Few nights ago, 330 and I watched “Doctor Who: The End of Time”. I’ll be honest: I cried like a baby at that ending. Even 330 looked like she was getting a little misty eyed. Asked her when we could start on the next season, but she said she hadn’t ordered anything past David Tennant’s run as the Doctor. Kind of a shame.
Oh. Um. I should probably also mention that I’ve started calling I-330 just 330. It’s, well, a bit easier to say, I guess. Faster, at least.
A few days after we watched the movie, 330 woke me up by throwing open the door to my room, tossing a bag on my bed, and telling me to pack up, we’re heading for Massachusetts.
What.
She explained it to me in more detail over a cup of coffee once I was more awake. She’d managed to finish translating the scroll; apparently it’s a bunch of excerpts from a book whose name I won’t even try to spell. The only place where we can find a full copy of said book is at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts.
Okay. So… why do we need to find this book, 330?
Just following the trail of breadcrumbs, Lisa.
Alright, that still doesn’t explain anything. How are we getting to Massachusetts?
We’ll get on a train at Alexandria, and head north.
How are we getting to Alexandria? That’s about 10 miles away.
Well guess what, Lisa? I got you a bike!
I don’t know how to ride a bike….
Don’t worry, it’s easy. You’ll figure it out in no time.
Well, now that I’m able to say I have tried to ride a bike, I can state with full confidence that 330 is a liar. My jeans were ripped, knees and hands bloody, and I felt like I was going to collapse from exhaustion. Less than a fourth of the way to Alexandria. 330 took pity on me, and wrapped my leg. Good thing she’d thought to bring bandages with her.
So then we did the smart thing, and caught a bus to Alexandria.
The train ride was several hours long; by the end of the first hour, 330 started getting fidgety. It’s definitely the longest I’ve seen her forced to stay in one place before. So it was a good thing I thought ahead to bring books for us to read. That got her to stay still, though by the end of the trip she’d gone through over half the novels I’d brought….
When we got off at the Arkham stop a man was waiting for us, who waved and called for 330 when he saw her. She ran over and gave him a hug, then the two started with a series of friendly greetings. “It’s been ages since I saw you! How’ve you been?” and so on. I don’t think he even noticed I was there until 330 introduced me. “Lisa, I’d like you to meet my old friend, Peter. He works as a professor at Miskatonic.”
Peter looked like someone in their 30s or 40s; bit hard to tell. His face looked younger than the graying strands going through his brown hair seemed to indicate. I tried to mutter a greeting; don’t know if I was really all that successful. If I wasn’t, at least he was nice enough not to comment on it….
The two talked the whole time as we walked to Peter’s car and loaded our bikes and luggage in. Mostly Peter discussing how his job’s been going; learned that he works in the history department. For someone apparently meeting a friend for the first time in years, 330 did surprisingly little talking about what she’d been up to. The only hints at that was Peter asking, “You still running around doing the same crazy stuff?” She laughed and nodded, and that was the end of it.
Since the train ride had taken up most of the day, 330 and I were going to be staying at his house, where he had a few extra beds. I… wasn’t all that comfortable with the idea at first…. I haven’t slept anywhere but in my house for years….
The whole drive to his house wasn’t very fun, either…. 330 and Peter were talking to each other the whole time, and I just sat in the back seat, quiet. Kinda felt a bit left out…. But why should I have expected otherwise; this is someone 330’s known for a long time, and I’m just someone she met a few months ago….
Not that I want to sound like they were being mean or anything! Peter was very polite as he showed me the room I’d be staying in, helped move my bags inside, and asked if there was anything I needed…. But as it got later at night, and I could hear the two of them talking so enthusiastically in the living room, I began to wonder why I had been brought along….
I… was kinda curious… about what sort of things 330 would reminisce about. So I snuck out of my room and eavesdropped on the conversation….
“…so after lugging that box all the way across the city, we get to the place where Septimus had told us to go. So we were waiting there, looking around, didn’t see anyone…. And he suddenly says, ‘Oh, wait guys, I had the map upside down this entire time.’ All nonchalant! How do you hold a map upside down?” That was Peter’s voice.
Both of them started laughing, then 330 said, “And I just knew he was going to do that! I even put arrows saying ‘This Way Up’ on the map before I gave it to him!” Both started laughing again. Gradually, the laughter died down, and when 330 started talking again, she was much quiet. Had to strain to hear her. “Shame what happened to him….”
“Yeah…. He was a good guy. Didn’t deserve that….”
Another long silence, which 330 broke. “I should have been there….”
“What?” Peter’s voice again, “Christ, I-330, you’re still blaming yourself for that? That was decades ago!”
I don’t know what she said to him, because I left then. Their conversation was sounding a lot more personal than I felt entitled to hear.
Also…. There was a little bit of guilt I was trying to fight against. Not guilt from listening to their conversation…. But in that moment, when I heard Peter say I-330 instead of 330…. I felt almost like I’d beaten him at something, that I could call her something that someone who’d known her for years didn’t…. Don’t know why…. But I got back to my room and started writing this post, trying to get a better hold on my thoughts. Can’t say if it’s worked, really….
-Lisa
Wait, he said decades ago. 330’s at most just two or three years older than me, and I’m only in my twenties…. Just a misused expression? Or I misheard him?
Monday, October 24, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Looting a Church
Oh god that title for this post sounds terrible.
I’d thought that we’d be going to the meeting mentioned on the pamphlet I-330 got. But when Wednesday night came, I-330 showed no sign of getting ready to leave. Asked her about that, and she answered, “What? Go when the place will be full of people? Are you crazy? I just wanted to figure out the location.”
