Post #29: The Panopticon

Very rarely does anything irritate me, most of the times I tend to block out any distracting thoughts because I am simply too busy with my research. However, if that research is at any point compromised or hindered, that is when I allow myself the occasional feeling of displeasure and in this case it is going to be a written one.

As you may recall, I had finally created a vaccine for the Azoth which manifests within our bodies after we come into contact with Longus Homo and had successfully administered it to a "hollowed" test subject. It seemed to work resulting in the subject's memory loss, wiping it's memory of it's interaction with Longus Homo completely, I say that with confidence because the next step in my research was to keep tabs on the subject, to see if the vaccine may develop some negative side-effects, or if it had worked at all. During my observations the Subject was trying to make their way back home, which is something they wouldn't do if they had remembered what was the reason for them not being at said home to begin with. Over the course of a month I was observing the subject's way back home (The means of said observatory methods I will not divulge), when suddenly their progress was interrupted by unknown people wearing some very expensive equipment, they pulled up in their van and abducted the test subject, making me lose track of them and in the process hindering my research.

However, as annoyed I am at the situation, the implications of this abduction were more severe. What this abduction meant, was that I had finally blipped on their radar and my existence had become very known to them. In this case I figured it would be a good idea to finally reveal a few pieces of information that I had withheld over the course of this blog.

You might not recall how I had begun my research into developing the Vaccine, but it all started here, back when I talked about infiltrating an organization's HQ and acquiring the finger from which I extracted the anti-Azothic properties for the Vaccine. Of course they would attempt to track and pursue me, but unfortunately for them I've refrained myself, or Hannah from revealing anything about the "nature" of our hiding place and I was able to evade them quite effectively. Few years later I would infiltrate one of their bases yet again, this time in search of equipment, all of which was hidden within a loop, this is where I ended up running into a returning Kelevra, from whom they stole his Azothic companion. It was fairly easy to stay off the radar this time, because all their eyes were probably on Kelevra, since out of the two of us he is a far greater danger.

Since then I've tried to talk in relative vagueness when referring to them, trying my best to continue to stay off the radar on their end. I have learned a long time ago, the less you talk about someone, the less they are likely to show up on your doorstep, but I guess that doesn't always work, since this abduction indicated that they were yet again trying to track my movements. In fact, now that I think about it, they might have been trying to track me all along and were just waiting in silence for me to make some kind of breakthrough in my research, where they failed.

Considering all of that, I feel that it is only fair that I introduce them to you, or rather re-introduce since they've been around for quite some time.

The Panopticon started out as a think tank of various corporations and organizations aimed at the extermination of Longus Homo, or at the very least, that's what a lot of their newly employed were told/thought, in reality some version of The Panopticon dates back a long time, to such an extent that I am not aware of the exact year as to when this organization took shape, or even if it was always called "The Panopticon". I am aware that their first documented sighting on the blogs was around 2012, when one of their employees Jack Castel started a blog titled "Don't Let Them Tell Us Stories". Within that blog they ran into a few other bloggers which documented their activities and their methodologies, bloggers like: ProxieHunter and Adam Krug.

What was their methodology exactly? Fairly simple, they reasoned that the best way to battle Longus Homo is to essentially convince people that the entity didn't exist, very clearly following the "Tulpa Effect" principle, also I believe this was an off-shoot off of Jay's research conducted and documented within "Anomalous Data", within which Jay's research led him to using Kainic Acid via injection to the hippocampus, the goal was to cause amnesia within the test subjects making them forget everything about Longus Homo and essentially free them from the creature's hauntings. I personally denounce Jay's research in both it's ineffectiveness and danger levels, but I can not judge, to some extent I even admire Jay and his research, he was arguably the first one to try and find some kind of answers, it's too bad that he happened upon all of this during the early outbreak, there was very little information at that time to go on, nobody was aware of Azoth at that point in time, as well as many other details we are familiar with today.

My guess is that The Panopticon saw this and shifted the research in a different direction, if forgetting wasn't working, then disbelief had to be the key, discredit the monster as nothing more than a hallucination of a delusional mind and it may cease to exist. Their main way of achieving said goal was via abduction, they would abduct people that were running away for their lives and would torture them for months, they would fabricate evidence which they would then present to the abductee's, trying to convince, or rather condition them to believe that everything that had transpired in the abductee's life was logically explainable and in actuality, didn't happen. Such was the case when they abducted ProxieHunter who recounted the experience on his blog: "Other than that they tried tactics similar to those they used on Adam to convince me that my wife had died not at the hands of a Slenderproxie but a simple home invasion. Doctored footage, edited copies of police reports that claim to show no evidence of the scene I recall finding... There was talk of my "psychosis" providing an unanticipated line of mental defense against their program. One of them was talking about moving on to drug enhanced methods or "engaging in the use of other physical stimuli" which I think is scientist for torture." -ProxieHunter (I'm Free) I'm certain you understand the gist of it.

Eventually their activities had seemingly ceased, I am certain that it was due to how much attention they had received after being featured on a few blogs, can't exactly conduct unethical experiments if people are looking. However, prior to their disappearance and my memory loss, I had apparently taken an interest in them and made it a point to keep track of their activities as they went into hiding, it is these documentations that I had conducted prior to my memory loss that had led me to finding out about them housing the source for my Vaccine. Apparently their research was shifting gears yet again, seeing as the two previous methods had failed, a while back Morningstar had asked me what their goal was in the comments of this post, I tried to obfuscate their goal despite knowing full well what the end result of their current research was, as I said, attention is something they don't want and me providing an answer would instantly put me on their radar which I couldn't afford to do.

