getting out of bed as he is with everything else. And that's if he even sleeps, most of the time he just sits in his tent and does god knows what on his phone. Him and Suze and Walter and Alex spent a ton of time on their phones which means they use the chargers a ton. We've gotten used to going without charging for a few days because those four seem to use them the most and believe me when I say the phones take FOREVER to charge. Not seeing the sun for almost a week now (not that they'd know) means that they take the whole day AND THEN SOME to charge. I managed to leave Lyle's phone half-charged (he's going to kill me for this later) and got some time for my own and that's why I'm blogging now.

I haven't really done a lot of research into "Slenderman", but from what Suze and Lyle tell me he sounds kind of like a cheesy horror monster but I know better than to doubt something that has Lyle white and Suze shaking. Most of what I heard is word-of-mouth from the four who DO manage to spend a lot of time online. I know about the garbage bags and the facelessness, forests, trees, stalking, tentacles. They've told me a bit but something tells me there's still a lot missing. Nobody really knows a lot about him, do they? I guess that's what makes him so scary. That and the bodies in the garbage bags.

I should probably talk about those. Jegus Lyle, would it kill you to go into detail? Anyways as Lyle said we found the professor and a couple of the other missing students. Or whatever's left of them. It was a little bit before noon and everybody who was up was up and everybody who was asleep was asleep. I was talking to Lyle when we heard this THUMP behind us. Lyle froze for a second and looked behind him, confused and ... annoyed?

"What is it?" I turned around as well. A big black garbage bag was sitting in the center of the camp and nobody saw who dropped it there. "A... garbage... bag?"

Lyle sent me a freezing glare and told me to wake everybody up. I didn't want to argue.

Some of them were already awake. A lot of the people who usually post on the blog mostly. I caught Walter on his phone writing up a post, so I guess looking at the blog he was writing the post before this one. He just kind of looked at me oddly and marched outside, muttering about so... so... sophiSOMETHING.

Richard and Suze were both out by that time, hearing the commotion. Richard took a scary amount of delight in waking up everybody else and Suze and Lyle were standing over the garbage bag, looking at each other like 'What the hell are we supposed to do?'

Alex and Elliott followed last, Elliott's hair sticking up like the mohawk he tried a couple months ago. By the time everybody who cared assembled around the black mass on the ground, a noticeable smell had started to emanate from the bag.

I spent a couple years in forensic pathology, so I'm both very good at identifying the smell of rotting flesh, and also very good at IGNORING IT.

Everybody else wasn't that lucky.

Lyle turned green and stifled a cough, the girls took two or three steps back, and Elliott wavered on his feet. It was me who had to bend down and poke the bag, trying to get a feel for what was inside.

When I touched it everything inside seemed to fall over, and the bottom looked like it was filled with water. The bag kind of... rolled over and hit the ground with a wet plop and everybody's minds went to all the wrong places.

This was the [REDACTED] bag we'd seen, but the first one to be found in camp. After Richard made the mistake of cutting open a hanging one and watching [REDACTED] nobody really wanted to touch the things, but what else could we do?

The group was completely silent, dreading what we were about to do.

"Scalpel?"

Richard was crouching beside me, butterfly knife in his hand. It took me couple seconds before... oh, right.

I took the knife from him and cut a Y across the top of the bag, (the standard incision for autopsy, usually used for getting inside bodies, not body BAGS) holding my breath as I opened it up. The smell rolled out like a wave and I felt it more than I smelt it; damp and hot, it stung the back of my throat and made my eyes water. But when it hit the small crowd behind me Lyle gagged and Suze's eyes snapped shut and Elliott's knees gave and he hurled.

It wasn't like we didn't know what would be in there, either. We had seen [REDACTED] more (as I said before) and had even said that we'd never do it again, but curiosity and something else seemed to drive us to peek inside every time.

Well, if this soup of flesh and bone shards and blood (SO MUCH BLOOD) was ever a person, it wasn't a person now. At least not one I could identify. But it wasn't like we had a whole lot of options: it was either Zach, Hayden, or somebody we didn't know or had gone missing and nobody had noticed.

Suze leaned over me, hands clamped over her nose. She was three shades too pale and five shades too green. "There." Her voice was a harsh whisper and it sounded like she was trying very, VERY hard to not cry. She pointed to something inside, her hands shaking. I might as well have been deemed 'the body guy' because I was the only one who dared touch the things. "There's something inside."

