Anyway

Some guys with guns came after us. They weren't Sgt. Pepper's. I don't know who the fuck they were.

We were closest to a port, so we ran there, found a houseboat, and Tara stole it.

We're still on the houseboat, though we've landed a few times. Never at a port, though. We'll have to ditch it soon, we've had some close encounters with the coast guard.

I'll be glad when I'm not sharing a tiny fucking bathroom with three other fucking girls.

And...I'll be honest. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing as far as relationships go. I mean fuck I don't even really think about people that way.

But she's kinda cool, I guess.

Jesus Christ what is wrong with me this is public.

Anyway, people trying to kill us.

I don't think they're trying to kill us.

I think they want us alive.

I think they want to know how we gave Smiley form.

Penny/Alison whatever won't talk about it. I know she's the one who was the most responsible, but she won't say. She says she doesn't remember but no one's fucking buying it, Ali.

Anyway I need to find a way to ditch this houseboat.

More later.

SO

I GUESS I'M DATING ANOTHER WOMAN NOW.

Get Boat

Have to make this quick. We're on the move.

After those biographical comments got added a group of people attacked us. Lots of them. Heavily armed. Not very professional, though.

Trying to find a way to scramble our location. Might be tracking us by our computers?

Also, apparently Tara can hotwire more than just cars. Currently traveling by illicit houseboat.

More later.

Just Another Day

Just a snippet of a conversation we had the other day at a diner.

Tara: Hey, Jeanette. You remember when your worst fear was that you'd end up pregnant in high school like your mom?

Me: *snort, laugh* Yeah. Remember when yours was that you wouldn't be accepted by the U of I?

Tara: Totally. What about you, Chels?

Chelsea: My worst fear used to be that my classmates would find out about me and they'd force me to change in the shower during gym or something.

Me: *chuckle* Penny?

Penny: *deadpan* My worst fear is a monster with a wide smile and penchant for flowers. Perhaps you've heard of him.

*awkward silence. Penny slowly grins.*

Chelsea: It's your job to ruin everything, isn't it, ******?

Penny: Well, I am an older sister.

The Fuck Did I Just Watch?

Okay, so. I just saw something really fucked up.

Chelsea and I were hanging out in our hotel room. Chelsea was channel surfing and I was cleaning the revolver and, like, half watching the screen.

Suddenly, she stops on this shitty as fuck looking puppet show, right? The star is this puppet that looks like it's made of other puppets or something? Like, with a doll head? And he's on this cheesy as fuck pirate ship with a face, and there's cheesy fucking calliope music playing the whole time. Chelsea kept it on because it looked, to quote her, "wonderfully godawful".

So, I'm cleaning my gun, and I'm glancing at the screen, and then I start to notice the pirate ship's in strangely familiar waters. The sea's full of cattails, water lilies, lotuses...aquatic plants and flowers as far as the eye can see. It got to the point where I couldn't even see the water anymore. Petals began to drift down from the sky from some unseen source. I think I heard the ship choking on some of the flowers, spitting them out as best it (she, maybe?) could.

I guess they got to shore--not that I could tell, since the flowers never stopped, because the puppet--who looked fucking terrified, by the way--was giving this dismal fucking stare down at the flowers, and then the pirate ship says, "You have. To go. Janice needs us."

The puppet, I swear to God, gulped, nodded, and jumped down, and fucking immediately, the background music cuts out and gets replaced by a constant rustling sound. He sunk to his fucking knees in water and flowers, and started slowly wading through them and this whole time a part of my brain is screaming at me that all of this is real fucking familiar.

"Holy shit. Why would they go to all the effort to make such a shitty looking puppet so amazingly expressive?" Chelsea said. I could tell she was starting to get a little unnerved by the whole thing.

The puppet slogged through the water and to the shore, and the whole time, he's looking around, glancing at everything, like he's afraid something's going to pop out and drag him under at any minute, and from the ripples and rustling all around him? He was probably right.

So he made it to shore and now he's walking through this endless field of flowers, with petals raining constantly from the sky, and he has a hand over his mouth and he's coughing and sneezing and I would've been thinking about how realistic this puppet show was if I hadn't instantly recognized where the puppet was.

They focused a really long time on the puppet stumbling through the fields. Like, absurdly fucking long, ten minutes at fucking least, if not longer, and the entire time, it was like there was something under the foliage, just out of sight, following him slowly and methodically.

Eventually, the puppet started coughing so hard he fell to his knees, and he started to bring this surgical mask out of his pocket when suddenly, there was someone in front of him.

I kid you fucking not.

It was the Smiling Man.

And not, like, a Smiley puppet, or a Smiley actor. The fucking Smiling Man and, at this point, Chelsea dropped the pretense of being anything but unsettled by this.

The puppet started freaking out. "Muh muh muh Mister Smiles! The Bird Man told me...."

Smiley handed him a mayflower. Its eyes...they were like black spots, like the TV couldn't process the feed it was getting from them.

"Janice. I need to find Janice. Have you..."

The Smiling Man handed him a blue rose. The puppet stared at with absolutely no comprehension.

