Nobody Cares.

[Vespyr]

VIII.25.09

So, we finally got away from that blasted city. Things were getting a bit sketchy with the police and such, and that cannibal, and that other male who tried to attack me... So Fleesh and I headed south until we hit Long Beach. We didn't have the city in mind before we set out, but Fleesh and I are tired of travelling and we like it here. There are lots of stray kitties to make friends with here and many dark places to sleep. We approve.
But it still sucks.

The first thing I will do is find a place to stay. The police do not take kindly to the homeless here; We have seen a few of the scraggly old looking ones picked up and driven off to who knows where... I do not want that to happen to Fleesh and I. No, we must not be noticed. But we do not worry too much; we are good at such things. Several places I have seen already look like a good place to hide out. There are plenty of dark alleys like my old home atop and aside the cafe. But less cluttered and more tucked away... And no one has the nerve to set foot there, not even the gangs. Their faces are hard but their hearts are human and soft. They still fear the dark. We do not. We live by its ways.

Fleesh is many months old now and he knows to obey. When I am quiet, he is quiet. When I am still, he is still. Where I go, he follows for he has outgrown my cozy jacket pocket. But he still curls up inside against my chest at night to be near and safe. He even brings meals home sometimes, for he is an adequate hunter. No crap-mush din-dins for Fleesh; he is a real feline, a real predator. His one eye is keen and his claw is sharp and quick. We make an excellent team.

[Vespyr]

VIII.30.09

This week has been.. hectic, to say the least...

There really is no other way of explaining. I'm in a deep state of confusion right now... There's just too much going on in my head to make sense of any of it. I thought I was going to die, but here I am, perfectly fine... but he's not here.

That bastard.

I hate him... I don't understand him, and I don't understand myself when I'm around him. Within the mere few days that I knew him, I felt allured to him... he was mysterious... different from the rest of the stinking scum who walk the streets. He came out of nowhere, scooped me up, and threw me into a pit of madness. I feel so stupid for beginning to trust him at all-- when we sat on his rooftop, I felt like I could finally just accept that I didn't feel the same way as I did to everyone else... but then he tried to kill me. That fucking asshole... I still don't understand why he did it, but I don't care. All that matters is that he's probably dead, or at least far away from me.

I never want to see him again.

Fleesh seems to feel differently, though, but that's only because he's young and impressionable. Before long he will learn to hate like I do. Fleesh is the only one in the world I will ever care for. So let it be known, masked murderer... You won't be sneaking your way into my heart ever again.

You are dead to me.

[Vespyr]

Okay so, the week wasn't a total loss... Upon my roaming the city in utter depressed boredom, I stumbled across a humble-yet adequate- place to stay. By the looks of it, Fleesh and I won't be homeless again until the city cleans up its act and renovates the rundown parts of its filthy system... Which we all know will be never.

To my delight, our new home is distant from the venturing grounds of society. Its appearance says mopingly that its been abandoned, dejected, and forgotten for years. Which is a little eerie, since its located right in the heart of Long Beach... its amazing what treasures you can find if you know where to look-- which is lucky for us because everyone seems to walk about with their eyes closed. Ignorant pigs. I'll be bothered by them no longer.

The place? An abandoned fast food restaurant, by the looks of it. Tucked away behind overgrown trees, there is a road leading to it from the main street, but that's gated, locked, and rigged viciously with barbed wire. Even I wouldn't bother jumping it. However, I had continued my stroll with lightly dashed hopes to pass by a sidewalk that led off perpendicular to the street, down some stairs and around a corner. Curious, I followed the path to find that it split off at the top of a large and barren bank, each way leading to a different parking garage. One was dirty and seldom occupied; the other was fenced off and entirely empty. Guess which one I decided to explore? Yeah, predictable I know.

The interior of the vast concrete building was astonishing... graffiti covered the walls like one huge faded mural, and rusted empty spraypaint cans littered the floor like empty shells on a little-visited beach. The ground was covered in an inch (totally not exaggerating..) of soot, dust, and debris. I stepped carefully through it, my footprints the only visible trace of life in the shadowy dungeon. I ventured to the opposite side after what seemed like a trek across a wide desert, coming to a solitary staircase, light shining down from somewhere above, giving it a very grand look. Like a distant beacon of lost time. I climbed up, only to find myself surrounded by the sunlight again. (Don't ask why I was awake during the day... Its a long story...)

But there, welcoming, lonely, and now accessible, was the restaurant.

Welcome home, Vespyr.

So I went inside of course.. the place is a dream. The water still works, for one thing.. There's no electricity but that's just fine, who needs it anyway? I hauled a matress from the parking garage (all sorts of useful things in there..) to use as a bed. Things are quite comfortable...