My eyes narrowed and I squinted, looking in the bag. What was she... ?

There was something red inside. Not blood red, cherry red. I reached inside for it, feeling the blood. It was cold. Congealing had already begun on the surface, and touching it made it wrinkle like soup skin. Elliott, who thought it was a good idea to look into the bag, saw its contents and spewed AGAIN.

I grabbed whatever the red thing was, noting that it felt like... fabric? It was thick and woven and stuck to something inside of the bag, and I ended up having to use both hands to pry it off, finding a buckle and finally pulling it out.

It was a collar.

Hayden's collar.

And don't you know, he squealed like a stuck pig on the first stab.

You could hear the movie-style *GASP* that rippled through the group.

Before I could examine it further Suze snatched it from my hands and squeezed it tightly, drawing the blood out of the fabric. It was obvious she was upset, biting her lip and holding that collar so tightly her knuckles turned white. Lyle gave her a look of almost pity, trying to offer her some words before she just shook her head.

"Clean it up." She said, her voice faltering. "We don't need a repeat of what happened with Stuart."

Strong words for the girl who couldn't stop the tears from falling from her cheek.

There was a long silence before anybody moved, and grief hung heavy in the camp. Everybody mourned the loss of another classmate, and it took Richard breaking the silence by barking orders to get everybody moving again.

It's been a few hours since then and my phone is fully charged, so I guess I can put Lyle's phone back on. If he wakes up and finds out his battery isn't more than half full I think he'll kill me, even if I lie and tell him there wasn't any sunlight to charge it with.

But yeah, that's what happened lately. Alex is usually the one who covers updates but he just wrote one so I guess I figured it was my turn. Plus I hadn't posted in a while and it feels awesome to write everything down.

- Chase

Wednesday 15 June 2011

On all the others out there

Hello again. As you can see, I only really seem to post after Lyle has an ...episode. Whether this is co-incidence or simply an interesting case of synchronicity, I can not currently tell. Regardless, the research continues.

This... "Slenderman". Have I heard of it before? Yes. Whispered on messages boards and reveled on youtube. But alas, the blogging comminity? I had no idea.

Regardless, Zach has left us quite the reading list. His history has proved... enlightening, to say the least. I now follow a few blogs myself; if anything, they provide some sort of entertainment.

God grant me distraction....

Yet all these blogs raise interesting points, or rather their comments raise an interesting metaphysical dilema. Today, we delve into Solipsism; our only continual existance within our own minds.

...and that's quite simple minded, is it not? Rather, there are three basic types of Solipsism; the world does not exist outside the mind of the philosopher, the world may or may not exist as nothing is certain outside of our own senses, and that our own thinking is the perfect framework for building upon our basic thought, as well that it is our outside relations that shape our veiw of the world.

Now, how does this apply to these blogs?

One: We are afraid of isolation, despite it's possible risks. Despite KNOWING that we do not know our observations are accurate, we are almost compelled to log them, reach out, and gain outside opinion.

Two: We continue to let others define us. Too often, these comments say more than the actual updates do (Here's looking at you, M.). Craving the imput, craving the understanding, we give too much power to people that we do not even know.

Three: We may not be able to control this. Our incredible situation has both it's benefits and it's disadvantages. Yes, there's an incredible community of theory and assistance, but what good is it when we can't be sure what is false? An excellent example of this was Reach and the Remnants; falsities, spread by our own hand.



We can only follow what is currently in our minds. Our senses lie, others lie, even our worlds lie to us. We are forced to use outdated and illogical methods to keep sane, but it is a neccesity that we are AWARE of this folly, and, moreover, ensure that we take the neccesary precautions, taking everything with a grain of salt.

It all comes down to one simple thing; trust. Are you going to trust these people? Are you going to trust the world you see? Are you going to trust your own self?

There is no clear answers, only more questions.

In the end, the only conclusion I could come to was that we all have to be more cautious with what we believe in, and what we deliberate, what we consider. We need to start thinking before we act, yet not let thought obstruct action. It's certainly a delicate balence, but if we all want to survive, it's one that we must manage.

....look at me, chattering off as if I actually matter. Tomorrow and tomorrow, there's really nothing more to say, although I wish I had more. It's been... a long day.

Hopefully more will be up later, explaining what... transpired today. Maybe someone else will have an idea. It's...

I can't even give the situation justice.

Because, to be honest? I'm not sure what we're dealing with.

