User:A Helpful Little Gnome/Book

  

OLD JOURNAL

You open the old water-logged journal. Traces of dried bloody fingertips mark the edges of pages, evidence of many past readers and writers. Wedged in between the pages is a dirty old pencil. There still seems to be some space left to write something .

Some scribbles are left in the margins of pages...

Flipping through the pages, you come across...

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The scrawling of some confused soul...

I've been stuck in this...place...for weeks now. Having thought I could avoid the hordes by simply walking across the fields, I quickly found that the fields seemed to end without ending. How, I do not know, but somehow I would walk forward and find the same expansive landscape in front of me as I had with the last step and the one before that and the one before that. Since then, I have braved the ruins, slain madmen, mutilated zombies, and somehow managed to avoid death. Hopefully I will make it.

~ Aichon at sometime in August

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The scribbles of a blinded soul...

Day... Something. I don't know what's happening. I woke up, exhausted, and heard a creaky voice. I looked around, but saw only white. Actually, there were other things too... The words "Loading". A few black lines. A .jpg artifact, but that could just be my monitor on the fritz. Actually... One sec...

~ Red at sometime in August

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The writting of a delusional soul...

Day Something +1. Turns out it WAS a .jpg artifact. Someone must have done a lousy shop job on the universe. Anyways, it appears I'm in some sort of room. With a bunch of rats. And a fat, naked midget at a cardboard computer. I'm not sure what's going on, but there's a trio of people on the screen. One of them looks kinda strange (and bloody), like he ate really spoiled, raw meat.

~ Red at sometime in August

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The words of some hallucinating soul...

The nudist midget looks surprised that I'm here. Given the tone of his skin, I'm guessing he spends most of his time at the strange computer.

~ Red at sometime in August

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The marks of a distraught soul...

What are the chances? Finding this journal so much later, and with new writings in it, nonetheless. Strange how it has followed me, like some sort of silent companion on this journey. A part of me hopes that these new words can guide me to the one I lost, but I know that I am too late. There's no saving him. There's no saving me. Only hell awaits me for the things I have done. The things I won't share with any companion. Not even this silent one.

~ Aichon at sometime in June

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The chicken scratch of a strange soul...

I tasted the old man. He is good. I need more bears.

~ from an unknown writer left in the back pages

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Lost in an alternate dimension...

An old water-logged journal? Not my journal, that I am sure of. As much as I've had my fair share of traveling the different worlds of the universe, this world...It's exactly the same as the world I was just on. But it's not same. Something about this world is...different, as if this part of the world had been lost to sleep. Could it be that this world, this "alternative dimension", I have stumbled upon, is waiting for it's birth by sleep? I write this entry not in my own journal, no, but rather, in this old water-logged journal. Whoever finds this journal in the future, only you, and you alone, have the power to awaken this half of the world from it's slumber and make the entire world whole again.

~ Ansem the Wise at an unknown time

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The jottings of a madman...

it feels as if many have been here before me, yet I'm alone'.. And sad :(

~ Peralta at sometime in September

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The castings of a loon...

It was safe and pure. Why didn't I just stay in the field? You can't look back now! No, of course not, I'd never have met you. Promise me that we'll always be together. But you left me for that other man. It was only to help you! Yes, you did come back to me. And don't forget about the zombie; if not for me, you'd have drowned. That is true. And how else would you be writing this message if not for me to draw your blood? You're right, let's never fight again. Yes, let's. Glad that's settled, I'm starting to feel a bit light-headed from all this writing. You didn't have to go so deep... and did it have to be your wrist? I didn't want to run out mid-sentence. Aren't you about finished now? Wait, where did this pencil come fro...(the writing becomes illegible)

~ Charles Whipplebotum at sometime in November

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Messy, smudged notes from a lost soul...

I have nightmares every sunset, of waking up to a howling noise, filling the air and every pour of my body. I look towards where it's coming from, over the rolling countryside hills, and I watch in darkness as hundreds of the dead run over towards us. They have found our secluded, untouched paradise. The mass, flying towards us, prepare to collide with our stiffened bodies, frozen with fear.

The countryside never suited me, but the city was too overrun. When you don't see another man for a year it's time to move on. Hopefully the next city along has a stronger resistance.

I'm sure I'll make it.

~ D. Renolds, around the time of December

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A note within the Journal, scribbled on toilet paper in small elegant writing...

I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. You may not remember, but I do. It's fuzzy and I don't know how I got into this mess, but they can't take away my past. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but you'll have to accept that.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Malton in 1964, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1982 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

Malton. I was happy in Malton. In 1985 I played Dandini in Munford Cinemas Planet of the Vampires. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to Club Twycrosse or one of the other clubs near the cinema. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1988 I starred in Barbara Anthony's "Night of the Living Dead" in Troubridge Cinema. It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best years of my life.

In 1990 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell, I think. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth.

They came for me after the infection that broke out. I think they started it. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak. They brought Ruth in. She was alive!

But she wasn't. She was dead... reanimated, they said. They tied her to the cell bars across from me. I watched her try to eat me. She fought against her restraints. I wanted to throw myself into her cold, dead arms. I almost did it too. But I kept my inch.

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. She came back and ate one of the guards. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. They'll bring me back, but every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

The power went out... and I hear men coming. They'll place a bag over my head and shoot me out in a field. They've done it before. They'll do it again. I hope you make it out.

Love, Valerie

~ Lich Queen, around the time of Valentine's Day, February

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The ponderings of a disillusioned philosopher...

"We are born with the dead: See, they return and bring us with them."