Apparently it was all for naught as I've stated earlier, so I see no reason to hide their intentions any further. The purpose of their current research, the reason as to why they are carrying out experiments on various servants that they abduct, the reason for their theft of Kelevra's Azothic counterpart and the reason that they are seemingly working on an Azoth vaccine much like myself, is because they are trying to eliminate Longus Homo, by creating a creature of their own that they can control.

As you might guess, a lot of people wouldn't mind having a seemingly mystical weapon at their disposal, so I would assume that the funding is quite generous from various companies, government bodies and individuals.

We'll be laying low for the foreseeable future, if they were able to track me before, they will definitely be trying to track me down now.

Post #28: Alternate Liquids - Antiazoth Pt. 4 (Final)

Much to Hannah's dismay, it was yet again one of those times to shut down all of the equipment and lay low, I might go over the reasons at a later time, since for now I want to finally finish off this project I undertook several years ago and bring this fourparter to a conclusion.

In the previous post I've talked about the vaccine for the Azoth that clumps up in our bodies whenever we're exposed to Longus Homo's presence, being seemingly capable of eliminating it's presence within us without any lasting effects. Of course that was practice on just strands of liquids, all under a microscope, the question now was how would my vaccine fair in an actual human body.

It took me a while to find a perfect test subject, there's many of them in the wild out there regardless of how many of them think they are laying low. However trying to force an experimental vaccine on either a runner or a proxy most likely wouldn't go so well, considering the inherent trust issues and paranoia that both tend to exhibit, for obvious reasons.

So the ideal candidate would have to be a catatonic one, or as people on the blogs have taken to calling them: "The Hollowed". For those unfamiliar with the term, The Hollowed are people who's minds seem to be in a permanent catatonic state, despite that their bodies continue to move, undertaking specific tasks as if receiving orders from an unknown to us source. Hannah used to be one that I used when I needed to carry out my experiments on Azoth's Electrical Conduction properties, so the practice is not an unfamiliar one.

I was able to find my target in an abandoned train yard, a hooded figure, about the size of a teenager, standing in the middle of the abandoned train tracks, not moving, seemingly waiting for something. It wasn't hard to get a drop on them and inject them with the vaccine, applying it to the back of their neck, but avoiding the cervical spine entirely, I wasn't about to perform something as precise as an Epidural Injection, not whilst the recipient of the vaccine was busy thrashing around in my grip, an injection near the back of the neck would have to do considering that Azoth tends to begin it's invasion of the human body from the nervous system.

As soon as I finished injecting the vaccine into my test subject, his thrashing began to transform into violent shaking, a convulsion. I set the test subject down on the ground and ran off into one of the nearby abandoned wagons, observing from a distance in case there were more Proxies prowling around. The convulsion lasted for around 5 minutes, during the process the subject seemed to begin foaming at the mouth, so far everything pointed to a seizure attack. This process lasted for around 15-20 minutes, during that time the subject would begin to make it's first noises, grunts of pain to be more precise.

Then suddenly the body seized and went limp, looked like the test subject passed away. However, never to be sure I gave it 30 minutes, during my wait I tried to see from the distance if the body was breathing, or not, but it was too dark and I was too far away to tell. Once the time ran out, I was about to start walking towards the subject's body in order to take a blood and saliva sample to see what exactly occurred, but to my pleasant surprise I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sudden eruption of violent coughs from the very much alive Test Subject.

The coughs lasted about 3 minutes after which the Subject would turns itself on it's side and begin to vomit out a lot of black substance. this lasted for around 40 minutes, at some point the regular vomiting turned into unsuspecting vomiting as I could hear the test subject begin to question where it was, but instantly being interrupted by a wave of black liquid violently erupting out of it's mouth. Eventually the test subject got up to it's feet, leaning against one of the abandoned wagons, no doubt trying to collect it's thoughts and itself in general.

The subject seemed to have no idea of where it was, how it got there, or even what year it was. It did remember it's name and where it last was before it's assumed abduction.

The test subject would begin to slowly and limply try and finds it's way out of the abandoned train yard and into the civilization. I followed it, but not before getting myself a sample of the black liquid that it vomited out. Reason for my pursuit of the subject after the experiment is that the train yard was surrounded by a forest, not far from the highway but still, it was dense enough. I kept an eye on the subject up until it got to the highway and was picked up by a truck driver and given a lift, I wanted to make sure the subject to made it's way to some kind of a safe spot, because I'm planning on keeping tabs on it, to see if any side effects of the vaccine begin to rear their head.

While it was convulsing I searched the subject for any identifying documents on it and it had an ID card on itself, so I know the subject's name, where it was born, where it used to live, making the process of keeping tabs on it much easier.

If there are any side effects that begin to appear, I will re-open this post chain and proceed to update it just like I have for this entire time. However, for now, this post chain is on lockdown, at this point all I have left to do is wait.

Might go over the collected vomit sample at a later date.

Post #27: Alternate Liquids - Antiazoth Pt. 3

A breakthrough, after years of trying to work on this, what was seemingly at the time a little project of mine, has turned into a nearly 5 year long endeavour to synthesize a "vaccine" of sorts, to allow the human body to fend itself of the Alternate Liquid intake that tends to happen when we come into contact with "Longus Homo" (Or "Slenderman" as it is more widely known).