Sleep well. I wish everyone out there the best.



...Sometimes, when you're out here, it really feels like you're the only person alive. I hope that doesn't actually turn out to be the case.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

To Whoever Managed To...

Hack into Zach's account?

I have no idea what you're trying to pull or achieve or... whatever. But congratulations. Because you know what? Suze flew out of her tent like a bat out of hell and started interrogating everyone and now everyone is more terrified than they already are. So well done, you fucking jackass.

And as for your little poem? I don't know how YOU fucking know this, but we have no choice but to wait. We can't seem to navigate the forest and now everyone is turning up dead-

But you would know about that, wouldn't you, Lyle? Isn't it downright easy to fool yourself? You know me, but I know YOU more. Because, you see, I'm watching. And waiting. While you try and save your own hide.

Then again, am I really one to talk?

You never found his body, did you?






//Collect// what you know

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down

long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.



The Waiting Place



…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come,

or a plane to go

or the mail to come,

or the rain to go

or the phone to ring,

or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a

Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.



Everyone is just waiting.



Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls,

or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls,

or



Another Chance.



Everyone is just waiting.


Too bad he'll never have the chance to //wait// for answers~

Monday 13 June 2011

Status Report

Bearer of Bad News, reporting.

It's late. Why am I up? Why am I posting?

Hayden's gone. Slipped right out from under our noses. During the meeting, we think. Or maybe after Richard ordered us all to go to sleep.

I have this horrible headache.


Nobody argued because nobody was willing to fight him. I think we were all too tired to care anyways.

Suze and Lyle were hiding something from us. Slenderman. I think that's what they called him? Lyle mentioned something about blogs and video series. It's too late for me to recall everything, but I'll do what I can.

I'm sure anybody reading this by now has either been scared away or knows what's going on.

Help us.


Please.


Lyle doesn't know how to talk to people and Suze is... well, Suze is helpful at least, but if anybody even dares to mention Zach's name it's like she's suddenly gotten blue screened, and has to sit down for a little bit.

She was one of five people to not completely flip out when Zach died, so it doesn't really surprise me that her facade of normalcy and perkiness is just that - a facade.

Not that that surprises me.

It's hard to surprise me right now.

Ughhhhhh it's like a thousand buzzing bees trying to occupy the space inside my skull


And here I go sounding like Elliott when I say you could tell me the world was flat and that Lyle was secretly a reptilliod from planet Zekrom 5 (wait, isn't that a pokemon?) and I would formally congratulate you on your amazing discovery.

After faceless men with tentacles, it's hard to be shaken.

Well, the good news is we've got a fairly comprehensive list of who to read and what to watch thanks to Lyle's knack for memorizing URLs.  Now if only our tech would stop bugging out we could maybe get some solid research done. What Suze and Lyle know might do us for now, it's not going to help us against... against... whateverthehellheis.

It's late. I should sleep. Or stay awake. Richard says we should be sleeping more. Suze concurs. Like either of them have the moral high ground. Both of them look like hell. Suze especially. She's cracking and won't admit it. Worse than her boyfriend was.

She's going to kill me for this when she wakes up.

Hayden's at least calmed down a bit...

... But it's been a long, long night.
The meeting explained a... lot to the others, but it was hard to multi-task with the whole Hayden situation being on the down-low.

Dear god. If anything could be described as a fortress.....

If anything, he's creative.

We figured that since he checks the blog religeously, if we posted a summary of the meeting, he'd calm down and....

Well, that was the plan.

What actually happened is that all our phones decided to have some sort of panic attack and get stage fright. Having our only source of communication cut off all night has REALLY not helped the psyche of most of us, but I digress.

With that option rendered... not an option, we were forced to move the meeting closer to Hayden's tent//fortress and speak IN VERY, VERY LOUD VOICES.

Here's to technology.

It seemed to work, though. Hayden's calmed down sufficiently for us all to stop worrying about him, uh, MURDERING US IN OUR SLEEP and everyone is up to speed now. Which means that Alex, Suze, Richard, Walter, Elliott, and I are very, VERY tired from keeping watch over him all night.

Needless to say, we've got our work cut out for us.

Alex'll be posting the summary of the meeting tonight, once we all get some rest. In the meantime, Richard has insisted on going on some kind of lack of sleep marathon and told the rest of us to get some shut-eye.

(And all of us are too afraid of him and/or exhausted to say anything)

Hopefully, the screaming will tone down a bit.