But I'm still tormented on the inside. Fleesh is good company but I can't help longing for... Nevermind.

Dead and gone.

Cruel and decieted and dead and gone.

[Vespyr]

IX.7.09

The summer is coming to a close and the nights are no longer sweltering, and there is a guest in my home... I honestly don't know what's gotten into me but I have actually come to enjoy his company. A first. I never enjoy company. I hate people. But this one is tolerable enough.

We'll see...

Fleesh, by the way, is growing steadily more independant as the days go by. He comes and goes every once and awhile, disappearing for a day or two only to return with that big feline grin of his and stay with me for another week or so. I've just got to accept the fact that he won't be my little precious kit for always. I know he'll never leave forever, but I do get lonely while he's away doing who-knows-what... But as much as I hate to see him go it does amuse me. What a guy.

[Vespyr]

XI.23.09

Something about the incessant beauty of sunsets always catches the affections of my heart, no matter how many times i've gazed at them. I wish i could hold forever in my hand the splendor of the twilight, to cherish it in my palm and look upon it whenever i wished. Though, there is something grand about its treasure being so out of reach, so rare.

Nevertheless, i began to paint. My hands clothed in vibrant fuschias and indigos, i mimicked as best i could the radiance of the dusk onto the blank white walls. It took me ages, blending the smooth hues together from the ceiling to the floor, until the mural itself seemed to bathe the room in its glow. After this i slept, curled beneath the ever-dying sun.

When i woke, it was near sunrise... so i returned to my room and closed the door behind, letting the darkness envelop me. There is something comforting about this enclosed space and the absence of light that i can hardly comprehend, for i know nothing more of it than the feeling that i could stay here forever. There's no need for haste or worry, no narrow track in which my thoughts travel... No, the darkness has infinite routes in which my mind wanders. I get lost in its labyrinth, entangled among the roots, deeper, darker, resting in silence. Home.

Too much time on my hands. I've been... distracted. I must make a plan, something to aspire to. Blow up a building, maybe? We'll see.

[Vespyr]

I.12.10

He's gone again. Something tells me it's forever this time; my intuitions have been leading me rightly for my entire life and now... They're telling me softly that it's time to let go.

So i loosen my grip on the hand that's been pushing and pulling me along, and let him fade into the shadows of the deepest, darkest, forgotten crevices of my memory.

The cold draft of remorse has come and gone already. That wind blowing through my heart died down before it had even the chance to howl and chill my tears. There were no tears this time, for i have none left. There is nothing inside of me anymore, just like before any of this ever happened. I could very well have imagined the whole thing.

I unfold my hand and let the wilted rose fall into the darkness as all of the memories turn to dust and drift away into the abyss. The proof is all gone now; my wounds have long since healed.

He never existed at all.

[Vespyr]

II.23.10

Sometimes i wonder—when i’m alone and my cigarette is dying—is this it? Is this really all there is to life? Life seems so complicated when i’m caught up with everyday business, but at moments like this i can’t help but feel jaded and foolish because life is simpler than it seems. When i have time to myself, i get a feeling that something is missing—i should be doing something, shouldn’t i? Sometimes, however, i catch myself mid-thought before i busy myself with something needless just to eat up idle time, and i stop. I do nothing at all, and i just think. Sometimes i don’t even think and i just let the ever-spinning gears in my mind whir slowly and rest at an eerily silent halt. I get the discomforting feeling that there really isn’t much glamour to life—there’s never as much purpose in something as there is made out to be; that’s why i’m not at a loss by letting the time pass without productivity.

In a broader sense, i wonder if i’ll always feel this way, and can answer myself concisely—yes. I will always feel this way because life, in all its pointlessness and faux grandeur, will always be this way. The timeline in which we exist simply has no finale, yet the the world seem content with working their lives away in preparation for it… but i don’t want to. I know that this life, or time, or whatever is the undefineable thing that we drift through aimlessly, is endless, shapeless, and pointless. An ongoing reaction without a product, it might as well not exist at all.

[Vespyr]

VII.11.10

...and i thought life was confusing back then.

[Vespyr]

VIII.19.10

Gilbert.

He first caught my eye when i saw him exiting the mortuary, a swordstick tucked under his arm, pulling on black leather gloves. His face—the angular nose, the domed forehead, the lips that curved downward in a contemplative frown—was so intently focused on pulling taut the leather between his bony fingers. He turned onto the sidewalk, keeping the swordstick neatly between his arm and torso, walking with an impatient, long-legged gait. He was the type of person you take a second glance at; not because he was good-looking or handsome, but because he was dark and awkward-looking, and emitted the striking sort of aura that made you wonder that he was up to. And as I watched him moving toward me, my eyes pacing from his neatly combed, straw-coloured hair down to his spotless black leather shoes, I was curious.