"Please, sir! I know the Skin Taker was here! I need to..."

Smiley gave the puppet a handful of impatiens and asparagus blossoms.

"I...I'll go, if you don't know any--"

Smiley gave the puppet a human heart. Chelsea jumped.

The puppet fucking screamed and dropped it, falling into the tangle of flowers beneath him and backing away on his hands. Smiley slowly advanced on the puppet, its grin even wider than before.

"Oh please, Mr. Smiles, I didn't mean any insult! I just wanted to find Janice! P-please, don't..."

The Smiling Man handed the puppet one last flower. It was a rose. It was completely black, save for the flower, which was a solid white bud. The leaves had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only dangling, tendril-like veins hanging from the flower's sides.

"Y-yes sir. Yes, I understand." The puppet said, taking the flower and getting to his feet. The puppet was absolutely covered in this reddish brown mud and pollen and grass stains, and his hands were still covered in blood from the heart. He snatched the rose up and took off as fast as he could and then I guess the episode ended.

Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that? A children's show with the fucking Smiling Man on it? Shit, what the fuck else is on that fucking show?

Chelsea was pretty shaken up. I'm trying to calm her down. More if I can find out anything about that show.

Phone Call

Had a long talk with Gran today. She had some interesting things to say.

My Grandpa was a trucker, so my Grandma spent a lot of her early married life alone at home with the kids. Well, one day while the kids were at school, she was out doing some shopping when she ran into a young man who looked as though he had repeatedly been to hell and back. They got to talking somehow--I'm not sure she remembers exactly how anymore--and, well, he must have been pretty fucking handsome and charming because he went home with her, with all the connotations you'd think that has. I didn't ask for too many details. Brain needs enough bleach as it is.

So, afterwards, enjoying a cigarette or whatever the hell they were doing, the handsome traveler told her his whole goddamn life story. He talked about how the Shadow of Death had taken his whole family, how it had gone into them and slowly worn them out, little by little, its eyes on him the whole time. He said he was running from it, that he had been running from it for years now, and always managed to stay just one step ahead.

She thought he was crazy, at first, but the desperate look in his eyes, the conviction with which he told his story...I think it touched her. So when he ran, she kept in touch, and comforted him whenever he was near. Supposedly, Grandpa never found out, but I think I remember hearing from Mom that he was suspicious that she was cheating on him. I guess Gran never knew about that.

So, anyway, apparently she eventually saw proof of whatever that was chasing him--she refuses to tell me what kind of proof, exactly--and that's why she's helping me so much. Because she knows the sorts of things are out there.

Oh, and there's apparently about a fifty-fifty chance that this Runner was my actual grandfather. So, there's that.

Anyway, we're trying to figure out what to do next. Smiley's...unfocused at the moment. Not striking multiple times in any specific area. Its MO is the same, though--bouquet, stalking, torture, mutilation, blinding, heart-removal, etc. More if we get an idea of what to fucking do next.

I'm Surrounded By Nerds

Goddamnit girls.

Stop fucking talking about Pokemon.

On White Trash

As someone who was conceived when her parents were still in high school, I have some serious fucking qualms with how lower-income white Middle Americans are treated in the media. I mean, here's my background: my dad knocked my mom up when she was sixteen and he was eighteen. Rather than skip out, he manned the fuck up and married her, taking a factory job straight out of high school, and working it until he was laid off, at which point he started doing various jobs before landing a job as a mechanic at a nearby auto shop. My mom's been mostly stay at home her whole time as a mother, but every once in a while she's gotten a part time job at a gas station or a department store to help pay for the bills. Both my parents are decent, hard-working folk. They might not always be the most politically correct, but they raised me.

I know, that seems like a pretty fucking damning mark on their record, but fuck, I mean, I'm still fucking alive after all this supernatural bullshit.

The thing is, if I was in some movie, what do you think I would've been like? What do you think my parents would've been like? Thick, inexplicable Southern accent (mine's pretty standard Midwestern, only a little bit of a drawl)? Tramp stamp and visible thong? Substantially overweight, maybe? Maybe the town slut? Father with a new bottle of booze every night? Abusive parents? Maybe half a dozen kids?

Never'd be the hero. Almost certainly comic fucking relief, jokes about eating possums and fucking cousins. Maybe some abhorrent admirer for the hero to try to resist the wiles of while he seeks out Miss Perfect Cheerleader/Secretly Hot Nerd, depending on whether he's Mister Perfect Jock or Secretly Hot Nerd (Male Version).

My dad drinks, but not a lot. He's yelled a few times, but he's never done it abusively. Only ever took me over his knee when I was little, and even then not that often and only when I was being really fucking bad. He's a good man. Most media, you think my dad would've stuck around and raised me? Of course not, it's the modern motherfucking Midwestern fucking tableau, written by people who've never fucking seen the Midwest except from a fucking plane window. Fuck, in half the fucking shows out there I'd be a convenient fucking miscarriage, just a very special episode teaching little Becky not to put out without having to cross the fucking Abortion Rubicon.