...

Doubtful.

Sunday 12 June 2011

No. NO NO NO NO.

You've...
No.
No no no.
NO.

Broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record

Shit shit shit
what do we do?
what do we do?
what do we doooooo?

Suze was in on it
Suze was in on it
Suze was in on it AND SHE DIDN'T TELL ME

I'm next
I'm next I'm next oh god I'm next I'M NEXT I'M NEXT I'M NEXT
Ahaha.
Not going to happen, Suze, see that? I'm not falling for your little tricks and obviously there is SOMETHING YOU ARE NOT TELLING ME

I'll wait, though. I'll wait and wait and wait and wait because that's all I can do because even though I've read I still don't understand and I have to understand

why you would do
this to me

.....to us.


Hayden

Guess the cat's out of the bag.

Oh sure, I'd love to spent my time curled up in my tent sobbing my fucking eyes out over the death of my boyfriend but you all seem to have that role well and truly filled.


What the hell was I supposed to do, Lyle? You know just as well as I did what could happen going into the forest, and when Zach started slipping all you could think about was how to cover your own ass.


Christ on a bike, I never thought I'd be the voice of reason in a situation like this.

As much as I would love to sit here and wail 'Oh, woe is us! We're trapped in a forest and we've seen the deaths of our classmates and now our beloved professor has vanished!' I'm well aware of the fact that we have much, much, much worse things to worry about.

Anybody who isn't painfully genre-blind will know what I'm talking about.

[REDACTED]

There's no point in playing dumb anymore because this has reached the point of pants on head retarded and nobody seems to be able to do anything anymore. It's been five days since ... well, you know and nobody except for about seven of us (god bless you all, you beacons of common fucking sense in this otherwise abysmal pit of genre-blind, angsty university students.)

Calm, Suze, caaaaalm.


Tempers are running short, obviously. What Alex is so cheekily calling Exploration #1 (in what I pray to god isn't a House of Leaves reference) isn't helping, and while Richard goes and menaces some trees Lyle is beside himself because he knows just as well as I do we're all well and thoroughly fucked.


...







Jesus rollerblading Christ.


I always pictured the worst-case scenario of this trip being our chargers dying and the poor, defenseless peroxide blondes being left without their precious facebook.

But that's a lie, isn't it?

One of them is a brunette.

What I didn't expect was this.



Fanfuckingtastic.

To be perfectly honest, I'd like to pretend I have absolutely no clue as to neither who Tall, Dark and Slender is nor to what he wants with us, but when it comes right down to it I don't see the point in pretending. After all, he's been given fifty delicious servings of University Student à la mode and has no intention of giving us back any time soon.

Or at all.

Zach was a huge fan of the mythos. He was completely fascinated by the v/blogs and the idea of a seemingly unstoppable, reality-warping, cough-inducing Eldritch Abomination. I myself was never a fan of horror, but the vlogs seemed interesting enough and some of the blogs are very, very good.

So I suppose you could say I know what we're dealing with.

...

Nope, can't even keep a straight a face.

So I suppose you could say I'm more knowledgeable than 95% of the people here.

So I guess not all hope is lost?

Yay?

[REDACTED]


... Alex was right. Being optimistic is hard.




Speaking of Alex, you and Richard need to gather as many people as you can and meet me at center camp in ten. It's my turn to go talk some common sense into the rest of the camp and inform them about what we're dealing with. Lyle knows and I think he's just as badly in denial as I was, but with the events of this afternoon he'd be downright stupid to not accept it.


Either way, it's going to be one helluva afternoon.

I've pretty much (Courtesy of the drafts Suze hasn't deleted)

Gotten the blog equivalent of a hat-trick right now, and it's making me feel pretty pumped.

So not much is new. Was going to post earlier but we had SCIENCE to be had, and by SCIENCE I mean that Suze and I buggered off to explore again. Irresponsible? Sure. Fun? UHYES. Lyle kinda followed us around the whole time at a distance, but is he wants to be a socially awkward creeper than good for him. I'm in no place to tell him otherwise, amirite?

So Suze, being the killjoy she is (PLEASEDON'THITME) headed back to camp, and I decided to catch up with my old friend Mr. Bradbury. Yes, I did finish, and yes, it was amazing. For some reason, he has a way of writing even the most outrageous bit with a matter of fact-ness that just kind of puts up a wall of willing suspension of dis-belief. God, you need talent to pull that off.

