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Building 17, Part 2

"You need my WHAT?" I had to take a step back. What would you do, Readers, if your principal asked for your blood?

Said principal casually drew a knife from his belt. "Your blood. The creature in there wants an offering."

"I would hope you knew better than to call a spirit a creature, Mr. Lee Anders." Prudence took the knife away from him. "That looked really threatening...."

"I'm a principal."

"Did you say a spirit?" I interjected. "Spirits haven't been seen in centuries..."

"Just because they aren't seen doesn't mean they aren't there. You're made of cells, no? Atoms? Quarks and gluons?"

"I-I guess....but--"

"Besides, magic can't hurt them."

"Nor should it." Prudence gave the principal a look. "The spirit should be appeased, not attacked. Which is why we need your blood."

"Why my blood?" I pulled my sweater sleeves down a bit. "Doesn't all blood work in spellwork?"

"This isn't spellwork, it's an offering. And your blood is....special."

".....No?"

"Yes. Your blood is....unchanged. It's what we call 'Unmisted'."

"....I've never heard of that."

"Its a local phenomena. But it just means that, for now, your blood is special. And sadly, that means you're a....delicacy."

I shuddered at the thought. "I--"

Principal Lee Anders stopped me. "This is our only option son. We need your blood."

I resisted for a bit, but eventually I gave in. None of Principal Lee Anders' spells worked, and Prudence's meditations gave her the same answer. My blood was the only way this would end.

Prudence carefully pushed my sleeve up and drew her knife. I clenched my eyes shut and turned away, and winced. Luckily she made the....incision on my arm instead of my palm. Principal Lee Anders quickly bandaged the wound while Prudence smeared my blood on her hands. I felt woozy; it was too much for me. The cut, the...ritual....

I tried not to throw up.

Prudence reached for the vines with both hands, and before she even touched them the vines fell away. Prudence glanced back at Principal Lee Anders, then tried to enter Building 17. However, she stopped short. "Ail'sur'ia..." She cursed. Prudence then gave me an apologetic look. "It wants you to come with."

Dear Readers, at that moment I spoke my mind.

"Are you guys going to feed me to a spirit?"

"Wha--no!" Prudence rushed to deny.

"No harm will come to you, Mr. Page." Principal Lee Anders came up and put a hand on my shoulder, and a chill went down my spine. "I swear it."

Our magician of a principal wrapped a silver thread around my wrist and Prudence's, then used golden confetti mixed with sand to draw a circle that hovered in the air around him. "Stay behind me at all times."

When we entered Building 17, the vines came up again, trapping us inside. The interior was destroyed; the walls were split by tree roots, and flowers grew at random intervals. Moss covered everything, and small glowing motes were the only source of light. It was warm, and the air felt wet.

I looked ahead at Principal Lee Anders, and he was smiling. "Let's do this."

[End of Part 2]

I saw that girl again

The girl who lives with Micah Prince. He doesn't have a sister, so....a friend? A cousin? A girlfriend?

For some reason, I cannot remember this girl. Beyond this blog, I also keep a journal with me in case I get hacked or something gets corrupted.

I have four seperate journal entries about her. Nothing about a name, or anything weird--just how I've seen her around.

No one seems to know who this girl is, and when I asked Micah he agressively said "Don't worry about it," and left it at that.

I remember intending to approach the girl and ask but....nothing. I can't seem to remember her.

I'm making this post now in hopes to remember. Focusing on her seems to stop....whatever this is, but the instant I get distracted....

I had to write this post, dear readers, five times. That's how quickly I forgot this girl.

Ycm aes vxms ket sxyda ymc?

Q cyijqau. Edu jxqj mybb ru hucutyut.

i really enjoy learning about misery and hope to get the chance to read more about it :)

Thank you. Spread the word--people need to know about this place. ((For real though, thank you~))

THERE ARE NO BEES IN MISERY

Today In Misery

I was outside of the deli with Julia when it happened.

The deli is settled between the second and third lights of a series of four intersections. Every road was empty, and every light on Crown Street, which led directly into the Lower Marcus Ward, had turned green at the same time.

I assume the driver of the green sedan yelled out "Score!" to themselves, since the moment they turned onto Crown Street they immediately started to pick up speed.

They didn't even reached the second light before the hood collapsed onto itself, as if they had hit something. The car spun and struck a mailbox, knocking it over, and then finally stopped. Julia and one other passerby ran to save the person.

Before the police came to try and control the situation, I managed to get a look at the sedan's damage. It was curved, like it was trying to wrap around a pole.

Since there were no cars, I tried to find what the person hit, and was met with empty air.

I did hear....something. I couldn't determine the sound or the source, only that it was getting further away.

