Three

Blair’s getting these scratches down hir face and arms. I don’t usually doubt much, when it comes to Fear movement, but freaking hell. If there was any skepticism about this being the Vision’s work there sure as hell isn’t anymore.

I don’t know how s/he’s even standing. I got a taste of what it’s like not to even get my regular four hours, thanks to what happened last night. I hate to admit it, but it’s my own fault, what happened. Blair got this idea, from this blog, that if we need to sleep we could stick by campgrounds, but since that dream, s/he’s looking for something similar, but an alternative.

So, when we got to the highway and saw smoke further out, I suggested we go. You could hear the noise from where we were, and that was almost a quarter mile away. Evidence said, bush party. People always get drunk, high, or both, and pass out at those things. They wouldn’t question it, if we showed up…and if they remembered us the next day, they’d just remember the horse. And, probably think they were so fucked out of their minds they imagined it.

I walked us right into danger, because apparently I’ve been so focused on thinking Curtis is going to kill us that I’ve forgotten not to be an idiot. There are other things to be wary of.

We got close enough to see all the bodies. We stopped a good distance away, because it looked like a slaughter, and Blair was like, “If they’re dead maybe whatever killed them is still around.” But it was worse than that.

We realized it because Curtis pointed out, they were moving in one giant mass, rutting against each other and covered in red. Some of them were definitely dead, but it sure as hell didn’t seem to stop the bleeders. And, in the middle of it all, this man. Buck naked in the pyre they’d built. I feel like a freaking amateur – I saw him, standing in the middle of a fire, apparently burning to death and though, “Maybe I should call the fire department.” Fuck, even when I didn’t KNOW, I wasn’t so fucking blonde.

He wasn’t burning. He was having a threesome. Ugh, not even ‘he’ – IT. It was in some kind of fucked-up…fuck it was so disgusting that it won’t stop replaying in my head. Screwing the fire and the smoke, with all his loyal little bleeders around him, and I should have figured. Ugh, if things had gone a little differently in the past, I could have been in that pile. It’s making me nauseous.

Blair thought quickest, s/he was up on the horse’s back before Curtis or I could really think, and urging us up too. They’d seen us, so we didn’t have a lot of time.

Curtis didn’t give me much of a chance to protest, he was already helping me up. And then he got this look. Normally, his expression is a little…vacant, but within that second it was like he knew exactly what he was doing.

He ran, and he was chillingly fast. Blair got Windmill to take off running.

The bleeders weren’t chasing us, but the Vessel was. This one had to have been really comfortable in its body, now, because I’ve only ever seen one move like that. He was nearly catching up, and we had to either kill it or slow it down.

Since there’s no killing one of those things, not if you’re human, that only left ‘slowing it down’ as an option, so I pried open the guitar case on Blair’s back, turned, and blasted the gun off in Its face.

The recoil sent me back against Blair, and if it hadn’t, I would have fallen off the horse. The Vessel’s face had been blown apart, leaving a hollow wound with flesh and bone hanging in the gap. It stopped and grabbed at the hole in its face, all panicked – vain fucker.

We kept running all night, set up camp by day after we found somewhere hidden enough. I won’t describe the place, obviously. We all took turns napping again, but I didn’t manage it much.

Bizarre freaking night, and now I’m even less sure of things than ever before.

Dispute Against Madness