Let's cover some of the basics first to refresh the memory:
1. I manage to get my hands on a blood sample from a shadowy organization.
2. Said blood sample contains within itself a unique set of white blood cells which are capable of fending off Azoth.
3. The end result ends up killing Azoth but also all the necessary antibodies along with it, leaving the human body more vulnerable to other infections.

So the purpose of experimentation up until this point was to find a way to somehow protect the antibodies from dying off after successfully fending off Azoth, to leave the human body intact with a perfectly functioning immune system.

Thanks to Kelevra's generous donation, the water from the "Moriturum's" ("Dying Man's") domain, which exhibited extraordinary, healing properties.

Examining the water under the microscope, it didn't at all appear to be different from the regular water that we consume in our day-to-day lives. However, when combined with the Anti-Azothic blood sample, the changes were instantaneous and obvious, specifically to the blood's white cells. The water seemed to accelerate the activity of the cells, matching it to that of the activity of the Neutrophils which essentially acts as "first responders" of the immune system. By nature Neutrophils are usually the first of the White Blood Cells to detect harm to the immune system and are first to engage said form of harm, meaning that they are significantly "faster" than the rest of the cells. If none of you know, Neutrophils usually consist 55 -80% of a person's white blood cells, acting as the first line of defence against viruses and bacteria, the remaining white cells (Monocytes, Lymphocytes, Basophils and Eosinophils) act as a form of "back-up" or "clean-up", as a result of which they are usually far "slower" or "delayed" in their activity, mainly because they must allow the Neutrophils to fight off whatever might be endangering the immune system first. However, when I added the water, the result was the other white cells match their activity speed to Neutrophils (Neutrophils remained unchanged).

Now regular water intake is important, because it helps the human body to produce Lymph which in turn is responsible for circulating the white blood cells and nutrients across the body, allowing the cells to travel to all of the body's tissues. The water from the river however, seems to not only do that, but also seemingly increase the speed at which the cells travel through the body.

Naturally, the next step was to pit the Anti-Azothic blood, which has been infused with the water, against Azoth itself. In my previous test, the blood seemed to eliminate the Azoth, but at the cost of the White Cells themselves, this time however the outcome was different. Right off the bat, the engagement was different, whereas before, when Azoth was introduced it was the first one to engage the White Cells, this time it seemed like the White Cells were the first ones to attack Azoth, safe to assume this is due to the fact that Cell activity was increased because of the River Water. Second big difference was the fact that the Cells were not absorbing the Azoth like last time, this time they were outright dissipating it, again this is most likely due to the fact that the River Water increased the speed of activity within the rest of the White Cells allowing the Monocytes to help break down the Azoth and Lymphocytes create the necessary antibodies, at greater speed.

As a result of the White Cells no longer needing to absorb Azoth to eliminate it, the White Cells remained instead of dying out along with the Azoth. This is an important finding, a first step in creating a vaccine of sorts for the infections that our bodies suffer when coming in contact with one of those creatures.

The next step is live subject testing.

Post #26: Interesting Anomaly #02 - Book of the Blind.

It seems that my meeting with Kelevra has already been made public, indeed Kelevra did reach out to me when he was stunted on figuring out how to read the book that he acquired from the Blind Man's domain. I of course declined said meeting, my own research on the development of Anti-Azoth was far too important, I was not willing to put the research off for any deviations, however, in order to entice me into the meeting Kelevra offered a bargain: I help him out with the book and in return he will give me a jar of water, which he acquired from the Dying Man's river. Remembering that the water was capable of healing even the most severe of injuries, I determined for myself that it was a valuable asset to have at my disposal, not only for the purposes of studying, but potentially to help me make progress with the development of Anti-Azoth (Still deciding on a better name).

I gave Kelevra a date, time and the address of the research centre that I would need, telling him not to path in there before, or after the agreed upon time and date, he had to path in at exactly the agreed upon time, otherwise I would not show up. Luckily for me, him and his colleagues seemed to have followed the instructions quite closely.

I've been to this facility many times before, so I knew my way around. I discovered this place during one of my experiments, the experiment was about trying to determine how various nucleus areas can transport one who wanders into them, to the domain of the creatures that many of us are hunted by. However, I failed to take the necessary precautions and was transported to their domain, it wasn't a big issue though, mainly because I'm really good at determining where the exits usually are, the problem with that however is I had no control on where exactly I would exit and so, a happy accident occurred and I exited on the outskirts of this facility. I swiped one of the access cards many years ago, hence why I can access the facility with little effort, same wasn't true for Kelevra and his colleagues, so it was very fortunate that me and Hannah stumbled upon them, before they could trigger the alarms.

I believe both Malik and Hannah did a decent enough job explaining where we all ended up after meeting up.

Now, some might say that it wasn't a particularly smart idea to shoo Hannah away with Malik and Franky on guard duty, effectively leaving me alone with Kelevra, an individual that isn't exactly regarded for his honesty, however, if he were to betray our agreement, I doubt Hannah would be able to do much, in fact, her being outside gave her a head start if anything were to happen, luckily nothing happened.

Kelevra took out both the jar with the water from the Dying Man's River and the book he acquired from The Blind Man's Catacombs: "Let's science, Spooky Man!" he exclaimed with excitement.

Ignoring the nickname I immediately started analysing the book, which wasn't exactly in the most pristine condition. The blank, red, half-scratched hardcover was barely holding together due to the falling apart spine of the book, the smell was "earthly" best I can put it, the pages are all of the dark-ish yellow colour, all of them blank, just like Kelevra described. Well except for the one blood filled page, I'm assuming that's the one Kelevra smeared his blood all over in hopes that, that would somehow do something: "You claimed that you are certain that there's more to this book." I enquired, mainly because, again, other than the poor condition of the book, there was nothing to it, it was blank, none of the pages had anything written on them, or etched into them and it was definitely not in brail.