So we went last night instead. All these late night escapades are really starting to get to me…. Felt like I was about to fall asleep the entire time.
Didn’t know anything about the place we were going to except for the name, so I thought it was going to be downtown. Instead I-330 led me to a forest at the edge of town, pointed at an overgrown dirt trail, and said, “It’s back there.” Where does she even get her night vision? I could barely see the trail. Hard to believe that there would be anything back there.
After fighting through what felt like a wall of branches and thorns, we reached a clearing where the church was located. When I first saw it, thought that its occupants were going all out with the Halloween décor. Then I realized, no, it actually looks like that. Small wooden church, crumbling rooftop, old cemetery on one side, broken windows, looked abandoned for years…. I-330 had to talk me into going inside that place. Was not feeling in the mood for dealing with haunted house style buildings. Not that late at night.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be seeing tons of run down abandoned creepy churches by the end of all this. They’re almost as common as spooky libraries.”
Thanks I-330. That’s real encouraging.
Inside the church looked just as old and torn up as the exterior. Rubble from the collapsed roof covered the floor, termite eaten pews were scattered, old and moth eaten tapestries hung loosely from what was left of the walls. The moon shining down through the holes in the ceiling was the only light I could see by; caused me to trip a few times on the mess. Don’t know about anyone else, but this really didn’t look like the sort of place I’d hold meetings in.
The altar at the end of the church had been cracked in half, with a broken cross at the foot of it. I-330 stepped over it, and began to examine the floor behind it. It was pretty dark back there; apparently too dark for even her. She pulled a handgun out of her coat, and started to shoot the ceiling until enough rotten pieces of wood had been blown away for the moonlight to come in.
That there? That freaked me out. Panicked for a few moments; what was she doing, why was she carrying a gun around, WHY WAS SHE SHOOTING THINGS. She told me not to worry, it was alright…. NO IT’S NOT ALRIGHT YOU’RE SHOOTING THE CEILING! Calm down Lisa, I just needed enough light to find this….
“This” was a wooden hatch built into the floor. I-330 grabbed the metal handle and pulled it open; down it was a series of stairs leading into darkness. This didn’t look like a darkness which I-330 could solve by shooting things… so she pulled a lighter out of her coat and told me to hand her one of the old candle stubs lying on the floor.
WHY DIDN’T SHE JUST DO THAT EARLIER INSTEAD OF SHOOTING THE ROOF?
Not that the candle provided much light; still could only see a few steps below us. Least it kept me from falling over (much).
At the bottom of the stairs, the space opened up into a larger room. Don’t know what it was about the place, but if felt… off somehow. Colder than it should have. And there was a weird sensation of falling, even though I could feel the ground at my feet…. Couldn’t see any of it due to lack of light, but I-330 reached over to the wall, found a torch attached to it, and lit it. A real torch. Because this church wasn’t hitting enough horror clichés yet.
That gave us enough light to look around. Surprisingly little there…. Just a small, circular room, with an altar in the center. On top of the altar was a greenish colored statue, less than a foot tall. It looked like some kind of monster; a cross between an octopus and a dragon, holding a scroll in its claws. I-330 picked up the statue from the altar, and carefully removed the scroll. Then she threw the statue back towards me; I caught it (clumsily. It was heavier than it looked.) And she told me that it would make a great paperweight or garden ornament for our house. I’m not so sure about that. It’s pretty grotesque…. Not something I’d want to look at often.
Kept expecting for something to happen (we were stealing from an old church in the middle of the night only a few weeks before Halloween), but we made it back home without any incident. I-330’s been looking over the scroll since then; it’s covered in weird hieroglyphics, and she’s trying to make sense of them. They don’t look like any symbols I’ve ever seen before.
As for the statue…. I wanted to get rid of it, but felt like that would be rude to I-330…. So I stuck it in a really dark corner of the living room, face turned away from where I usually sit. It’s probably the weirdest item of décor I have in this entire house, bar none. But I-330 seems to like it, so… I suppose I’ll tolerate it.
-Lisa
I’d thought that we’d be going to the meeting mentioned on the pamphlet I-330 got. But when Wednesday night came, I-330 showed no sign of getting ready to leave. Asked her about that, and she answered, “What? Go when the place will be full of people? Are you crazy? I just wanted to figure out the location.”
So we went last night instead. All these late night escapades are really starting to get to me…. Felt like I was about to fall asleep the entire time.
Didn’t know anything about the place we were going to except for the name, so I thought it was going to be downtown. Instead I-330 led me to a forest at the edge of town, pointed at an overgrown dirt trail, and said, “It’s back there.” Where does she even get her night vision? I could barely see the trail. Hard to believe that there would be anything back there.
After fighting through what felt like a wall of branches and thorns, we reached a clearing where the church was located. When I first saw it, thought that its occupants were going all out with the Halloween décor. Then I realized, no, it actually looks like that. Small wooden church, crumbling rooftop, old cemetery on one side, broken windows, looked abandoned for years…. I-330 had to talk me into going inside that place. Was not feeling in the mood for dealing with haunted house style buildings. Not that late at night.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be seeing tons of run down abandoned creepy churches by the end of all this. They’re almost as common as spooky libraries.”
Thanks I-330. That’s real encouraging.
Inside the church looked just as old and torn up as the exterior. Rubble from the collapsed roof covered the floor, termite eaten pews were scattered, old and moth eaten tapestries hung loosely from what was left of the walls. The moon shining down through the holes in the ceiling was the only light I could see by; caused me to trip a few times on the mess. Don’t know about anyone else, but this really didn’t look like the sort of place I’d hold meetings in.
