bend me break me anyway you need me

We meet up with Jeanette and Alison tomorrow.


I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I see them.  I've been talking with Tara about it a lot.  And sometimes I ask Ten for her opinion, which annoys her, so I do that some more, because I have to get the younger sibling instinct satisfied somehow.


I've missed them.  I love them both (not in the same way obviously).  I want them both to be happy...and I'm not sure which of us would make Jeanette happier.  And I'm not sure Penny wants to be happy.  And a jealous part of me doesn't care if Penny is happy or not.  Jeanette's the only person I've been with that...that gets me, you know?   And she's so cool.  And amazing. And really, really hot.


And now she has both crazy Balisong sisters nipping at her...I was going to say "skirts" but I don't think I've ever seen Jeanette wearing something that isn't a pair of black jeans.


I guess the mature thing to do would be to talk to them about this rather than venting to the public, but eh, that takes too much work, emotionally.


I guess I just don't know where it goes from here, you know?  Penny's being all Doomsayer on us...and she's probably right.  I just...what do you do with the knowledge that one or more of your friends is absolutely going to die?  Especially since...the way Penny's been talking...I'm pretty sure at least one of them will be one of the two two people I care about most in the world.


And then she drops the "I love you" bomb.


What do people do in this situation?  I try to think of  something, but I keep getting sad and frustrated.


Maybe there isn't something for me to do.  But I can't think like that.  Maybe Jeanette and Penny can, but I...


There has to be something I can do.


-Alice

Not Much Time

Paramilitary goons are looking for us.  We don't have a whole lot of time, so I'll make this brief.

Penny's with me.  She's preparing a transcript of me finding her.  She insists I don't just fucking tell you, because she likes her transcripts.  Whatever.  It doesn't matter.

I'll say two things before I shut down this laptop and we get the fuck out of here:  One, the others found Tara, and we're working on a rendezvous, preferably somewhere neutral where Ace's goons won't find us.

Two, the thing that came out of King?

We're going to have to kill it.

No Word From Jeanette

I could sign on here with my own gmail account, but I'm waaay too lazy for something like that.


This is Alice.  We're in California.  It looks like Tara was here, but from what I can gather, we just missed her.  She seems to have been lucid, so I sent her an email.


I'm a little worried about Jeanette, though.  She hasn't gotten back to us yet.  Last we heard from her was a text that said she had found Penny.  She was going to talk to her and...that was like sixteen hours ago.  I'm worried.  Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm fretting and kind of freaking out.  I just got her back...I don't want to lose her again.  I'm not sure I could take losing her again.

On The Right Track

I'm in St. Louis.  The other two are on their way.  They'll be in LA tomorrow.

No sign of Penny, or Alison.  Whatever the fuck you want to call her.  But she sent me an email.

"you're on the right track (it's a train pun.  GET IT?)
i'll be there tomorrow
steal me a cheeseburger and some bourbon
and meet me at the dumb mall train station thing"

So I'll try that Union Station place tomorrow.  Guess I should steal those things because I'm a fucking delivery service now.

Penny

Penny left this.  In theory.

No fucking clue if it's actually her.

I hope it is.  I really fucking do.  Alice does too, but she's jumping at the possibility a bit too eagerly.  I think she'd run directly into hell if there was a chance this was her sister.

Alice think that the what Penny meant was, Tara is, or will be, near her old house, where her parents live.  It's where Penny's eyes got burned out.  I think I agree with Alice--that's pretty much what she'd consider her beginning, the morbid fucking bitch.

I miss her.

Which is why I'm going to find her.  She said "a station heading west".  Not much to go on.  But if I had to guess, I'd say she's in St. Louis, the "gateway to the west".  If she's not, then I'll start there and head west and hit as many train stations as I can.

Alice and Ten are going to LA to find Tara.  I don't fucking care if they don't want to split up, if there's a trap, I want both of them together.  I can handle a trap on my own.

We head out tomorrow.  As soon as we fucking can.

We'll find them.  We'll get back together.

I fucking promise that.

The Things With Dead Eyes That Used To Be Men

Fuck.

Don't even know where to fucking begin here.  This is some fucked up shit.  Maybe this sort of thing is like, fucking preschool stuff to some of you out there, but I've only been really dealing with Smiley, never many of the others, not fucking directly.