Today in Misery

As school ended and all of the students left their respective buildings, a murder of crows descended and swarmed around a random student, carrying her away. No one seemed to register what was happening, even as she struggled and and kicked and screamed for help.

When I asked Julia what the fuck just happened, she informed me "That's just Margo. This happens every day."

Mists of Misery 2

Dear Readers, I have made a breakthrough in my study of the mists.

A classmate of mine, named Julia, mentioned a friend of hers named Cynthia. She went missing a month before I came into town, and right before her disappearance, she was suddenly overcome with a desire to study the mists.

When Julia heard about what I was doing, she gave me Cynthia's notebook, as a warning and a message, to get word out about her friend's disappearance.

Cynthia's notebook doesn't contain much; however, she attributes much of the strange behaviors of the mists to an entity she had seen within them. Appearing every night at midnight, this "Man in The Mists" appears to generate the mists, and prowls within them, watching, yet unseen. According to the notebook, it is guessed that he cannot see or move outside of the mists, as the Man avoided random holes within the mists, one of which happened to capture Cynthia's house the night she saw the Man. There is little information beyond that [she gives wildly different explanations for what he could be, amongst which a god, a fey, a monster, and an incomprehensible alien are given]. The book ends a night before Cynthia vanished, in which she states that she intends to meet and/or capture the Man in the Mists.

And so, dear readers, two questions arise with this new information: who is the Man In The Mists? And where is Cynthia Jennings?

Building 17

No one could enter Building 17 today. While it wasn't exactly because of the overgrown vines wrapping around the entire property, growing denser and knotting at any entrance, especially the door, they certainly helped.

My peers weren't exactly....affected by the blockage. They saw it as an opportunity to mess with their phones and have a break; two couples even decided to have a picnic right then and there.

Meiriam, of course, went to grab her father, Principal Lee Anders, who proceeded to do a particularly....intricate ritual that required dancing around the building, swallowing a stick of butter whole, and stabbing a statue made of some kind of melon with a firepoker.

The vines choking Building 17 blackened, but did not wilt. Apparently, this was not the intended effect, since Principal Lee Anders frowned, crossed his arms, and said "The woods rot serves to the feeding of his growth." Whatever that meant.

No one except me seemed to pay much attention to Principal Lee Anders as he tried to free the building several different ways, which includes: using wichfyre to burn the vines away [it didn't], talking to the vines using the language of flowers [from what I gathered, the flowers grown by the vines in response essentially said "fuck off"], and simply hacking at the vines with the firepoker.

There were ten minutes left in class when Principal Lee Anders decided to call for outside help.

I didn't expect my neighbor Prudence to show up, trying to ride her bike in her vestments; as an Oracle, the priestesses who followed the Goddess Aliurian, her garments were highly impractical. The vestments were designed to show off as much skin as possible, to display the jagged tree like scars that all Oracles had to bear.

Prudence approached the vines and pressed her palm against them, letting her eyes drift close. She stayed like that while my peers began to wander off, some moving on to their next class, while some outright skipped, using Principal Lee Anders attention to the blockage to leave without his notice. My next class still im Building 17, so I had to stay while the next group of students approached and were faced with the same problem as the previous period.

Prudence pulled away from the vines with a worried look, and pulled Principal Lee Anders aside to talk. They would occasionally point at me, which just made me hug myself and try to seem smaller than I already was. If they thought I had something to do with this catastrophe, they would be sorely mistaken; I still wasn't allowed to do the practical labs in any of the thaumaturgy classes.

Principal Lee Anders approached me with his hands behind his back, and Prudence followed, fidgeting with her mossy hair. They pulled me to the side, away from the other students.

"Story," Prudence began, wringing her hands. "We, uhm..."

Principal Lee Anders interjected. "We need your help, son."

"With....the vines?" They nodded. "I don't see how I can help..."

"It's not you, per se..."

"Your blood, Mr. Page. We need your blood."

[End of Part 1]

It rained today. This doesn't sound odd enough for Misery; it isn't.

It's what happened in the rain that concerns me.

Micah Prince, heart throb of MSAA according to Julia, and a man of many secrets, is the only one in my neighborhood with a fence. No one knows why this is. Nor do the Princes care, since the fence is grimy, warped, and has no upkeep at all.

Perhaps this is why.

When the rain struck the fence, runoff revealed two different messages.

The first was: "Q xuqhj veh q xuqhj. Q iekb veh q iekb." Running it through a few ciphers (as I did with most cryptic messages like this), revealed, when using Rot16: "A heart for a heart. A soul for a soul."

The second message didn't need translating. It simply said "If you love someone, you have to be prepared to kill them."

When the rain stopped and the fence dried, the messages disappeared.