So It's no secret; you guys all saw in my last post that I am indeed an internet lurker, and the WORST KIND AT THAT. It's almost a good thing I can't go on TVTropes out here or else I would get less done than I do now, and that's quite an accomplishment. And since this blog seems to be less "everyone contributes" and more "let Zach rant to the internet so he doesn't rant to us", we have a lot to talk about, don't we?

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, get the FUCK out.)

First off. Probably tempting fate here, but the Slendercommunity has had some giant things happen. I was poking around twitter and saw HABIT's tweet (another thing I simply lurked about on. Go me!). I doubt the protest'll actually get noticed, but who knows? I get that everyone has lives and such, but it would be made of epic win and awesomesauce if you all managed to pull the protests on the same day; would probably make our favorite ALL-CAPS sadist very pleased.

Nothing much on the Marble Hornets front. We've got two Maskys running around (What's the plural of that? Maskies? Maski?) and everyone is freaking out and it's actually quite amusing. Totheark continues to make me not sleep at night so who the hell needs caffeine when you've got an essay due?

All is quiet on the Tribetwelve front, which is kind of depressing. Sure hope Noah is doing alright. Quiet spells usually don't mean good things.

In other news, MLAnderson0 has been called by some people to be promoted to the "Big Four" and I'm inclined to agree with them. Dear god is it filled with epic. And creepy. Go check it out if you already haven't. I'll wait.

....good? Alright then, onto the blogs!

Zero. Dear god, Zero. I feel for you, man. Sure, you've done a lot wrong and some people hate you for it, but I... understand. It's hard to be so terrified that you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Some people say you're long gone but I disagree. Welcome back.

Madiun, not sure what you're trying to achieve by naming new sages, but hey; whatever floats your boat. I look forward to #7. XD

Robert has vanished off the face of the freaking planet am I the only one that's worried about this? Whatever, it's Robert freaking Sagel. He'll be fine. (Assuming redlight isn't up to his old tricks again)

Sandra and crew? Seems like shit is going downhill and FAST. Jesus. Keep safe and best of luck.

Zeke. Dear god Zeke. I don;t think you need wishings of luck, you badass
.
Oh, and M is back and making troooooooouble. Totally kidding there. Nice to see you back and safe, man.


And a few other mentions: Glass, good to see that you're typing normally again, Messenger, the fuck?, Yggy (or Hellfire, don't know what you go by now), a the fuck? for you too, Hakurei Ryuu, good fucking luck, seems like you'll need it. Arkady. I kinda get why people don't like you, but you should really talk to Walter. Seems you two would get along.

Reach. We honor your memory, dude.

And there's a whole bunch of you that maybe eventually I'll comment on and I'm just really too shy. God I'm such a wuss.

Oh. And I was doing what I do best (lurking!) when I found a new blog detailing this person that seems to be Slender's... wife? Um? What? Not that it's badly written or anything, but if we're not careful we'll be back to gen one with all those superpowers flying around because of the Core Theory. Be cautious and tread carefully if you're going to start one of these, guys, or else you're just going to be a biiiiit annoying.

(Zachariah Lewis; the man with one foot behind the fourth wall and one foot in front of it.)

So yeup. Gonna go figure out what I'm making up for dinner, and will probably post after about the actual going-ons around camp, and maybe som'ore nerdom.

(SEE WHAT I DID THAR?)

I'm going to laugh when everyone looks at this post and has no idea what it means. Worst case scenario, Suze'll make me take it down. Hope I'm amusing enough that it stays up!

Oh, and guys? We're here for over a month and blogs are easy to read on our phones. Might as well get your daily dose of awesomehorror!

(SORRY IF I BORED YOU ALL TO TEARS.)

More to come. :D

Happy trails,
--Zach(ariah) lewis.

Exploration #1

After five days of cowering and nothing but bad news (The prof is gone. So is whoever went with him. As Suze says, this surprises nobody.) everybody in camp seems to finally have gotten it through their heads that staying out here is a momentously bad idea.

Lyle approached me this morning as I was working on getting our chargers set up again after the recent rainstorm had blown them halfway across camp. Waterproof? Yes. Windproof? Not so much. The recent rainstorm. It was early but most of us were awake; insomnia's drifted through camp like a plague and infected just about everybody.

"We need to get out of here."

Tell me something I don't know, Lyle. I continue to play with the wires and test the chargers, praying that we haven't lost them due to carelessness. If some of the insulation was stripped off of even one of the wires we'd take a major hit.