He sat down on the opposite side of the desk: "I am, it may look blank to you and me, but my darling is telling me that there's actually something within it."

I knew it was probably a poor choice of words on his end, but that sentence did give me an idea on where to start. If we couldn't determine if there was anything actually written on those pages, or not, then we could try to determine what those pages consisted of. With Kelevra's permission, I cut off a small piece of the paper and placed it under a microscope, now if I were to place a regular piece of paper under a microscope, I would see a network of plant fibres that have been laid down to form a flat sheet. But with the paper from this book, I wasn't presented with a network of plant fibres, I was presented with... fly ash particles.

What does that mean? Well it means that the pages within this book were all made out of black fly ash, which is something you get when you burn coal. Now, this isn't that much of an alien concept, but it is also not the most common one considering that the Chinese Professor Zhang Meiyun only in 2009 proposed the idea of using Fly Ash as the key component in paper production, what's weirder is that the the suggestion turned into reality only a year ago, what is weird about that you may ask? Well, the fact that this book looked like it was put together long before 2009, long before the idea of even using fly ash to produce paper was a theory, this book predates the practice. Meaning that whoever put this book together were way ahead of their time, this revelation made me slightly amused, mainly because this was a sign of our science finally closing some kind of gap between us and the "supernatural"!

Sorry, moving away from the tangent, this revelation might seem like nothing special, a sentiment echoed by Kelevra's unenthusiastic: "So what?" Funny thing about research, any new revelation raises more questions, questions demand speculation, speculation leads to action, action results in further questions, it's kind of a never-ending web of questions that will untangle after you ask all of them and get to the core. Knowing that the pages were made out of fly ash particles, meant that these pages were at some point part of coal, what does coal do? Burn. Now coal ash on it's own (Which is a combination of fly ash and bottom ash) is toxic enough to pose a health issue for many who work in the coal-oriented industries, so burning a small piece of a page, consisting purely out of fly ash, which came from a book that was acquired from a Alternate Creature (In this case the Blind Man) would probably be a bad idea without the proper precautions.

Luckily we were in the right room, respirator masks and goggles were plentiful. Putting the small piece of paper in a tray, I began to burn it, it didn't burn for long considering it was just a small piece of the page, nothing was out of the ordinary about the burning process itself, it just burned up, emitted a bit of smoke and that's it. However, when I began to approach the burnt paper Kelevra tried to follow, but immediately stumbled and almost fell, if it weren't for a table next to him, that he grabbed onto to maintain his balance. At first I thought it was him just being clumsy, but once I glanced at him, slightly hunched over, standing still, holding his bandaged head with one of his hands, it was clear that this was more than a mere stumble.

I eagerly approached him, asking him if it was something from the burning, how could it possibly effect him if he was wearing the mask and the goggles, what did he experience and etc. I didn't get any answers to those questions, he just looked up at me, with a wild smile on his face, quietly proclaiming: "I saw him doc..." After which he suddenly grabbed me by my shoulders, I instantly braced myself for whatever violent act he was going to enact upon me, but instead all I received was an excited shake, with Kelevra, seemingly back to full energy proclaiming happily: "You did it doc!" I tried to ask what is it exactly that I "did", but he would cut me off, stating: "No time! I got what I needed, so I'm taking the book now, as promised you can keep the water." To say that I wasn't frustrated at the lack of answers I was getting would be a lie, however, as excited and interested as I was about learning what is it exactly that I "did", ultimately that wasn't why I was there, I was there for the water and so, deciding not to push my luck any further, I simply took my reward and we parted ways.

I have been researching the water since my return, I will publish my findings in my next post.

Silent Period 2: The Silenting

 So yeah, as you can see here, I finally got to meet Malik, Franky... and the asshole.

When G informed me that we were going to be meeting them in order to exchange information for some "goods", I was extremely opposed to the idea. No shit, right? I don't want to meet up with a corpse fucker, who makes love to weird ooze that flows through his body. G was all too willing to go on his own and leave me behind, and I definitely gave it a lot of thought, but in the end I decided that it was best to accompany him, there's two main reasons for that.

One: We're a team, DUH!

Two: Due to my amnesia, I don't ever remember encountering any of the scary things we write about in these blogs, generally I have been entirely blocked off from the rest of the world thanks to G. Sure, on occasion I got to go on grocery runs, but in the end I always had to come back to our hiding spot within the time limit that G provides me with. I could disobey him and run off, it's not like he is keeping me captive, but I'm pretty sure that would be an awful idea. While I believe him, there has always been this lingering doubt about all of this being real, so this was my chance to finally confirm that all of this is true, meeting up with people who are just as stuck in this predicament as me and G are.

Obviously I can't disclose our means of travel, but let's just say we were where we were supposed to be in a flash. Now, I have no idea how G knew of this research centre out in the middle of nowhere, or how he even had the card that would let him in, but it's G, a man who never takes off his mask (No joke), I could probably write a book about what I don't know about him.