The altar at the end of the church had been cracked in half, with a broken cross at the foot of it. I-330 stepped over it, and began to examine the floor behind it. It was pretty dark back there; apparently too dark for even her. She pulled a handgun out of her coat, and started to shoot the ceiling until enough rotten pieces of wood had been blown away for the moonlight to come in.
That there? That freaked me out. Panicked for a few moments; what was she doing, why was she carrying a gun around, WHY WAS SHE SHOOTING THINGS. She told me not to worry, it was alright…. NO IT’S NOT ALRIGHT YOU’RE SHOOTING THE CEILING! Calm down Lisa, I just needed enough light to find this….
“This” was a wooden hatch built into the floor. I-330 grabbed the metal handle and pulled it open; down it was a series of stairs leading into darkness. This didn’t look like a darkness which I-330 could solve by shooting things… so she pulled a lighter out of her coat and told me to hand her one of the old candle stubs lying on the floor.
WHY DIDN’T SHE JUST DO THAT EARLIER INSTEAD OF SHOOTING THE ROOF?
Not that the candle provided much light; still could only see a few steps below us. Least it kept me from falling over (much).
At the bottom of the stairs, the space opened up into a larger room. Don’t know what it was about the place, but if felt… off somehow. Colder than it should have. And there was a weird sensation of falling, even though I could feel the ground at my feet…. Couldn’t see any of it due to lack of light, but I-330 reached over to the wall, found a torch attached to it, and lit it. A real torch. Because this church wasn’t hitting enough horror clichés yet.
That gave us enough light to look around. Surprisingly little there…. Just a small, circular room, with an altar in the center. On top of the altar was a greenish colored statue, less than a foot tall. It looked like some kind of monster; a cross between an octopus and a dragon, holding a scroll in its claws. I-330 picked up the statue from the altar, and carefully removed the scroll. Then she threw the statue back towards me; I caught it (clumsily. It was heavier than it looked.) And she told me that it would make a great paperweight or garden ornament for our house. I’m not so sure about that. It’s pretty grotesque…. Not something I’d want to look at often.
Kept expecting for something to happen (we were stealing from an old church in the middle of the night only a few weeks before Halloween), but we made it back home without any incident. I-330’s been looking over the scroll since then; it’s covered in weird hieroglyphics, and she’s trying to make sense of them. They don’t look like any symbols I’ve ever seen before.
As for the statue…. I wanted to get rid of it, but felt like that would be rude to I-330…. So I stuck it in a really dark corner of the living room, face turned away from where I usually sit. It’s probably the weirdest item of décor I have in this entire house, bar none. But I-330 seems to like it, so… I suppose I’ll tolerate it.
-Lisa
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Rooftops
Not long after I made that last post, I-330 came back. She’d left to find materials to stitch her Doctor Who outfit back together after it got a bit torn up during the night’s events. Which forces me to conclude that she has some odd priorities. At least she wasn’t bleeding everywhere, so I’m guessing she also got that cut patched up.
I’m a bit proud of myself; for once, when the time came to ask her about all the crazy things that have happened to me, I actually was able to get words out. Maybe there was still some adrenaline from the night before pushing me on.
She agreed to tell me what happened at the library… if I helped her out with something else another night. Curiosity won out against common sense, and I agreed.
According to her, that thing we saw last night is called the “Black Dog”. It’s some kind of monster that hunts people with deep/dark secrets. That’s about as far as she got with an understandable explanation; after that, she was obviously grasping for words. “It’s kinda like an embodiment of the fear of being discovered…. Only not really, more like a creature which existed prior to the fear but grew as that fear gathered around it…. But it also didn’t really exist, more like it potentially existed…. But looking at it from a nonlinear perspective, it still had physical presence in the multiverse all along the various spacetime lines…. Ah, screw it. It’s all eldritch shit and nonsense.”
Ignoring the parts of that which didn’t make sense, it sounded simple enough. Like a monster out of a horror novel; something I’d have thought was fantasy if I hadn’t seen it myself. Still having a hard time accepting it, but with this on top of the Grendel thing, plus Elizabeth’s diary, plus I-330’s earlier posts…. I’m starting to reach the point where if I keep saying, “No, not possible” much longer, I’m going to be sounding like those annoying skeptics you see in stories. You know, like the parents who keep claiming Little Tommy’s talk about werewolves trying to eat them all are just his imagination for half the book. Just once I want to see someone actually believe the kid when he warns them. “What Tommy? Werewolves? Holy shit, everyone in the car right now, we’re getting out of here!” Which I guess is why I’m letting myself be convinced by her, odd as it all sounds.
Since I-330 had done her part of the deal, I had to do mine. She brought the manila envelope she’d gotten from the library, and spread several sheets of paper from inside onto the table. They were covered in locations from all over the country, as well as times and dates. One had been circled in red: the address was less than ten minutes away, and the date was that night. I-330 pointed at it, and said that’s where we’d be going next.
Which is how I ended up freezing to death on top of a roof at two in the morning.
I-330 said we were doing a stakeout, which as it turns out, are much less exciting than detective fiction would lead you to believe. The address which had been circled was near the local American Legion building; I-330 decided that to be a perfect observation spot, so she led us to the roof and told me to keep watch. I was given a walkie talkie, a pair of binoculars, and the instructions to tell I-330 if anything happened while she was “taking care of business” on the ground level.
It must have been hours before anything happened. Or maybe it just felt that long; either way, it was long enough for me to really start regretting my decision. I didn’t even know where I-330 had run off to; soon as she’d told me what to do, she’d climbed down and run into the night.
Finally saw someone down at the street corner I was watching. Two men, each coming from different streets; greeted each other and had a huddled discussion. No clue what it was about; binoculars aren’t exactly well known for their sound transmitting capabilities. Both men were dressed casually, and weren’t doing anything which looked out of the ordinary.