"Bri's gone."

Now that catches my attention.  "Another one, eh?" My eyes trailed along the camp boundary into the forests. Overcast skies meant there was no bright orange sun to paint the leaves golden, and everything just looked dull and gray. "Sure she's not just out taking photos?"

The glare he sends me is so sharp and incredulous it catches Elliott's attention behind me. It's clear Lyle is in no mood to argue, so he only reiterates.

"We need to get out of here."

The urgency in his tone is unsettling.

"The GPSs are broken and the compasses are all spinning." I states matter-of-factly, stifling a yawn. "We can't get back to the campgrounds with them." 

"We've got the trail," It's Elliott who speaks next, moving beside me and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. "It'll take longer than going directly but, hey, it'll lead us to the grounds."

I shake my head. "This forest is a maze of trails and cliffs and rivers and dead ends. It'll take us weeks."

It's Richard who comes in next. "Finally, some fucking IQ." He's got his butterfly knife and is letting is fall naturally from his hand. Everybody takes an instinctual step away. "And who said we had to get out of here on our first try, weatherman?"

I'm not even going to ask where he came up with that nickname.

It was about eight then, but I'm rather skeptical about trusting my phone's internal clock because it told me it was 00:30 when the sun was out and aforementioned rainstorm settled in. It's Lyle, Richard, Nick and myself who end up forming the party. Elliott convinces Nick to go in his stead and slinks back into camp, presumably to poke at the ashes of the fire and polish his guitar. 

He's going to kill me for that later.

Before we left Richard made a point to cut Xs into all of the large trees surrounding camp so that anybody who ventured outside would know when they were close. This seems to unnerve Lyle quite a bit but he refuses to tell us why. 

I have to admit, I wasn't exactly ecstatic. It wouldn't be the first time a group of people had gotten lost in the woods and ended up wandering in circles until they collapsed out of exhaustion, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

Well, luckily it only ended up being the former, and not the latter.

The trails were slick and more mud than anything and at least two of us took a tumble and twisted an ankle. Nick wouldn't stop complaining about his shoes getting dirty, which Richard took as a cue to tell him to kindly shut his fucking mouth and let the grown-ups do the talking and wave his butterfly knife around like it was a judge's gavel. He promptly shut his fucking mouth and let the grown-ups to do the talking and spent the rest of the trip in a mix of silent fear and shame.

Allow me to put this into perspective for you. Convincing Nicholas Day to be quiet is like convincing grass to cut itself; both physically impossible (as the grass lacks the intelligence to comprehend the command) and very, very stupid.

Richard Battle did it.

So with that little bit of insanity out of the way the rest of what I scarcely call an exploration was spent in scattered silence (or what passes for silence in the forest) before the coughing began.

Now, this has become a bit of a bad joke around camp. Anybody who spends time out in the forest gets this horrible cough that makes Lyle and Suze look at each other like death itself has just passed through the camp. What makes it worse is that Lyle seems to have it even more than Zach did, and even in camp he can't seem to shake it. The more time we spent out here the worse it gets and Chase says it's downright weird.

It's clear to Richard, Walter and I that they both know something but aren't about to admit it. The fact that they were both arguably the closest to Zach also seems a little too coincidental, but maybe it's too early to start pointing fingers.

But I digress. 

We've been walking for two hours. The trail has split and we decided to head east, (or what we think is east; it's next to impossible to tell with the sun covered and none of our compasses or GPSs working) away from the general direction of camp. Zach had told us that we'd reach a small river if we headed this way, where a bridge has long since been destroyed and nobody's bothered to build a new one - you have to cross on fallen logs. 

We didn't find the bridge.

We didn't find a river.

What did we find?

X's on trees.

And the smell of a campfire.

Lyle was shocked to silence. Nick took twenty steps back the way we came and couldn't see the fork, only where the trail disappeared beneath the forest canopy. There wasn't anything to suggest that the path would split and lead back to where we had set up, and checking the maps later told us that Zach was right; we should have hit a river and a bridge.

We had walked in a circle on a path that was a straight line.

Either we can't navigate for our lives or the space-time continuum is giving us one giant middle finger, and with everything that's happened lately I'm starting to believe it's the latter.

Nothing about this trip has been normal.

Why ship us across the country?

Why do none of us seem to have anything in common - academic or otherwise?