He passed by the tree where I was perched without noticing me, and I watched him until he disappeared around the corner before jumping down to follow. He seemed to be in a hurry, but it wasn’t difficult to keep up with him. I kept my eyes on his high, bony shoulders as he rounded another corner; this time, into one of the shady backstreets that ran between the buildings. I couldn’t help but smile; I knew the streets in the area well, and anyone who ventured into those backstreets was up to no good. I doubted that that he was merely taking a shortcut home from work. From the corner of the alleyway, I observed the thin figure standing in front of a dumpster. After making sure he was alone, he pushed the dumpster aside, revealing a door against the brick wall of the alley. He unlocked it, and went inside.

Like a shadow, I followed him in—and to my surprise, I found a vast, dark, and nearly empty warehouse. I waited in the doorway, grinning at what I saw.

The stranger, at the far end of the warehouse, was standing over something—a chair. In the chair was a skeleton, its rotted hands still bound to the rungs. The skull, awkwardly tilted with a gaping jaw, seemed to stare at me from across the room. I stared back with a growing excitement in my chest. His black leather gloved hands were reaching down toward the skull. Fingers deposited themselves in the eye sockets and lifted the grotesque thing from it body, holding it as if he were about to re-enact a scene from the play Hamlet. There was a moment of deadly quiet in which he seemed to gaze at it in contemplation. Then, a most malicious peal of giddy laughter pierced the silence—and the stranger hurled the cranium to the floor, shattering it. The swordstick was withdrawn from its place beneath his arm, and while shrieking with maniacal laughter, he began to prod the remaining skeleton until it fell to pieces.

Once he was satisfied, he cleared his throat, pulled taut his gloves, and tucked the swordstick beneath his arm once more. Upon turning to leave, he saw me and froze in his tracks—so I smiled at him. After a moment, as I had still not run away, he walked briskly toward me, withdrawing the long dagger from his swordstick and holding it out in a threatening manner. Even at a distance, I could see the burning fear and rage in his eyes, His eyes, the colour of dried blood.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Admiring your work… or, what I would assume to be your work,” I answered, withdrawing a knife from the pocket of my trench coat. It was old, and stained with blood. I displayed it to him for a moment before dropping it to the floor between us.

“Don’t worry. We’re the same.”

He stopped, glancing down at the knife, then back to me, the dagger still unwavering and aimed at my throat. The silence in the warehouse was so empty that it was like I could hear the cogs ticking inside his head—his head that was like mine, operating differently, for a different purpose. A darker purpose. After several moments, he lowered the dagger and replaced it in the swordstick, regarding me coldly with his blood-coloured eyes.

And that’s how I met Gilbert Pike.

[Vespyr]

XI.7.10

It’s too dark to see anything in that shaft in the parking garage. When a lit match is dropped in, some strange draft of air snuffs it out before anything can be seen. I managed to pry the heavy grate off to get a better look, but there was nothing more to see but the same black void. It’s a strange phenomenon, but I feel as if there’s something down there. I always feel it listening when I’m walking about upstairs.

Sometimes in the night I hear strange sounds coming from the garage, from that shaft. Strange, sharp noises that echo, almost like the dragging of a knife across the ground. It comes from the depths of the shaft then grows distant, but I can still hear the chilling echo of it even now. This presence, whatever it is, is persistent, but not invasive. It’s my own curiosity getting the better of me that keeps me leaning over the gaping mouth of it, staring down at a nothingness that seems to stare back.

[/blockquote]

[Vespyr]

XI.14.10

I’m not sure what inspired me to do it at first, but now that I’ve begun, I don’t see an end to it. The task itself is enthralling—reaping the warmth of life with a shining blade, steaming blood flowing beneath my hands on these cold nights. Then I carry my spoils home, and the most fulfilling part of the process follows.

I had said before that I sensed a strange presence in the shaft; this thing, whatever it may be, still lurks down there and I have heard it. After the first night I was sure; I heard, somewhere in the darkness, the slick lapping of a long tongue after I emptied the pail of blood into the shaft. That night and the next, the garage was silent, seemingly satisfied. On the third night after, though, the sounds began again; razor-sharp scraping of metal on cold ground and what I can only describe as the metallic clicking of claws, or teeth, or both. That night, I emptied another body of its blood and once again fed the darkness. I could hear, faintly, the eerie licking sound down below, as if some monstrous dog or cat were slaking its sanguinary thirst on the fresh offering.

That was two nights ago, and I have yet to hear any noise come from the garage this evening. Perhaps whatever is lurking down there is satiated for now, but its presence lingers here and in my mind. I can feel it—it is silent and listening, even as I write this.

[Vespyr]

II.17.11

It’s back.