Then I-330 stepped out of the shadows. I guess she said something, because both turned to her. And I’m going to continue my assumptions by guessing that they didn’t like what she said, because both pulled out pocket knives and ran at her.
That… was a pretty tense moment for me. I looked away, keeping my eyes off the binoculars until I heard someone screaming loudly enough for me to hear. Looked back, expecting to see I-330 lying on the ground covered with stab wounds. Instead, she was standing perfectly upright; one of the men at her feet, his arm bent at a weird angle (got a little nauseas when I looked at it…), and the other was still standing. Barely. He took a few staggered steps towards I-330, tried to swing a fist at her, and collapsed (unconscious, I’m presuming) in front of her. With both men down, she started to search through their pockets.
That was when I thought I saw someone else walking down the street towards her. Too far away for me to make out any details, but he was definitely heading in her direction. I got on the walkie talkie to warn her, but soon as I pressed the call button, static screeched out of it in a deafening roar. Even after I took my finger off the button, the noise continued. Felt like a dentist’s drill going through my ears into my brain….
Eventually it stopped, leaving me feeling partially deaf. When I looked back through the binoculars, the man was gone, and I-330 had gotten whatever she was looking for out of the men’s pockets. She called me over the walkie talkie, telling me to meet her on the ground.
What she got out of their pockets was a pamphlet, advertising a meeting at some nearby church Wednesdays at 3:30 AM. Nothing else to say who’s meeting there or why, but I-330 says that church is going to be our next destination.
This is starting to feel like a scavenger hunt…. A really weird, messed up scavenger hunt.
-Lisa
P.S. Felt I should mention, we called an ambulance for the men who’d attacked I-330. She says they’ll be alright, “just a few minor injuries, nothing that won’t heal.” I’m not sure if I should feel bad for them…. She did beat them pretty thoroughly, but they were attacking her....
I’m a bit proud of myself; for once, when the time came to ask her about all the crazy things that have happened to me, I actually was able to get words out. Maybe there was still some adrenaline from the night before pushing me on.
She agreed to tell me what happened at the library… if I helped her out with something else another night. Curiosity won out against common sense, and I agreed.
According to her, that thing we saw last night is called the “Black Dog”. It’s some kind of monster that hunts people with deep/dark secrets. That’s about as far as she got with an understandable explanation; after that, she was obviously grasping for words. “It’s kinda like an embodiment of the fear of being discovered…. Only not really, more like a creature which existed prior to the fear but grew as that fear gathered around it…. But it also didn’t really exist, more like it potentially existed…. But looking at it from a nonlinear perspective, it still had physical presence in the multiverse all along the various spacetime lines…. Ah, screw it. It’s all eldritch shit and nonsense.”
Ignoring the parts of that which didn’t make sense, it sounded simple enough. Like a monster out of a horror novel; something I’d have thought was fantasy if I hadn’t seen it myself. Still having a hard time accepting it, but with this on top of the Grendel thing, plus Elizabeth’s diary, plus I-330’s earlier posts…. I’m starting to reach the point where if I keep saying, “No, not possible” much longer, I’m going to be sounding like those annoying skeptics you see in stories. You know, like the parents who keep claiming Little Tommy’s talk about werewolves trying to eat them all are just his imagination for half the book. Just once I want to see someone actually believe the kid when he warns them. “What Tommy? Werewolves? Holy shit, everyone in the car right now, we’re getting out of here!” Which I guess is why I’m letting myself be convinced by her, odd as it all sounds.
Since I-330 had done her part of the deal, I had to do mine. She brought the manila envelope she’d gotten from the library, and spread several sheets of paper from inside onto the table. They were covered in locations from all over the country, as well as times and dates. One had been circled in red: the address was less than ten minutes away, and the date was that night. I-330 pointed at it, and said that’s where we’d be going next.
Which is how I ended up freezing to death on top of a roof at two in the morning.
I-330 said we were doing a stakeout, which as it turns out, are much less exciting than detective fiction would lead you to believe. The address which had been circled was near the local American Legion building; I-330 decided that to be a perfect observation spot, so she led us to the roof and told me to keep watch. I was given a walkie talkie, a pair of binoculars, and the instructions to tell I-330 if anything happened while she was “taking care of business” on the ground level.
It must have been hours before anything happened. Or maybe it just felt that long; either way, it was long enough for me to really start regretting my decision. I didn’t even know where I-330 had run off to; soon as she’d told me what to do, she’d climbed down and run into the night.
Finally saw someone down at the street corner I was watching. Two men, each coming from different streets; greeted each other and had a huddled discussion. No clue what it was about; binoculars aren’t exactly well known for their sound transmitting capabilities. Both men were dressed casually, and weren’t doing anything which looked out of the ordinary.
Then I-330 stepped out of the shadows. I guess she said something, because both turned to her. And I’m going to continue my assumptions by guessing that they didn’t like what she said, because both pulled out pocket knives and ran at her.
That… was a pretty tense moment for me. I looked away, keeping my eyes off the binoculars until I heard someone screaming loudly enough for me to hear. Looked back, expecting to see I-330 lying on the ground covered with stab wounds. Instead, she was standing perfectly upright; one of the men at her feet, his arm bent at a weird angle (got a little nauseas when I looked at it…), and the other was still standing. Barely. He took a few staggered steps towards I-330, tried to swing a fist at her, and collapsed (unconscious, I’m presuming) in front of her. With both men down, she started to search through their pockets.