We were on the research facilities grounds, had to sneak through a few security guards to get to the back entrance. As we rounded the corner, that's when we bumped into Malik and the asshole, who was all too ready to blow everyone's cover by trying to break and enter. Luckily G intervened and just opened up the door by using his card I mentioned earlier, from there we just had to sneak a bit further to the second floor, find the correct room that G needed and that's it. The entire time G and The Asshole were constantly talking about the book, Malik was just quiet, just like Franky. I gotta say here, seeing them in person for the first time was weird, I'll save my comment about The Asshole, mainly because I suspect he'd enjoy the description I'd provide of him. Malik looked like the typical music school dropout, pretty much what he posted of himself as his profile photo, except that he is covered in more bruises and his hair is dirtier. Franky was the weirdest one, wearing a dark brown hoody with that blank face mask, completely covering his face, he certainly looked like a person, but the way he moved was really weird, it's as if he was struggling to walk on just two legs.

As we were about to go in, G stopped me, Malik and Franky and told us that it would be a better idea to keep an eye out on the hallway, just in case some security guards start coming around, I didn't question G, I trust him enough not to do something stupid when left alone with The Asshole, Malik wasn't so willing though, he immediately tried to question him, but was cut off by The Asshole, telling him that it was his turn to help him and that G's idea was a good one and that's how the three of us ended up starring at a corner for nearly an hour. That's where Malik finished his post, but he left out our conversation, which he said that he didn't mind me posting, so here we go:

The conversation didn't start between us for a while, it was actually getting kind of awkward hence why I decided to break said silence: "So, kind of a strange meet up huh?"

No response, just leaning against the wall, arms folded, starring at the ground.

"I mean, I guess it makes sense, G's pretty much the only one active on the blogs who's trying to research the weird shit, that your master is aw-" this is where he instantly cut me off.

"He's not my fucking master." He looked up at me, annoyed look on his face, even Franky turned around once he started talking.

I shrugged "Whatever, you'll still end up dead if you continue 'working' with him."

"I have enough of your lectures spamming up my comments, I sure as hell don't care to hear them in person, especially not from you."

That comment took me by surprise "The fuck does that mean?"

He unfolded his arms and stood up straight "You call the idiot my master, which is hilarious coming from an amnesiac who has no idea what is out there and just blindly follows another amnesiac."

"Ah yes, that is definitely worse then the two retards who are constantly self-sabotaging one another on every 'mission' they embark on."

"Hey, if I'm such a retard then why the fuck do you care as to what I do, you sure as hell can't seem to shut the hell up about what us 'retards' do!"

"No, I can't shut up about the idiotic shit you do! But I'm sorry for trying to prevent another persons life ending in death due to their idiotic choices!"

"Hey, at least I'm fucking doing something for myself, instead of just sitting on someone's ass not sure if whether all of this is real, or not!"

"Impulsive idiot!"

"Indecisive tard!"

And suddenly both of our mouths were covered by Franky's gloved hands, I didn't even notice that we got in each other's faces and were nearly yelling at one another, I also didn't notice how Franky managed to creep up on us, guess the argument got a little too personal, not gonna lie.

After Franky removed his, surprisingly cold hands Malik just stormed off back to his end of the wall, leaned back on it and avoided looking at me. I just kind of awkwardly stayed in the middle of the hallway, mainly because I didn't really want to get into an argument with him, honestly I just wanted to have a conversation, I also felt like a bit of an asshole for what I said, hence why I felt the need to say the following:

"I don't believe you deserve to die, sorry that you don't agree with that."

And then I walked back to my side of the corridor, continuing to look at the corner. Few minutes of silence passed until he broke it:

"Look..." I looked at him "Shit's fucked out there..." He looked to the side and then covered his face with both of his hands and slid the hair out of his face "Hell, shit's fucked in here..." He pointed at his head as he moved his hands away from his hair "Been for a while." He looked directly at me "Point is, I'll die, I know it and I made peace with it a long time ago, you need someone who wants to survive and reach a happy ending?" He looked away "You're going to have to find someone else."

Yeah, pretty fucking depressing, but hey, it wasn't all negative, he did say this in the end:

"For what it's worth, I hope you manage to reach it."

That's about when G exited the room with The Asshole and we all parted ways. Despite the argument and the name-calling it was actually somewhat nice to meet Malik, he is the first person I talked to in person who is entangled in the same shit that I am and I guess he's not a complete ass.

Post #25: Pondering - The Effects of Creatures on the World

 As Hannah stated in her previous post, work on the Anti-Azoth is still ongoing, finding a way to preserve the blood cells from the finger that I've acquired a while back when they come into contact with Azoth, without them dying out in the process and ending up polluting your body with dead cells has been quite a chore, nothing I tried worked. Recently I was e-mailed by a person who has something in his possession that very well might help, so at some point I will be heading out to meet up with them, for now, the person and the item in question will remain unnamed.

In the mean time, I felt bad that Hannah has been the only one keeping this blog active, so I decided to contribute with a bit of an informative post, mainly inspired by Hannah's subject she covered recently.

John Smith's a.k.a. ProxieHunter's blog, I believe, was a very informative piece of work, mainly because it came at a time when all the other creatures were just appearing on various other blogs, prior to that it was just the Slender Man, hence why his blog was valuable, I believe it was the first informative blog that tried to inform the people caught up in all of this of the other creatures other than the Slender Man. Because of the informative nature of the blog, ways of how these Creatures tend to operate were discussed at great length, referencing the hauntings of other survivors, which is really nice, it's a great cyber map for those who want to begin studying these anomalies.

However, as informative as it is (And this isn't unique just to ProxieHunter's blog) text doesn't exactly convey how these Creatures tend to impact the overall world that we all inhabit. So in this post I would like to concentrate on interesting world anomalies, which, in my opinion, are exactly that. Now fair warning, 2020 has been a tough year so far, so if you had enough of bad news on how the world is suffering right now, then I urge you stop reading from here on out, because this post will feature nothing but bad news from various parts of the world.

