DECEMBER JANE

December: Diary of Jane

Ann noticed something off with me when I got home a few days ago, but as I noted before, I wouldn't be telling anyone about It.

For breakfast, I grabbed a can of soup from the break room cabinet and found a spare bowl to microwave it in. The soup was beef stew, which wasn't awful, but it wasn't ice cream either. To be fair, nothing is going to taste any good in my mouth after what just happened. However, I can't be 100% mad, because It was making me question how the electric and plumbing systems in here worked-- and where the hell the police were-- and why the city was still supplying utilities to an essentially unknown region on planet Earth.

I threw the old bowl into a sink that was now piled full of them and walked to my room. The clothes I laid out the night before were on top of my dresser. I stared at them. My stomach twisted in ways I didn't like.

It didn't matter what that thing was. It was time to go back.

I took painfully long to put everything on to stall time, and in my bag, I grabbed more ammo pellets from my small cabinet. My gun was loaded and everything I had was packed. I sighed and looked into a cracked compact mirror that lay propped on my dresser. The face of some crooked ghost that became of me stared back. I was unrecognizable. I shook my head. Wasting no more time, I sped out of my room.

Once again, I walked down the corridor, where the somehow functioning lights barely lived and flickered down the large expanse of the hall. The stairwell was the same, and so was the lobby. Nothing looked new, but everything felt different. Nothing was really the same now.

I thought about everything on the way back to my spot. I remember Smiles talking about cults and shit. Maybe I could bring this whole thing up and make his silly little occult-club secret seem anti-climatic, or make me seem psychotic, which is not something I'd want to risk now. Not that he wasn't any worse.

Nothing could explain it, but whatever. I should just pay attention to my surroundings.

When I got to my spot, however, these thoughts didn't stop bugging me. I tried to walk to the highway, maybe to clear my head and explore, but they still ate away at me. I walked back to my original spot. It was hopeless. So hopeless, it was, that I didn't get to do a lick of work or blueprinting. I opened my book to a blank page and stared. I got the idea that who better to tell any of this than myself? My journal may retire for a page or two from my scribbled-out plans and sporadic equations poorly written on the edges.

Let's start over from square one, I thought.

I wrote what I could. I drew what I had seen. My hand scribbled It, the pages, and even a small map on the third page; it was rough, but I used the parts of my metal hand cage to measure some proportions. Sucked in entirely for hours, I forgot I was even writing at all. Like I was most of the time when working, I temporarily disappeared from reality. I was gone.

The sound of crunching forest ground violently brought me back to my senses.

I was up on my feet the moment I sensed it. I dropped everything and held myself firm.

It was back. It was here.

But when my attention spun around, I saw a figure some distance from me. The hair was the same familiar fluff from a month or so ago. It was that random chick I ran into while I was here. She was waltzing slowly further into the woods. Something nagged at me, a thought telling me that I needed to move toward her.

In light steps over the dead vegetation, I trotted toward her, hiding behind the trees. When I was closer, I realized why her gait was slowed. I did the same. Her attention was totally engulfed in a page on a tree, no more than a meter away from her now.

I stumbled from the trees that covered me.

"STOP!"

Violently shaken, she spun around and looked at me. Her eyes were wide from fear. She tried to make noises, maybe form words, but her jaw twitched pathetically to no avail.

I sprinted at her and grabbed her by the shoulders. She was tense, no shit. But I had to get it through.

"Don't touch those," I urged.

"Y-you're that girl... that girl from..." she tried to speak.

"I don't care if you trust me or not," I interrupted. "You cannot take those. Don't look at them, don't touch them, don't take them, and for the love of God do not look at the tall man."

She squirmed, and to her struggle I released her. She stumbled back and shook her head. "Who do you think you are?!"

At this point, it finally occurred to me that I may have severely screwed up.

"Okay, I'm sorry, ay," I begged. "That was not very nice of me."

"You now realize that?!"

"Listen, I saved your damn life."

"It's a piece of litter! You're being nothin' but nonsense!"

"That litter is demonic and I was almost murdered last time I grabbed myself a few."

She blinked profusely. "How could you possibly justify that?"

"I can't. Not without throwing you to It."

Something set into her face. Maybe she knew something.

"Why do you phrase it like that?" she asked.
"Like what?"

"The way you said 'it'."

"Do you want me to describe It?" I laughed. "Hell no."

She shook her head, then brushed herself off. "Listen, I think you might want to take my offer for Keystone," she said. "Sounds like you need a visit next weekend."

I looked at the page that was next to us, a few steps away from my grip. This time, the writing wasn't just a warning. It was a name. Jane. It sent chills down my spine. That could've been a victim for all I knew.

In a moment's decision, I slipped my coat off my shoulders. I waved my hand for her to leave. She stepped back.

"I'll see you then," I said. "Let me get some chores done first."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

I stopped towards the page and traced the edge with my finger.

"I'll see you Sunday."

The page ripped from the bark.