That was when I thought I saw someone else walking down the street towards her. Too far away for me to make out any details, but he was definitely heading in her direction. I got on the walkie talkie to warn her, but soon as I pressed the call button, static screeched out of it in a deafening roar. Even after I took my finger off the button, the noise continued. Felt like a dentist’s drill going through my ears into my brain….
Eventually it stopped, leaving me feeling partially deaf. When I looked back through the binoculars, the man was gone, and I-330 had gotten whatever she was looking for out of the men’s pockets. She called me over the walkie talkie, telling me to meet her on the ground.
What she got out of their pockets was a pamphlet, advertising a meeting at some nearby church Wednesdays at 3:30 AM. Nothing else to say who’s meeting there or why, but I-330 says that church is going to be our next destination.
This is starting to feel like a scavenger hunt…. A really weird, messed up scavenger hunt.
-Lisa
P.S. Felt I should mention, we called an ambulance for the men who’d attacked I-330. She says they’ll be alright, “just a few minor injuries, nothing that won’t heal.” I’m not sure if I should feel bad for them…. She did beat them pretty thoroughly, but they were attacking her....
Sunday, October 9, 2011
For a while, it seemed like I could pretend I’d forgotten the weirdness about I-330. Seeing her just going through a regular daily routine like any normal person…. Sure, she acts a bit odd sometimes, but in a normal way. If that makes any sense. No talk about running around temples or shooting people who instantly heal themselves. Just day to day life.
Then one day she suddenly asked if I still had my key to the library. Well… yes, I did, since the termination of my employment hadn’t exactly followed official procedure (unless it’s normal to call your boss a pig and run out the door while he shouts more insults than you knew existed at you…), but I didn’t see why I-330 was asking me that….
Then she told me that she wanted me to help her break into the building that night.
I don’t know what I said in response, as my mind just sorta blanked out, but I doubt it was a coherent sentence. She slapped me on the back and thanked me for agreeing to help (I don’t remember agreeing to anything…) before running off.
Spent the rest of the day dreading that night. I tried to find her so I could tell her that I hadn’t agreed to help her, that I didn’t want to be involved with breaking into the place where I used to work, but she’d left the house. So I tried to think of how I could tell her when she got back, but I just knew that as soon as I saw her, she’d have that big, enthusiastic smile on her face, and I’d start stuttering something, and by the time I’d managed to get a full word out we’d already be at the library and it would be too late to get out….
Which I suppose means I’m psychic or something, because that’s exactly how it happened when I-330 came back around midnight dressed in full Doctor Who gear. Though I can’t say I remember the metal device around her wrist with what seemed like several tubes attached to it being from the show. Don’t quote me on that; we only just finished series 3, so I can’t claim to know what the Doctor’s outfit is going to look like later on.
Thus I found myself standing outside the local library in the middle of the night while a possibly crazy woman used my keys to unlock the door. That’s not a situation I ever imagined I would be in. At least no alarms went off; not surprising, really. Back when I was working there, I was the only one who ever remembered to set them.
I felt nervous about following inside after I-330, but didn’t want to stand around on the streets. Never realized how dark the inside of the building could get at night. I-330 didn’t seem bothered; she asked me where the storage rooms were, and when I told her, walked right into the darkness towards it. I started to follow her, but after stopped before I left the small patch of light coming in through the windows facing the street. Something about that place was just… creepy. It was like a completely different place than it is during the day.
When it was clear that I had stopped following, I-330 came back and asked if I was alright. I told her to just go on ahead, I’d wait for her there…. For a moment I thought she’d insist, but instead she told me it was alright, she’d be pack in just a few minutes.
Almost as soon as she’d left, I started regretting my decision. Sure, I wasn’t in the dark… but I was alone, and everything around me was completely black. And of course I’m cursed with an overactive imagination to fill in all the horrible details of what’s inside that darkness.
Then the street lamp which was providing me light started to flicker on and off. Screamed at that. When I looked out the window, the light flicked back on for a second, long enough for me to see someone in… I think it was a suit, may just have been a black shirt, standing underneath it, before the light flicked off again. When it came back on again, it stayed on, but the man I’d seen was gone. Then I got my second chance to scream when, while I was looking out the window to see if I could find that man again, I heard someone behind me say, “Lisa?”
It wasn’t I-330; voice was a bit too male. Turned around, and it was my old boss, from when I was working there. “What the hell are you doing here?” He asked. I panicked; couldn’t make myself speak. He repeated the question, even louder, and started to advance towards me. I thought he was going to hit me or something… until I-330 jumped out of the shadows and tackled him. Pinned him to the ground, then asked if I was okay. Apparently she’d heard me screaming.
After I told her I was alright, she let my boss get up. He immediately started shouting at both of us; what were we doing here, who the fuck did we think we were, what did she think she was doing attacking him…. I-330 just ignored it and, calmly asked him why he was in the library so late at night. He shouted that it wasn’t our business, and besides, we were the ones breaking in, so we should be answering him why-
She cut him off by again asking why he was there, but far more forcefully. To my amazement, it got him to be quiet for a moment. He sat there, really quite for a long time.
It’s been months since I had last seen him, but… he’d changed in that time. At first I thought it was only the shadows, but when I could get a better look at him, I saw it clearly. He had these dark bags under his eyes, the beginning of a ragged beard was growing on his chin, and his hair was a mess. That last detail caught me the most; the man I’d worked under had been insanely vain about his hair. I think he might have spent more time trying to get the right “long, flowing golden hair” look every morning than any girl I knew. Now it was a tangled, dirty mess.
“If I go outside, it will get me.” He was practically sobbing when he said that. Like all the aggression had drained out of him. He started to beg us for help, talking about how it would hunt him down and rip him apart with its teeth, that it was right outside the window waiting for him….