I don’t know how many months it’s been since I last knew the thing was down there, but I’m as sure now as ever that it is still lurking somewhere in the cavernous maze beneath this building. It was shocking, I must admit, for me to come to this realization the way that I did. How am I suddenly so sure that it still exists?

I saw its physical form today for the first time. Or part of it, at least.

Just as I was leaving the garage, at two in the morning—the moon was full, and its glow was creeping in, casting a dim silver light upon the walls—I heard a strange but familiar, metallic scraping sound behind me and whirled around in time to see a lithe shadow disappear into the shaft room. I darted after it, obviously, thinking at first it might be human so I should kill it. However, there was a great scuffling and a metal clang, and as the distance of the garage was quite vast, whatever was there moments before was now vanished. The vision of the shadow crossed my mind again, and I shivered, hearing again that metallic scraping echo in the depths of the shaft. The shadow was far from human—too large, too slender, too… alien. In the brief second it was there against the wall, I could depict the latter half of some strange animal, built even more lithely than a greyhound. There was a tail, quite long, at the end of which was something flat and pointed—but that was all I had seen, and arguably even less once the wild calculations of my mind had been subtracted.

I still wonder where it had gone to, but wherever, it’s back and it’s here now. Yes, here, right now. I feel a presence outside my door that isn’t human; I can always tell with humans—they emanate fear like a foul odour. Even when they think they aren’t afraid, I can smell their stench and hear the beating of their hearts. But no, there is no one outside my door. There is something.


And I feel eyes on me when I sleep.

[Vespyr]

II.19.11

4:17 AM.

I am awakened by the clanging of something metal downstairs in the garage. Instantly my mind creates the frightful image of that thing, whatever it is, crawling out of the shaft, knocking over the grate—silence follows. Then steadily, a faint sound reaches my ears; with a shiver I recognize it as the clicking of claws on pavement. I can hear its pace change as it bounds up the stairs of the garage, and then slows again—it’s on the upper level now. It’s getting nearer. I’m wondering if I locked the door. Can it get through doors?

As if an answer to my question, the ominous sound is clearly inside my building now—I can almost see those lithe and deformed limbs trotting across the floor. What the fuck is that thing? Its claws must be huge, they make so much noise. But the sound has stopped. It’s outside my door now.

It stayed for about 45 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I couldn’t move—frozen where I was, sitting up straight with my eyes fixed on the door. I tried to see through that door, straining my eyes, my heart beating madly. The cold blood pulsing through my veins made me feel heavy, like a stone. I desperately wanted to go back to sleep but that thing outside the door wouldn’t let me—I could feel its presence like a stifling heat and I began to get angry. Why was it just sitting there? What did it want? I could hear, faintly, its shallow raspy breath, almost like purring—I imagined its eyes fixed on the exact point on the door that I was staring at. I imagined it starting at me through the door.

Finally the eerie clicking sound started again and faded away; I followed the sound it back down the stairs and through the garage until it was almost inaudible, and then the whole ordeal was over with a clumsy scuffling as it crawled back into the shaft. I collapsed back onto the mattress and fell asleep immediately—but in my dreams there was only darkness and all I could hear were its damned claws scraping against the inside of my skull.

[Vespyr]

II.27.11

To 6.9 billion bodies the human population swells; fresh ones flood in day by day as the old ones barely begin to decay. Billions of breathing, sweating, talking, moving bodies—they shout and shove and scramble over each other in an attempt to grasp something, though they’re not sure what. They crowd the hallways and streets with their careless footsteps and their stench. They pack themselves into schools, shopping centers, office buildings, and airplanes (yes, they even manage to crowd the skies). Masses of their buildings have buried Earth and created an uncomfortable new landscape overflowing with bodies, all blocking each others’ way as they scamper in circles and wait in lines. 6.9 billion bodies are excreting waste and noise, polluting the Earth with their presence and taking up space that no longer exists. Soon they have no choice but to claw their way upward or share a bed with the dead.

6.9 billion voices are all speaking at once; it is an inescapable roar that dominates the world and slays silence wherever it can be found. They talk but don’t listen; hear but don’t understand. Instead they plug their ears and fill their heads with more noise as a temporary escape from the constant yelling and screaming that grows ever louder because not one voice can be heard. Every one of the voices is trying to sell you something; a message, a product, a soul; but they can no longer rely on the voice alone. Adverts and information are stuffed into the ears and the eye sockets by endless forms of media in this modern age and there is not a place in their world where some form of solicitation does not exist.

...More on that later. I heard something.

I think the thing is on its way here now. It's been coming every night for the past week or so, but my door is always closed and I haven't seen it. But this time... when it arrives, it will find the door has been left open.

I am waiting.

[Vespyr]

I swear if I die tonight I won't look back at all.

Now it's running up the stairs, what th