I didn't really believe Alice at first, because it sounded like a pretty tall fucking tale, but Ten corroborates, and I've fucking seen them with my own fucking eyes, so listen up.  And if any of this sounds familiar with anyone, let me know.  I'd like to know what I'm fucking dealing with.  And what the fuck it did with Tara and Alison.

I'd just met up with Ten and Alice.  It was a bit after I punched Ten in the face on principle.  We were out looking for somewhere to get food and maybe get some ice for Ten's face.

Alice was the first one to see it, maybe because she's been the one to see them more.  Still feel pretty fucking careless not spotting it first, though.  Fucking monocular vision.  She saw someone being dragged into an alley.    Ten didn't want to get involved but, fuck it, what's the point of being a goth cowboy if you don't go fucking vigilante once in a fucking while?

She told me to be careful, but I told her I knew what I was doing.  Then I looked down the alley and realized no, I really fucking didn't.

I'm going to say here that it was like a zombie, and I know the first fucking thing that will come to your mind is a Romero zombie.  This wasn't like that.  They're more like voodoo zombies.  They're living and mindless and focused on the task in front of them. This one grabbed a guy and was dragging him, hand over his mouth, somewhere down the alley.

Another thing?  It looked like it was...absorbing the color around it, I guess you could say.  It was all grey and washed out, and I could see that in some places, the guy it was holding was like that too.  Like if Rainbow Brite had a fucking voodoo priest in her Rogues Gallery or something.

I don't know what it was going to do next.  I didn't give it fucking time.  I sprinted up to the fucker with my knife out--to big major a street to risk the Anaconda--and jabbed it right in the bastard's throat.  Grey blood gushed from it, but it kept hauling the guy back.  Like I'd just barely fucking tapped it.

I still didn't want to use the Colt, so I grabbed a loose brick from the alley floor and smashed it down on the zombie...thing's head.  I did that a couple of times, enough that I saw its skull cave in.  It just fucking let me hit it, too.  Didn't even pause dragging the guy back.

I was about to just shoot the fucker when it slowed and stopped, and then loosened its grip and fell back.  The guy it had scurried away as fast as he could and took off screaming.  Ten, Alice, and I had to get away fast, so we couldn't investigate the body.

What we think happened is, it doesn't need the brain to work.  It's programmed, like a fucking computer.  Only thing that killed it in the end was blood loss, because it just really fucking needs the limbs and lungs to work, and it took way too much of that before it started fucking slowing.

My suggestion?  You see these things, go for the heart.  Stop the blood flow altogether.  If I'm right that'll fucking down them faster than anything.

Wish I knew what the fuck they were, or where the fuck they came from.  Best guess?  Whatever the fuck was in King's head has made them.  I don't know more.

All Alice and I remember is that we were sitting with Tara, and Alison was in the other room, talking to King, in this old warehouse we were squatting in.  Then I heard Alison call out something, and then I heard a loud BANG, and then Alice woke up alone in the warehouse a few days later and I woke up in a fucking cornfield months later.

Ten remembers coming to look for us.  She also, seeing the transcript, can sort of recall seeing something but she doesn't remember what.  According to her, she was in the group to see if whatever the fuck Alison knew could be used as a weapon again the Major Arcana (fuck now I'm consistently calling them that).  Knight was there to help his brother, and from talking with King, he was there mostly because Knight was making him.  Ten says she doesn't know any of the specifics on what was in King's head, only that Knight occasionally let slip that it wasn't...a stable entity.  Like maybe it was broken or something?  If the Major Arcana can even break--though I guess the Chariot (Dying Man.  Why do I keep using her terms?) is proof that they might not be immutable.

It's Ace that makes me nervous right now, though.  Not even Ten knew what his deal was, exactly, or how he had that paramilitary group under his command.  She's not even sure his soldiers knew--different squads had different fucking stories about why they were where they were and doing what they were.

Who he is doesn't make me nearly as nervous as the other question:  where the fuck is he now, and what is he doing with all those soldiers?

For that matter, what happened to the, like, fucking dozen of soldiers that tried to capture us?  Are they turning up at random around the country too?  Or around the world?  What if Tara fucking shows up in the middle of fucking North Korea?  What is Alison appears in the fucking jungle?

I really need to find them soon.  I hope whoever posted that fucking clue is Alison or Tara.  But if they are...why haven't they contacted us?

i learned to bribe, i learned to say please

Oh my god you guys.


Jeanette just punched Ten in the snout to establish superiority.


It was seriously incredible.