I looked out the window. Didn’t see anything there.
Which meant I was very confused when I-330 looked through the same window and whistled, saying to him, “Wow, you really have gotten yourself into a mess, huh?”
I asked what they were talking about, and I-330 said something about forgetting I couldn’t see it “yet”. What was it?
“I’ll show you.” She said, before placing her hands on each side of my head and directing my gaze out the window. I was being pointed at just another patch of shadows created by the street lamps; nothing special I could tell about it. I said I didn’t see anything, but I-330 kept my head focused on that spot. After a while, I began to feel an overpowering desire to look away. Had to look anywhere but there. I-330’s grip was firm, and stopped my attempts to turn my head. She started whispering in my ear; encouragements, telling me to keep looking. “I know you can do this. Just focus on what’s really there. Don’t make yourself ignore it; pretending it’s not there won’t make it go away. It’s there, standing outside the library. Just focus, and let yourself see it.”
The urge was turning into pain, like a burning in the back of my skull. Tried to close my eyes, but I-330’s hands moved quickly to hold them open. The pain kept building, almost beyond what I thought I could bear, when it suddenly stopped. I was still looking out the window at the same patch of shadow, but now…. What had looked like the silhouette of a light post was now a black tail; the shadow of a car had become a snout; a pair of red brake lights reflected on glass was now a pair of red eyes….
Right outside the library, steadily pacing back and forth in front of the window, was a huge black dog. No. That doesn’t convey the size of it well enough…. It was impossibly huge. It would have towered over all of us.
I-330 gently let go of my head, but I didn’t stop looking at that thing. Wasn’t even paying attention to whatever she was asking my boss, except to think that her tone sounded way too cheerful for that situation. What was that thing? Heard I-330 ask me if there was a back exit we could leave through; I nodded, still paying more attention to the monster outside than to her.
Broke out of it when I-330 grabbed my shoulder and told me it was time to leave. She’d gotten what she’d come for (a manila envelope… still hasn’t shown me what’s inside it), so she didn’t see any reason to stick around. As she started to lead me away from the front of the library, my boss shouted that we couldn’t leave him alone with that beast.
He… he was right. I couldn’t stand him or his harassment when I worked for him. But when I looked at that thing outside, baring its huge teeth at the window…. I don’t think I could leave anyone alone with something like that.
I-330 seemed to have a different opinion. She laughed at his pleading, and said, “You know, I’ve only run into that monster a few times before. But every single time I did, the person it was following deserved everything that happened to them.” And then she just started walking away, like she didn’t care. I didn’t understand how someone could be like that. Seeing someone so desperate, begging for you to save his life… and then to just walk away. So I… um… I shouted at her. Shouted that we couldn’t abandon someone asking for help like that. Shouted that she didn’t have the right to decide what someone deserved have happen to them.
I think we were both surprised by my outburst. Neither of us spoke for a while; I was too shocked by what I’d done to say anything, and I-330 seemed, for the first time since I met her, speechless. Her eye had gotten really big, and she was opening and closing her mouth like she wanted to say something but couldn’t think of anything… actually a lot like how I probably look whenever she says something that catches me off guard. She turned away from me, and for a moment I thought she was angry. But then she turned back, with a huge smile across her face.
“Right!” She said, “Time to save some people! Because that’s what we do!”
Then she asked my boss if he had a car nearby, which he said he did. Told us both to get ready to run to the back door when the time came. When I asked her how we’d know when that time would be, she told me that “it would be pretty obvious.”
After saying that, she threw open the front door and stepped outside. “Yo! Doggy!” She shouted at the huge beast. “Remember me? Looking forward to another round?”
It watched her as she stepped out and walked into the street. Thought she was completely insane, but she looked so self assured, as though nothing bad could possibly happen to her. A low growl was coming through its fangs, loud enough that we could hear it inside. I-330 didn’t seem fazed by it; she pointed her arm towards it; the arm with the weird metal wrist thing I mentioned earlier. Sparks started to come out of the end of one of the tubes on the wrist device… then the tube flew off towards the black dog, exploding like a firework when it hit.
That seemed like a good time to run, so I grabbed my boss and sprinted for the back door. Didn’t care about the dark then; hard to worry about imaginary fears when a very real one is right outside. Once we got through the door, my boss led me to his car, parked half a block away. Could hear that monster’s howling echo across the streets. Started to worry about I-330; she’d been acting confident, but I didn’t think confidence was going to be enough against that thing.
Reached my boss’s car, and he started fumbling with his keys. I looked back to the library, hoping to see I-330 coming…. And those hopes came true, as she soon was sprinting towards us, shouting to get the car started. A mass of shadows, vaguely dog-like in appearance, was close behind her. Boss got the car doors open, I jumped inside, he started the engine; I-330 paused long enough to shoot another tube towards the monster before leaping in a door I opened for her, and the car shot off.
Soon as I could see it vanishing behind us, I had to ask I-330. What was that thing she had on her wrist?
“Well, it’s supposed to be a hands-free flare gun….” She said, “Though admittedly, I’ve only… twice used it for its intended purpose. Normally I just shoot things with it.”
Oh. Okay. That still makes no sense, but I’ll go with it.
That’s also when I noticed she was bleeding really badly from a cut going her stomach, but she dismissed it as “not even a scratch.” You’re right, I-330. It’s not a scratch. Scratches generally don’t look that painful. Nor do they bleed that much. But she shrugged off everything I said about how serious it looked….