Why so far away from the campgrounds?

Why the blog?

And why is there a sickness that's clearly more than allergies, why haven't people been sleeping, why haven't those who have been screaming in their sleep, who followed Elliott in the forest, (because I know for a fact that Nick was at camp) and what the hell is going on?

I'm going to read through Zach's drafts and posts. Suze seemed very quick to delete a lot of what he was posting, but some of the stuff is still here. It's got to be more than coincidence that the two who were closest to Zach seem to be taking this the most seriously. 

Alex out.

Friday 10 June 2011

Sie alle wollten mich auf meine Arbeit Englisch

Aber scheiß drauf.
Wenn wir gehen, um in einem Wald mit einem Serienmörder zu sein, als werde ich nicht meine zeit verbringen sprechen in einer launguage ich kaum verstehen.

Adelheid. Deutsch Austauschschüler.

Die Vergangenheit folgt Ihnen.
Immer.

Comments.

Are back up again.

It took Bri and I a good hour of working around the HTML, (a block had been put in, and we can't seem to undo it) but judging by Lyle's post everything's fine now. I've got admin privs to mess with the coding should another problem crop up - worst comes to worst and we'll just throw up an easy CSS so we don't have to work around templates again.

I feel like nothing really interesting has happened since Zach's death (rest in peace, buddy) and most people seem to have calmed down... for the most part. I guess we won't be able to tell for a couple more days.

As Elliott's informed you, the prof hasn't come back. As Elliott went to moan to Lyle about later, no, we should not go after them, if they ended up dead what chance do we have? It's not exactly verbatim (the conversation involved quite a bit more swearing and glaring daggers before Walter stepped in and talked some sense into both of them.) but it's close enough, and the consensus seems to be que sera, sera.


Everybody has the same thought on their mind.

. . . And now the comments are down.

Fanfuckingtastic.

The professor hasn't come back yet.

Really, we should have seen this coming.

Class List

[REDACTED]

PROFESSOR: Williams, Stuart

Anderson, Joshua
Battles, Richard
Baur, Danielle
Blockridge, Jennifer
Broodmoor, Elliott
Campbell, Lily
Cash, Lindsey
Chambers, Serena
Cheng, Bryan
Church, Ian
Cunningham, Domenic
Day, Nicholas
Dearborne, Alexander
Ekkhardt, Adelheid
English, Laura
Fitzpatrick, Trent
Flynn, Brigitte
Fraiser, Adam
Freeman, Jonah
Gillespie. Garrett
Gilmore, Samantha
Harmon, Opal
Hart, Eva
Hayes, Stephanie
Holt, Annabelle
Hood, Craig
Houston, Chase
Kaufman, Olivia
Levine, William
Lewis, Zachariah
Lyons, Victor
McKenna, Erin
Mills, Jamie
Nieves, Chastity
Peterson, Robert
Pickett, Timothy
Pittman, Whitney
Reeves, Walter
Samson, Samantha
Smith, Dylan
Sosa, Catherine
Strangeworth, Lynn
Sullivan, Wallace
Trujillo, Micheal
Walker, Hayden
Walker, Suze
[REDACTED], Lyle
Whitney, Edward
Wright, Brianna



and one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one


they all fall down.

Thursday 9 June 2011

Double teaming

Because someone in this camp has to get everyone back on track, and it sure as hell won't be anyone else who does it.

Richard Battle here. Walter has already gotten some people back to work, but we still have one big problem.

In everyone's shock and grief, they seem to forget we're STILL HERE, in the FUCKING FOREST where it's REALLY EASY to KILL US.

You know.

Just saying.

Walter, who would normally wouldn't raise a hand to swat off a mosquito, managed to slap some sense into Victor. Victor, who nearly got into [REDACTED] on an athletic scholarship and is built like a fridge with a Chia pet on top. If you haven't gathered, Walter is about as built as a washboard.

Yet he had Victor on the ground, terrified.

Go Philosodude. Whatever floats your motherfucking boat, because today, I had to deal with the Lyle issue. Here's the lowdown; while most of us have stolen a few hours of sleep, he hasn't had any. In what looks like days, before, well...

you know.

And I...well.... I walked into camp after some scouting and Walter and I made some food, and handed it out. As per usual now, everyone ate in silence. And then I realized Suze wasn't there.

Now let's get something straight. Zach and I were pretty close, so Suze and I know each other well enough. And I'm pretty sure if I let his girlfriend get killed, well, he wouldn't be too happy with me.