2020 has been quite the eventful year indeed so far and I believe it is all due to the Creatures becoming increasingly active, so let's start off with the obvious one, shall we?

The Plague Doctor was arguably the reason for why this year has been going the way it's been going, what with the way COVID-19 has impacted the world so far. Now, whether the Plague Doctor created this virus, or released it, or whatever, I do not know, but what leads me to believe that is his doing rather than the work of nature, is due to how insanely resilient this virus is and how transformative it is. It's been almost half a year now with how long this Virus has been studied for and to this day, new symptoms are discovered on a regular basis, the most recent being, apparently, the loss of hearing. This adds to the list of symptoms, such ass: Loss of taste and loss of smell. We have never faced anything like this, it blows my mind the amount of symptoms this virus carries within itself and how we can't spot them until it's too late, bringing the world into a devastating era of uncertainty.

The media coverage didn't help things any, filled with incomplete reports and speculations at the time, quickly sending the world into panic. Wasn't long until various rules were put in place to calm the public down and as a result, the people were told to self-isolate, so as to limit the amount of possible infections. In some countries, people are forced into self-isolation, in other countries they are lawed into self-isolation and in some they are just recommended to self-isolate. Regardless of which one of those you land on, the reality of the situation is that "self-isolation" has a severe effect on the mental health of the populous, specifically a spike in depression rates due to the fear of isolation. Guess who benefits from that? That's right, the Cold Boy, all of this created the perfect stalking-ground for him and you can bet that he contributed to that spike.

However, while The Plague Doctor seemed to have started the year off with a bang, it seems like The Brute is the one who intends to finish it off with a nuclear explosion. Civil unrest has been spiking all over the world throughout the year, with new conflicts emerging suddenly and out of nowhere, all nearly at the same time, which is exactly what leads me to believe that The Brute decided to take it upon himself to try and wreak more havoc than The Plague Doctor. I'm sure I don't need to tell you about the tensions that have recently evolved into shootouts and riots between the Police and The People within the USA and which have lasted for a bigger part of the year now. But this isn't the only conflict that erupted, over in Belarus you have more of the same, as well as in Bulgaria and many more. Meanwhile, we got wars brewing between several countries, the first to show signs were China and India, next to follow just recently were Armenia and Azerbaijan. All of which happened in a relatively short time frame of one another.

I can recount several accounts of various Servants claiming that the Creatures are not allies, they can be if there's a mutual benefit (Prime example would be how the environment that The Plague Doctor created, tends to also benefit The Cold Boy), but in general, they tend to conflict with each other over who the populous of our world fear the most. So it is no surprise that amidst all this chaos, other Creatures are also trying to jump in, such as The Convocation and EAT.

While this all looks bleak, there is a useful lesson out of all of this, I have various networks setup in my hideout, which all filter through various news articles that are published every day, in order for me to see the areas of activity where these Creatures are operating, this allows me to see what areas are relatively safe and where not to go. I highly recommend doing the same, despite how depressing it may be, or demoralizing, if you have the chance, then I suggest keeping an eye on the world developments as a Survivor, it can give you an idea on what areas to steer clear of.

HP's: People of Interest - ProxieHunter

Not dead! Me and G are still kicking, he's still working on that Anti-Azoth juice, been obsessing over it for months now, which is weird, but I kind of get it. I mean, a vaccine for the shit that these monsters infect people with and control them? Sign me up! However I did notice another weird thing with him, he's been locking himself up in a room that I've never been in before, because it's always locked and he obviously doesn't want me in there. He legit spends hours in there sometimes, but hey, whatever it is, I ain't about to go snooping around, don't want him kicking me out to fend for myself. On a personal note, he's been more lenient about letting me go outside, I've gotten quite good at it, this must sound weird, but it isn't... well it is, but that's purely because of the nature of the place that we're staying in and not because I don't have the physical ability to step outside... or whatever, I'm rambling, so fuck it, onto the next person I'll be covering in this post.

So as I said, I've been going outside more, most of the time it is to get supplies whenever we're running short, but the outside isn't safe for obvious reasons, a lot of assholes are roaming the world right now and if I were to run into them, a girl with barely any experience in running, like me, would most likely, quickly, bite the dust. Luckily, for people like me there is no shortage of guide blogs dedicated to telling you on how to survive your Slenderific Adventures! Hence the topic of this post - ProxieHunter.

Some Music to set the mood:

ProxieHunter began his blog on December 21st, 2011 titled - "The Most Dangerous Game". However, he has been active on the blogs long before that, establishing his presence in the comment sections of other blogs, usually giving advice to the authors on how to survive. Right off the bat, just from the title of his first post you can understand that ProxieHunter is an individual who has been on the run for quite some time now, long before he started his blog. What you can also immediately understand from the first post is that ProxieHunter is not some unhinged lunatic like the one we covered previously, he's a person who understand that not everyone is Rambo and makes that statement clear, he is here to teach you to survive, which can be achieved in many different ways. He also clarifies that his blog was going to help all manner of runners, whether you're running from the Tall Faceless Freak, or some other abomination, he'll do his best to cover all areas.

From there on, we get a series of posts covering various useful things, like: What's the best type of equipment a runner should have on hand (Very useful), how to identify if someone is following you (Again, very useful) and etc. But I'm not here to re-tell the blog's posts, I'm here to talk about the person behind the blog and for the most part, that's going to be pretty hard to do because ProxieHunter's posts don't tend to reveal much about himself, they concentrate on specifically giving advice and educating. However, even those posts can help us in analysing the person behind ProxieHunter, through the comment section, in which ProxieHunter was very active.