I know some people fit the stereotypes, and yes, I know as a white girl I don't have it as bad as other people do, but still, I'd really like it for people at the gas station to stop fucking smirking at me when they hear that Midwestern twang. It gets really fucking tired to have to hide your accent when on the coasts just to avoid being fucking patronized. Shit, it even happened in Champaign half the time I spoke to one of those fuckwits from Chicago.

Anyway, rant over, for now.

Oh, by the way, the Secretly Hot Nerd was Tara. I guess in the High School Romantic Comedy Equation, that makes me the Jealous Protective Possibly Gay Best Friend.

God, Penny and Chelsea are going to have a fucking field day with this post.

Queens' Run

You know what I miss? When I wasn't on the run from a secret organization.

Those were the days.

Fuck, where do I even start?

So, if you didn't know, me, Pete, and his brother Jimmy were all trying to find a way to get the two of them together. Jimmy and Pete both agreed this was probably the best option. Pete gets out of our hair, and also, maybe some fucking help. I know his organization isn't the most trustworthy but it's better than letting him run around on his fucking own.

So they decide to meet us at the same old amusement park the Manufactured Newborn was unleashed in. Yeah, that was a great fucking idea on everyone's fucking part.

We all got there, and everything was going fine. Better than fine. In fact, it looked like we'd hand off Peter and we'd be on our way and everything'd be fine and fucking dandy.

So of course that's when Peter's other side took over.

The agents weren't there yet, but they would be soon. Pete said he wanted to say goodbye to Tara. I didn't want her to, and I don't think she wanted to, but she stepped forward, and then Pete had his arm around her neck and was using her as a human shield.

My revolver was already pointed at him, but I didn't trust the shot. Not with one eye. Not with my best friend in his grip.

I asked him what he fucking wanted. He said he wanted not to be there when the agents sent to pick him up got there. He said he was sorry he had to grab Tara for this.

I told him to go fuck himself. He replied that he really didn't want to hurt Tara but he would if he had to. He was slowly backing towards an alley.

Penny was telling me to take the shot the entire time. I never did. When he reached the alley, I kid you fucking not, he blew us a kiss, pushed Tara forward, and ducked down it. By the time I reached the alley, he was gone.

So, basically, I fucked up. I should have killed him when I had the chance. But what else is fucking new? I'm basically fucking worthless anyway. A fucking blind girl could do my job--a fucking blind girl HAS done my job.

But enough fucking self pity. Because right after that, almost the exact fucking second after that, the fucking Lonely Hearts Club Band Agents show up, and, oh yeah, they were fucking armed, faster than they looked, and they looked pretty fucking fit. And they were also pretty fucking pissed that we'd lost Peter Rivers.

We lost a few of them by telling them where Peter had started to run, but it was clear that they still weren't that happy, so I distracted them while everyone else absconded the fuck out of there.

And by distracted I mean with bullets.

Yeah, in hindsight I probably shouldn't've shot at them, but it was really just a matter of fucking time before we pissed off Sergeant Pepper's, and I'm pretty sure I didn't shoot anyone fataly.

Pretty sure.

That makes me sound more badass than I was. The reason I'm pretty fucking sure is that I spent a lot of my time shooting over my shoulder and hoping not to get fucking shot. Jesus fucking Christ, it's like everyone in that fucking agency only drinks fucking Powerthirst.

We wandered around the amusement park for a while. And by 'we', I mean I wandered for a while, looking for the others, trying to stay away from those freaks in Sergeant Pepper's.

It's a creepy fucking place. I bet Penny could say something more fucking poetic about it but, yeah, turns out? Rusted out amusement parks where a dark machinery god was born? Really fucking creepy.

We had a few close calls, but we met up at the parking lot...where they had our shitty car on lockdown. I'm pretty sure weird shit happened to the other girls, but they don't want to fucking talk about it, of course.

Anyway, we needed a way out but couldn't really think of one, until Tara suggested we steal the caretaker's car. To which I sarcastically asked if she knew how to hotwire a car.

So, funny story. Turns out, when Tara insists she's been preparing for this life? Turns out she really has been. Long story short, she actually can hotwire a car. So that's pretty fucking rad.

There was a fucking lackluster car chase (not even one fucking fruit cart got hit!), but now, long story short, we're on the road again, possibly now being chased by a nebulous organization. Oh fucking joy.

Penny doesn't think we'll keep their interest very long. I'm not so sure.

But what I'm curious about is...why didn't Pete do worse to us? He probably could have. I mean, if he really does have fucking fear powers or something, he could have grabbed the gun or knife from me? Fuck, he probably could've done that without powers, considering how fucking glacial my fucking draw was.

Fuck, he could've snapped Tara's neck pretty fucking easily before he escaped. She wasn't even really bruised. Why the fuck not? Not that I'm complaining, since it turns out she's a master fucking thief. Also my best friend, but yeah, that hotwiring thing is really fucking cool.

Anyway, we're on the road and under the radar again. I think I might have found a couple Smiley sightings. For now, the four of us are going to investigate together.

Hopefully, we'll have better luck.