So of course, I ask where she is, and then that little black haired fucker started to laugh. "Wandered off. If she's not going to be savvy enough to-" He was cut off then by me tackling him to the ground.

"What the hell, Lyle?" I was furious, 'course everyone was staring by now. "Does the saying 'keep everyone alive' mean anything to you, you fucking piece of shit?"

At this point it was when I noticed how bad he looked; bags under eyes, heavy lids, maniac grin that was faltering. Someone had to wake this kid up. He managed to pick himself up and started to brush himself off, and suddenly his hand flew instinctively to his face. A thin trail of blood ran down the ridge of his nose and I held up my butterfly knife (Illegal in over 5 provinces!).

"Zach was a hundred times the fighter I was, and I could've killed you easily right there. Now go get some sleep or else the fucking psycho won't get the fucking chance, y'hear me?" I gritted my teeth as I watched his face slowly fall as he realized I was right and Walter gently took him to a tent.

The rest of the students watched me, like they were hypnotized or something like that shit. "And YOU! Does having a serial killer stalk you take points off your FUCKING IQ?!? WHAT THE HELL IS WITH YOU ALL?!? GET IT TOGETHER!!!" And they all started to move, by god, albeit away from me.

...I didn't look behind me, did I?

At least camp is up and running again.

Suze turned out to be in her tent, but I'm almost glad that this happened, because I was talking to Walter later and he looked at me and asked

"Why?"

"Because they need something to hate, Walter. They need something with a name and a face that they can see and asses and plot against. Right now we've just got bodies and a whole lot of being afraid. So they hate me. So they think I'm...." I didn't even finish that thought. "It's alright. Because everyone who's dead would've wanted me to keep 'em alive, no matter what it took." And Walter just sort of looked at me for a while, but he really didn't have to say anything.

So that's what's going on right now. And I guess that's my introduction too, ohhh boy. I'm just making a great impression, aren't I? Fucking awesome. I'll do what I have to but I probably won't like it.

Maybe someone else'll post later, I don't know. I'm going to go stand watch (not that we ever see anything through this fucking forest).

Fight 'till the end,

Richard Battle


There's a whisper in the forest....

...and it's not the cool breeze we're all accostomed to feeling. Zach once mentioned uncontrollable shaking. I think we all know what he meant.


Because we've all been keeping secrets, haven't we?


Greetings. After seeing Lyle's spectacular... moment last night, I figured that at least one person has to post and let anyone reading this that rationality does exisit within the camp, it's simply scarce and an incredible rarity. Many of my fellow students have not moved since last night; they stare into where the fire burned and has now gone out.





Something has to be done about that. Excuse me for a second.








...Alright. At least they're tending the camp again. As harsh my methods, they remember that they're alive again. Once a human loses the will to live, are they truly a person anymore? Sure, they're human; but what consitutes a person in the first place? At one time, the general view was that souls (of which there was an assumed existance) was our substance, what made us, well, us. Though some still share this theory, I consider it... outdated. Our bodies our complex biological systems and some metaphysical object is, quite frankly, a cop out. Does that mean that the soul itself is the person, is the body and soul one unit, or is the soul simply something that is non-tangible? Difficult to say.

Then let us move on. The question of personal identity, which was first raised by Locke and later expanded on by Leibniz, seems fully trival in comparison to our whole soul issue. Consider this; if one takes, for example, a pencil and puts it behind their back, is it not the same pencil that you placed there? Argue as you will; the pencil is the pencil, no matter how many woodchucks have gotten to it. It's not that straightforward, is it?

It may be.

Yet we grow. We are not the "same" as we are when we are simple children. We grow and change. Does our status of personhood change as well? If a ship sails with a whole store of replacement parts, a replacement for every part on the ship, and over 100 days, you systematically replace every part, is it the same ship that you left on? We are the same; our cells are die and are replaced. Your blood cell that lived with you through your first kiss is long dead.

So who are we? What are we?

If I may.

Souls are foolish. They're intangible and invisible, but what if we considered the soul as, rather, memory? Rather, it is our experiences that shape who we are.

Those who have lost the will to live are throwing everything that makes you what you are. You give up your personhood the moment you give up.

I'm not going to let that happen.

Walter, philosopher, survivalist. Now, if you excuse me, I have to go talk some sense into the walking dead.

There seem to be a lot of people like that around here....