First thing you can note, is that ProxieHunter is a very careful and dare I say, paranoid sort (Can't blame him). In his introductory post he talks about the misspelling of his Username and how it was done because of him suffering from a concussion back when he was making the 'ProxieHunter' account. Some people questioned him about changing his Username but he declined, stating: "I could change my display name, yes. But Runners, even ones who aren't me, are a paranoid bunch. Even if I accepted that someone who posted as *Penni* Balisong was in fact you and not someone posing as you with deceit in mind name changes by bloggers are often a very signifigant thing. For example when Joey Steward became *Joseph* Steward. More than in most places a bloggers name says who they are. Changing it is not to be done lightly." -ProxieHunter (I always said I wasn't going to star my own blog)

ProxieHunter also used very interesting terminology when talking about Proxys, labelling them as traitors to their species, when challenged on this view, claiming that most Proxys end up serving because they just have no choice, to which ProxieHunter responded: "If they'd given up and slit their wrists I'd pity them. Instead they gave up and betrayed their species." -ProxieHunter (What is a Proxy and why do they need to die?) Now, you could say that, that's a cold and grim way of looking at it, however, there is a reason for the anger. In one of his posts the centre piece of which was to try and analyse all types of Proxys that serve the Tall Fucker and how to avoid them, you of course expect one of their ilk to show up in the comments to do their 'taunt' routine, in this case, the proxy in question would be Nightscream, a known sick fuck among the Runners who'd proceed to try and get a rise out of ProxieHunter, to which ProxieHunter replied: "I don't smile much at all anymore. Not after what one of your kind did to my wife. I laughed with glee after I tracked him down though. Unfortunately he wasn't nearly so amused." -ProxieHunter (Detecting and fighting the Slenderproxy) Supposed tragic past aside, ProxieHunter manages to remain as close to a healthy mental state as possible, there is no "Lone Hero" complex, or anything like that, on the contrary, ProxieHunter encourages seeking out allies and staying in contact with as many fellow runners as possible.

However, to call him sane would be a lie, despite ProxieHunter's advice, he himself wasn't the sort to only rely on self defence, he was actively hunting down various Servants in order to kill them, hence the Username: "I was stalking a Slenderproxy I'd traced back to three Runner deaths by arson in the last month and I'd finally managed to catch him in an alley away from witnesses. Had my knife out, carefully approaching from behind planning to slit his throat..." -ProxieHunter (A title I can live with) His thesis was simple "If I can't harm the big bad monsters, then I can impair them by killing their servants." as ProxieHunter himself puts it: "I've never claimed I was a good man. Only better than those who threw away their humanity to serve. I lost all that was good in me a few years back." -ProxieHunter (Betty takes a late night swim) But he doesn't just kill them, sometimes he leaves them alive, after a rousing round of mutilation, of course: Veronica won't be much use to the Timberwolves after I pulverized both his hands and broke his legs in so many places they'll never heal right. It should make it pretty difficult for him to kill himself too. He's also going to have trouble asking his Timberwolf buddies to do the job for him without his tongue. I took his wallet and made an anonymous call to 911 from a payphone about hearing a disturbance in the alley so he should be checked into the hospital as a John Doe now. -ProxieHunter (A little "talk" with Veronica) Now granted, the justification he gives for this type of brutality, is that at this time he was dealing with "Timberwolves" servants of another abomination called "The Archangel". Among their circles it is believed that death is a reward, that to their souls get embraced by their master, or some stupid shit like that, hence Hunter's brutal display over there, he didn't want to give them the satisfaction they apparently crave from their servitude.

Now as time went on, as is part for the course for a lot of the informational blogs involved in all of this, the focus began to shift from informative postings to documentative, where Hunter would concentrate on summarizing the crazy shit that he survived, so obviously, a lot of posts of him going up against various Timberwolves, Rake in a costume (Wasn't actually the Rake, most likely was a Maenad) and also going up against a group called "The Panopticon" who started circling around Hunter's area a few posts prior. Now this was my first ever hearing about them, a quick read through G's notes, basically The Panopticon was an organization which probably involved a lot of ex-members of Washington who concentrated on battling the Freaks of Nature we're all running from, problem is, their way of combatting the threat was through extreme mental conditioning of those who ever came into any kind of contact with them, convincing their victims that what they were running from, was never real. Hunter was captured by them and treated to exactly that: "Other than that they tried tactics similar to those they used on Adam to convince me that my wife had died not at the hands of a Slenderproxie but a simple home invasion. Doctored footage, edited copies of police reports that claim to show no evidence of the scene I recall finding." -ProxieHunter (I'm free) Reason I mention this, is because they tried to give Hunter a false diagnosis, telling him that he had a Psychotic Break, as a result of which, he went on a killing spree as a serial killer, justifying his murder sprees with some imaginary creatures haunting him. Now, while this was done in order to brain wash Hunter, I don't believe their conclusion was that far from the truth, but more on that at the end.