Since my boss was at the time remarkably open to suggestions, I-330 had him drop us off at my house. She gave him a short lecture once there. Telling him that the “Black Dog” would hunt him down as long as he lived; he could either keep running forever, or “confront the issue.” He didn’t look too keen on that last option. So I-330 gave him some money, saying it should last him a few weeks, along with a list of places friendly towards “people in situations like yours.” He left right after that; don’t think he wanted to stick around this city much longer.
I should have questioned I-330 more about WHAT THE HELL I had just gone through, but I was too exhausted. Not used to that much adrenaline after midnight. Collapsed in my bed, and slept for a looooong time. When I woke up, I-330 was gone. Hope she’s alright…. That cut did look bad, no matter what she said about it.
And that was how one of the most eventful nights I’ve ever had went. As soon as I-330 gets back, she’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.
-Lisa
Then one day she suddenly asked if I still had my key to the library. Well… yes, I did, since the termination of my employment hadn’t exactly followed official procedure (unless it’s normal to call your boss a pig and run out the door while he shouts more insults than you knew existed at you…), but I didn’t see why I-330 was asking me that….
Then she told me that she wanted me to help her break into the building that night.
I don’t know what I said in response, as my mind just sorta blanked out, but I doubt it was a coherent sentence. She slapped me on the back and thanked me for agreeing to help (I don’t remember agreeing to anything…) before running off.
Spent the rest of the day dreading that night. I tried to find her so I could tell her that I hadn’t agreed to help her, that I didn’t want to be involved with breaking into the place where I used to work, but she’d left the house. So I tried to think of how I could tell her when she got back, but I just knew that as soon as I saw her, she’d have that big, enthusiastic smile on her face, and I’d start stuttering something, and by the time I’d managed to get a full word out we’d already be at the library and it would be too late to get out….
Which I suppose means I’m psychic or something, because that’s exactly how it happened when I-330 came back around midnight dressed in full Doctor Who gear. Though I can’t say I remember the metal device around her wrist with what seemed like several tubes attached to it being from the show. Don’t quote me on that; we only just finished series 3, so I can’t claim to know what the Doctor’s outfit is going to look like later on.
Thus I found myself standing outside the local library in the middle of the night while a possibly crazy woman used my keys to unlock the door. That’s not a situation I ever imagined I would be in. At least no alarms went off; not surprising, really. Back when I was working there, I was the only one who ever remembered to set them.
I felt nervous about following inside after I-330, but didn’t want to stand around on the streets. Never realized how dark the inside of the building could get at night. I-330 didn’t seem bothered; she asked me where the storage rooms were, and when I told her, walked right into the darkness towards it. I started to follow her, but after stopped before I left the small patch of light coming in through the windows facing the street. Something about that place was just… creepy. It was like a completely different place than it is during the day.
When it was clear that I had stopped following, I-330 came back and asked if I was alright. I told her to just go on ahead, I’d wait for her there…. For a moment I thought she’d insist, but instead she told me it was alright, she’d be pack in just a few minutes.
Almost as soon as she’d left, I started regretting my decision. Sure, I wasn’t in the dark… but I was alone, and everything around me was completely black. And of course I’m cursed with an overactive imagination to fill in all the horrible details of what’s inside that darkness.
Then the street lamp which was providing me light started to flicker on and off. Screamed at that. When I looked out the window, the light flicked back on for a second, long enough for me to see someone in… I think it was a suit, may just have been a black shirt, standing underneath it, before the light flicked off again. When it came back on again, it stayed on, but the man I’d seen was gone. Then I got my second chance to scream when, while I was looking out the window to see if I could find that man again, I heard someone behind me say, “Lisa?”
It wasn’t I-330; voice was a bit too male. Turned around, and it was my old boss, from when I was working there. “What the hell are you doing here?” He asked. I panicked; couldn’t make myself speak. He repeated the question, even louder, and started to advance towards me. I thought he was going to hit me or something… until I-330 jumped out of the shadows and tackled him. Pinned him to the ground, then asked if I was okay. Apparently she’d heard me screaming.
After I told her I was alright, she let my boss get up. He immediately started shouting at both of us; what were we doing here, who the fuck did we think we were, what did she think she was doing attacking him…. I-330 just ignored it and, calmly asked him why he was in the library so late at night. He shouted that it wasn’t our business, and besides, we were the ones breaking in, so we should be answering him why-
She cut him off by again asking why he was there, but far more forcefully. To my amazement, it got him to be quiet for a moment. He sat there, really quite for a long time.
It’s been months since I had last seen him, but… he’d changed in that time. At first I thought it was only the shadows, but when I could get a better look at him, I saw it clearly. He had these dark bags under his eyes, the beginning of a ragged beard was growing on his chin, and his hair was a mess. That last detail caught me the most; the man I’d worked under had been insanely vain about his hair. I think he might have spent more time trying to get the right “long, flowing golden hair” look every morning than any girl I knew. Now it was a tangled, dirty mess.
“If I go outside, it will get me.” He was practically sobbing when he said that. Like all the aggression had drained out of him. He started to beg us for help, talking about how it would hunt him down and rip him apart with its teeth, that it was right outside the window waiting for him….
I looked out the window. Didn’t see anything there.
Which meant I was very confused when I-330 looked through the same window and whistled, saying to him, “Wow, you really have gotten yourself into a mess, huh?”
I asked what they were talking about, and I-330 said something about forgetting I couldn’t see it “yet”. What was it?
“I’ll show you.” She said, before placing her hands on each side of my head and directing my gaze out the window. I was being pointed at just another patch of shadows created by the street lamps; nothing special I could tell about it. I said I didn’t see anything, but I-330 kept my head focused on that spot. After a while, I began to feel an overpowering desire to look away. Had to look anywhere but there. I-330’s grip was firm, and stopped my attempts to turn my head. She started whispering in my ear; encouragements, telling me to keep looking. “I know you can do this. Just focus on what’s really there. Don’t make yourself ignore it; pretending it’s not there won’t make it go away. It’s there, standing outside the library. Just focus, and let yourself see it.”