Perhaps T.S. Eliot was precise when he wrote those words, not so very long ago. And perhaps we were all dead men walking from the very beginning, and shall remain so until the very end.

One day, Big City was moving along. The next, she was reduced to a blood-soaked ruin; the hordes already hunting. But though I slumbered behind unlocked doors, some divinity spared me to see humanity at its worst. What was it? A strange contagion, sent to punish us for our sins? Or something so much worse it defies explanation?

Another artist, his name lost to memory, once gave mind to a more frightful concept: something metaphysical, maybe hundreds or thousands of years beyond our comprehension of natural law would appear not as applied science, but entirely supernatural, pure, magic. By the same thinking, could a supernatural event of world-shaking proportions, occurring in a faithless time when only science is believed to have the power to work miracles appear to be a product of applied sciences, such as a disease, a plague, a biological weapon?

Some things are better left in the dark.

~ Prince Azure at an unknown time

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an erratic scrawl, over a yellowing, moldy piece of paper that seems to have been folded far too many times...

Chiaki, my dearest brother,

It is without certainty that this letter may go beyond the confines of Malton, but if my plan works according to design, it should at least leave the borders by a mere centimeter. In which case, it is less certain that it would be ever held by human hands, much more those that belong to someone who is still alive. The chance that it will fall upon your hands is even scarer, but I pray that the He will send this to you, in some way.

How have the last 8 years been for you? Can you believe that I am still alive, after all this time? Not "alive" in the way those of you beyond the border define it, but that of Malton in itself. See, "life" has a very different definition here, and if I were to expound on this, I may have to write an entire volume chronicling the first 8 years of the Quarantine. I do have my own journal, which I would have sent to you if I had more than an undead carrier pigeon, but I doubt that even ten pigeons would be able to carry this beyond Kempsterbank.

I managed to graduate from my studies, by some odd miracle, or possibly the dedication of the College of Medicine's faculty - no outbreak can stop the pursuit of knowledge, or put the flames of service asunder! After my clerkship in St. Seraphim's Hospital, which was mostly a blur, I had also entered a convent for a year, until I realized that I wanted to be human. I have my limits, and the ascetic lifestyle I've led for that time took its toll in my body. No more than a few weeks ago, I found myself with the Knights Templar, and now, I work not only alongside them, but as one of them.

I knew those years ago that I have made my resolve. I always knew that it was unlikely that I would leave Malton.

This is my world, this is my home.

I've decided to stay - only He knows if Momiji made it safely beyond the border back in 2008, but I have made my resolve never to see him again, regardless of whether he failed or succeeded. I would never allow him to do so.

I acknowledge that I am being incoherent, but such happens if your dwellings are under constant attack. I cannot keep watching these barricades break down right before my very eyes, and have my companions eaten, or see my friends fallen to the hordes.

I hope that you've gone for your happiness. Whether you decided to abandon your medical studies, or continue them for whatever motivation, always remember to do what makes you happy, not that which makes our parents, or your teachers joyous. If you have moments to spare, might I make a request of you?

This might be the last letter I would write, for I have not the luxury of time as of late. I have found myself with much more responsibilities, and more lives to save, including my very own.

Do you think you can pay St. James' Hospital a visit for me?

If you are still the same as you were when we were first year medical students, I know you might not want to. There may be too many things you'd rather not recall there, but, please consider it akin to a dying wish. I've left a box of mementos somewhere on the ground of the room in construction, along The Canary Mile. To this very day, I think at least one of those may serve you well, in your endeavours.

You never walk alone,

Chiharu.

P.S. If you meet a certain Dr. Isaac Finck in St. James', please send him my regards. It is doubtful that he would ever recognize me, for I was but an intern who admired his work from afar.

~ Chiharu Matsuda, dated May 1, 2013

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A bloodied, dog-eared, and crumpled document. Over a sea of machine-printed character strings, a faded, yet large watermark reading 'THE SEGMENT - TOP SECRET' can be seen. It smells faintly of decayed roses and moonshine. On its opposite side is relatively legible freehand.

perhaps i am truly insane. i chose this exile yes but only because i believed i deserved it.

i thought malton was a place where i could rest in piece forever. far away from their influence. they told me they would give me free reign. and so they did. i lived as i chose. i know that there is no escape. i do not want to escape.

could i still be that angered over what she had done?

it is unlikely she would recall. she would not kill me even if she did. she might even help me one more time. maybe save my life. either way would spite and offend my sensibilities greatly. it is not that i am not in need of help but that i do not deserve it.

there is no salvation for my soul. there really is no salvation. these principles i pride myself in... could they be a farce? it would hurt my ego to believe so. i will fight for the truth yes. i would rather die than have to lie. i still do not understand what her motive was. not even now.

it might be an obsession. this burning rage i feel upon the mere mention... that inhibited desire. i want to kill her with every fiber of my being. yet at the same time i do not. or cannot rather.

i know very well the consequences. we would both die. i do not mind dying. as it seems it is impossible to truly die in this place i would die as many times as humanly possible. a comedy of errors and an irony of all ironies. i desire to kill her but i also do not desire to kill her. is such possible?

killing her is what is just. they are the same but not quite the same. the very cross of jerusalem she reveres will be her own death.

~ Vera Wong at an unknown time

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The thoughts of a desperate soul...

ALONE ALL ALONE...

~ Fluffy Shark sometime in September

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The longings of one lost...

Day 1...

I just want to find someone to love me..

~ NOCKTRNL sometime in September

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The end of another's journey...

That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.

Goodbye.

~ Prince Azure on a bitter October dawn

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The point

What is the point? They come back for you in the end...

~ User:Zeke_Zaccaro on March 5th

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