Hunter didn't spend much time as their captive, ironically the one to rescue him from further torture was one of the people that hunter hates, a SlenderProxy. Apparently she used the "Path of Black Leaves" to appear in Hunter's torture chamber and proceeded to open up a can of Shaq-Fu on The Panopticon members that were in the room with him and giving Hunter the means of freeing himself, before disappearing into thin air. While the details of the fight are quite gory, I'd rather direct our attention once again to the comment section, where we find out another reason for why Hunter did what he did, the failing within the judicial system: "I've seen what happens when we try to let the police handle a Proxy. The best case scenarios involve a rich agent posting bail or buying a judge and jury. The worst case scenarios . . . well the last one I read about they called it a terrorist attack. It isn't the Taliban that's known for leaving behind that kind of oily black residue though. In any case there were a lot of dead cops, dead prisoners, and a big fucking hole in the Proxy's cell. The Proxy in question was long gone but I was hearing about kills with his MO a short time later." -ProxieHunter (I'm free) 

 

After escaping, Hunter went back to doing what he did before, however, life didn't stop throwing shit at him just yet, because in his area, a lot of different Servants began to congregate, with some type of turf war possibly brewing over the horizon. Hunter did pretty well in avoiding them, however, he would also find that a lot of his fellow Runners were also in the area, specifically an 8 year old girl named Janice from Jcarlson's blog "To Light a Candle". To give the important summation, Janice was apparently immune from being stalked by the Freaks of Nature due to some sort of deal that took place on Jcarlson's blog, but the poor wording of the deal, did not exempt Janice from being hunted by the non-powered idiots that serve the Freaks. According to Hunter, their reasoning being that it might put them in good graces with their "Masters", so Hunter took it upon himself to deter any attempts made on her life, an ordeal that would yield a very interesting reaction from Hunter: "Anyway a couple nights ago Janice managed to look at the window at an inopportune moment and saw me with my knife in the gut of a man wearing a bunny mask. Surprisingly she didn't scream. I think she somehow knew the man in the mask was there to hurt her. She just looked at the crazy man with his knife in the other crazy man and called me a hero. A God damned hero. According to Carlson she's a bright kid. She should know better. I'm no damn hero. This is important to note, because it allows us to see how Hunter perceives himself, he doesn't see himself as a noble hero, on the contrary he just sees himself as a person who is doing the job that most people wouldn't, or can't, I believe Faith No More put it best: "Its a dirty job but someones gotta do it"

After this, Hunter makes a few more informative posts, before stumbling onto a trap contained within an online blog, which leads to him acquiring a Dead Man Shard within himself (For simplicity's sake, let's just say a being entered into his body through an online website), but he manages to overpower it and hold it under his control by subjecting it to an event in Hunter's life that he self admittedly tends to replay in his head regularly: "It's probably not going to shock many of you to hear that there is a part of my mind where my first kill takes place over and over again in a never ending loop of blood and screaming with my laughter over it all. The man took twenty minutes to die. It would have been longer but I wasn't good at preventing shock and blood loss. When Bob deserves Happy Fun Time I put Bob into the body of the man who killed my wife and he lives through what I did to him over and over until I let him out again." -ProxieHunter (Why I hate Halloween) Note what he says about this event, "my first kill" the very first kill that Hunter committed was that of his wife's murderer, more than that, he doesn't seem to stop thinking about it, specifically the amount of joy he got out of it, note how he describes the bloody event, his laughter echoing over it all, he even remembers the amount of time it took for the man to die.

Sadly, this is where the blog concludes, ProxieHunter's death was never confirmed, in fact, he was still active in 2013, leaving comments on other people's blogs, a year after he stopped updating his own blog, so who knows, he might still be out there, able to read this, hopefully he won't be too offended by my concluding thoughts.

As we've noted Hunter's blood trail starts with his first kill, the murder of a man that caused him to experience a catastrophic loss that most people never manage to pull out of, in that murder he experiences an almost overwhelming feeling of joy and that's when ProxieHunter is born. What Hunter seems to suffer from are issues of complicated grief and loss, see, a regular person when seeking revenge, or justice, for the wrongdoing that they may have suffered, tend to move in some way or another after getting it. Hunter got his revenge, he took the life of a man who took the life of his wife, the problem is, due to the circumstances of his situation (Which is a situation we all share, that of being hunted) he was given an opportunity to see other options, most people move on because they simply don't see another choice because of the limitations of the law, or social expectations. For those of us that are being hunted by the Freaks of Nature, we don't have those limitations restricting us and that allowed Hunter come to the conclusion that he did, he was going to become a Proxy Hunter. He was no longer a mere "Runner" he was actively hunting down people that in his mind, deserved to die and he justified his actions by claiming that the Law doesn't work when it comes to this issue, according to him, he wasn't doing it out of pleasure, he was doing it out of necessity. But I believe that to be a lie that Hunter himself is probably unaware of, see, this is where grief comes into play, I don't exactly know the circumstances of his wife's murder, nor it's aftermath, what I do know for sure is that Hunter didn't grieve his loss FULLY. Every time Hunter killed, he had to have experienced a redemptive moment, a feeling of gratification on a job well done, there's a reason he would constantly quote one of the kills he enacted upon a proxy, whenever someone would question him on his morality: "Hey, what I do has saved lives. And not just Runners. If you read my whole blog you might remember that Proxy who had a thing for fire. One of his fires he set to take out a single Runner spread and killed five other people who weren't involved in this mess. Thanks to me he won't be doing that again." -ProxieHunter (I'm free) He believes he is doing a service in the grand scheme of things and that feeling allows him to forgive himself for the loss of his wife, every kill is his way of grieving. The problem with that, is that it's a maladaptive way of grieving, the feeling of a kill is an attainable thing and there's no shortage of people deserving to be killed on Hunter's radar, this creates an addictive environment, similar to an alcoholic, the drink provides an addictive sensation and it's not hard to obtain alcohol whatsoever.