The urge was turning into pain, like a burning in the back of my skull. Tried to close my eyes, but I-330’s hands moved quickly to hold them open. The pain kept building, almost beyond what I thought I could bear, when it suddenly stopped. I was still looking out the window at the same patch of shadow, but now…. What had looked like the silhouette of a light post was now a black tail; the shadow of a car had become a snout; a pair of red brake lights reflected on glass was now a pair of red eyes….
Right outside the library, steadily pacing back and forth in front of the window, was a huge black dog. No. That doesn’t convey the size of it well enough…. It was impossibly huge. It would have towered over all of us.
I-330 gently let go of my head, but I didn’t stop looking at that thing. Wasn’t even paying attention to whatever she was asking my boss, except to think that her tone sounded way too cheerful for that situation. What was that thing? Heard I-330 ask me if there was a back exit we could leave through; I nodded, still paying more attention to the monster outside than to her.
Broke out of it when I-330 grabbed my shoulder and told me it was time to leave. She’d gotten what she’d come for (a manila envelope… still hasn’t shown me what’s inside it), so she didn’t see any reason to stick around. As she started to lead me away from the front of the library, my boss shouted that we couldn’t leave him alone with that beast.
He… he was right. I couldn’t stand him or his harassment when I worked for him. But when I looked at that thing outside, baring its huge teeth at the window…. I don’t think I could leave anyone alone with something like that.
I-330 seemed to have a different opinion. She laughed at his pleading, and said, “You know, I’ve only run into that monster a few times before. But every single time I did, the person it was following deserved everything that happened to them.” And then she just started walking away, like she didn’t care. I didn’t understand how someone could be like that. Seeing someone so desperate, begging for you to save his life… and then to just walk away. So I… um… I shouted at her. Shouted that we couldn’t abandon someone asking for help like that. Shouted that she didn’t have the right to decide what someone deserved have happen to them.
I think we were both surprised by my outburst. Neither of us spoke for a while; I was too shocked by what I’d done to say anything, and I-330 seemed, for the first time since I met her, speechless. Her eye had gotten really big, and she was opening and closing her mouth like she wanted to say something but couldn’t think of anything… actually a lot like how I probably look whenever she says something that catches me off guard. She turned away from me, and for a moment I thought she was angry. But then she turned back, with a huge smile across her face.
“Right!” She said, “Time to save some people! Because that’s what we do!”
Then she asked my boss if he had a car nearby, which he said he did. Told us both to get ready to run to the back door when the time came. When I asked her how we’d know when that time would be, she told me that “it would be pretty obvious.”
After saying that, she threw open the front door and stepped outside. “Yo! Doggy!” She shouted at the huge beast. “Remember me? Looking forward to another round?”
It watched her as she stepped out and walked into the street. Thought she was completely insane, but she looked so self assured, as though nothing bad could possibly happen to her. A low growl was coming through its fangs, loud enough that we could hear it inside. I-330 didn’t seem fazed by it; she pointed her arm towards it; the arm with the weird metal wrist thing I mentioned earlier. Sparks started to come out of the end of one of the tubes on the wrist device… then the tube flew off towards the black dog, exploding like a firework when it hit.
That seemed like a good time to run, so I grabbed my boss and sprinted for the back door. Didn’t care about the dark then; hard to worry about imaginary fears when a very real one is right outside. Once we got through the door, my boss led me to his car, parked half a block away. Could hear that monster’s howling echo across the streets. Started to worry about I-330; she’d been acting confident, but I didn’t think confidence was going to be enough against that thing.
Reached my boss’s car, and he started fumbling with his keys. I looked back to the library, hoping to see I-330 coming…. And those hopes came true, as she soon was sprinting towards us, shouting to get the car started. A mass of shadows, vaguely dog-like in appearance, was close behind her. Boss got the car doors open, I jumped inside, he started the engine; I-330 paused long enough to shoot another tube towards the monster before leaping in a door I opened for her, and the car shot off.
Soon as I could see it vanishing behind us, I had to ask I-330. What was that thing she had on her wrist?
“Well, it’s supposed to be a hands-free flare gun….” She said, “Though admittedly, I’ve only… twice used it for its intended purpose. Normally I just shoot things with it.”
Oh. Okay. That still makes no sense, but I’ll go with it.
That’s also when I noticed she was bleeding really badly from a cut going her stomach, but she dismissed it as “not even a scratch.” You’re right, I-330. It’s not a scratch. Scratches generally don’t look that painful. Nor do they bleed that much. But she shrugged off everything I said about how serious it looked….
Since my boss was at the time remarkably open to suggestions, I-330 had him drop us off at my house. She gave him a short lecture once there. Telling him that the “Black Dog” would hunt him down as long as he lived; he could either keep running forever, or “confront the issue.” He didn’t look too keen on that last option. So I-330 gave him some money, saying it should last him a few weeks, along with a list of places friendly towards “people in situations like yours.” He left right after that; don’t think he wanted to stick around this city much longer.
I should have questioned I-330 more about WHAT THE HELL I had just gone through, but I was too exhausted. Not used to that much adrenaline after midnight. Collapsed in my bed, and slept for a looooong time. When I woke up, I-330 was gone. Hope she’s alright…. That cut did look bad, no matter what she said about it.
And that was how one of the most eventful nights I’ve ever had went. As soon as I-330 gets back, she’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.
-Lisa
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