Kay Is Safe

"Fuck, this hurts. I won't lie.
Doesn't matter how hard I try.
Half the words don't mean a thing
And I know that I won't be satisfied,
So why try ignoring Him?
Make it a dirt dance floor again.
Say your prayers and stomp it out
When they bring that chorus in!"


-points up- This is my "get your ass in gear" song.

Normally I use it when I've procrastinated waaaaay too much on some essay or another, or in studying for a test. I'm panicking about what I haven't done, I listen to the song, I get calm again, and I get the work done. No idea why it does that for me, but it works.

Today, I'm doing something new and using the song for its intended purpose: as an outlet for my anger.

Mother of god...

---

We FINALLY found the damn place at around 1pm this afternoon. It was way further south than expected, but at that point we were more worried about the signs of proxy activity we kept noticing as we got closer. Two masked guys walking down the streets in town like they own the place, and I swear I kept seeing the exact same hoodie'd dude in the residentail area, no matter what road we turned down.

As might be expected, the house itself was run-down and falling in in some places. Not to mention it was located out in the woods in The Middle Of Fucking Nowhere (Southeastern District). Normally I love woodsey areas, but when TPF is involved, you kinda want to avoid places that radiate creepy as much as this one did.

Not that we didn't have a plan, of course. I did mention Sage's brilliant, insane, hilarious-on-some-level-but-not-in-a-way-you-should-spend-much-time-thinking-about plan, didn't I? No?

He found Slender, alright. That was my contribution. He did it by looking for a void in his senses, rather than searching for It outright. The fact that it actually freaking worked means a lot. Seriously, there is so much theoretical information you could extrapolate from that little venture. Maybe I'll write about it later. But not now.

So yeah. We found It. It was waiting in the basement of the house, which was presumably where Kay was being kept. It was waiting for us, of course. It knew we were coming. That was part of the plan, the whole reason I was updating so frequently and so publically, even though it's my policy not to do so. We needed It to be where Kay was so we could be sure of getting It out of the way.

So, without even entering the front lawn of said house, Sage sets up to pull Hilarious Stunt #1. With a chalk circle, a stick from the Pine Barrens, and some mumbo jumbo I probably don't want to understand... he frikking summons the Jersey Devil. Right in front of us.

Granted, I only saw it for a second before it vanished again. That was Hilarious Stunt #2: sic the Jersey Devil on Slenderman.

Yeah, got your attention now, didn't I?

Strictly speaking, though, he didn't sic it on It. He just sort of got it pissed off, pointed it in Slender's direction, and let loose, leaving them to duke it out for a while in another dimension. Which left us to break in with a dramatic rescue relatively hindrance-free.

Finally, there was the matter of the actual break-in. Neither of us were stupid enough to expect anything less than full-blown Alien Geometries, even with Slenderp kept busy for a while. However, enter Hilarious Stunt #3. Sage simply walked around the perimeter of the building for a moment, evidently looking for something. He decided that what he was looking for was a 1st story window on the left side of the house, towards the front. He shielded his face with his jacket, broke the glass on said window, climbed in, and gestured for me to follow. So I did.

And suddenly we were standing in what was obviously a basement, with a bloodstained cot over in one corner with some medical equipment and god knows what else. We had reached our destination, just like that.

I have no fucking clue how Sage did that. I mean, he explained to me beforehand that he knew how to make the labyrinth work in his favor, but I didn't really believe him until right then. As of now, I am going to make him teach me that trick. I am so serious.

So we were there. And the local proxy - this hulking six-foot-something guy - was standing on the other side of the room, his back turned, looking expectantly at the only door in the room. He was holding Kay up off the floor with one arm and holding a knife to her throat with the other.

Clearly he was expecting us. Clearly he had some dramatic you-are-too-late-mwahahaha speech planned out in his head, complete with the exact intonation of gloating and evil laughter.

Clearly, he thought we were stupid.

Thanks to Sage, we had just bypassed the maze entirely, and were now in perfect position to get the jump on the bastard.

We made our move. We weren't quiet enough. The proxy heard movement where there shouldn't have been and turned around, finally seeing us there and having no clue how the hell we got there but ready to murder us anyway. Sage pulled out his bokken and the proxy moved the knife from Kay's throat to a combat position...

...and suddenly the proxy was clutching a growing red stain on the side of his shirt and staggering away, and Kay was on the ground, sobbing and clutching a bloodied pair of scissors.

We didn't hesitate. Sage went to the proxy and started hitting him, hard, and I ran straight for Kay. Jesus-fucking-Christ, she was in bad shape, but it didn't take long to figure out that not much of it was permanent. Who was it who said that it's "a fine and delicate art, to inflict the greatest amount of pain on the human body while causing the minimal amount of physical damage"? Well, whoever it was, he was just as big a sick, twisted fuck as the asshole Sage was currently beating the shit out of.

I swear to god, I just... Kay's tiny, y'know? She's an adult and all, but she looked so little right then. Somehow, I never imagined her being so small, but... god.

There wasn't a square inch of her that wasn't either bruised or bloody. And I do mean that as literally as possible, because at that point her clothes were in such tatters that she might as well have been wearing nothing. Tears were streaming down her face and it was clear she was fighting just to stay conscious. She was soaking wet, and there was no heat in the building, and her body kept making these half-hearted attempts at a shiver to try and conserve body heat, but she didn't even have the energy for that... I couldn't even tell what color her hair was, it was so matted with blood - both dry and wet. There were these little shallow cuts across every visible bit of skin, just deep enough to bleed and keep bleeding. The only deep cuts I could find would a couple of dried-up puncture wounds over the nerve bundles at the shoulder. Well, that, and the numerous needle-piercings that covered her arms. And some telltale rub-marks around her wrists and throat. And the 2nd degree burns on the soles of her feet.

And. And. And. And. And.

Who... Who does this? I mean... fuck!

I'm angry, I'm beyond angry, but thinking about it all again... I'm sad too. I just...

I don't know.

Sage was still fighting the proxy fighting at this point, buying me as much time as he could, but I wasn't really paying attention. This was just too horrifying. I slipped into a light trance - the better one that Sage taught me to do before we left home - and went to work.

The main thing to remember about making anything do anything - including making a human body repair itself, or at least start to - is that you have to imagine yourself to be that thing. I couldn't imagine myself to be Kay; that kind of sensory overload is beyond my comprehension. But I could work on small parts of her at a time. The punctures at her shoulder became less deep. A few bruises lightened in color. The blisters on her feet shrunk in size as I drew out the heat and channeled it back into her core body temperature. Or... that was my intention, anyway, I'm not sure if that particular trick actually worked. But her feet did get a little better...

And she did stop crying. And opened her eyes.

I... I don't even know how to...

She looked at me, and I froze. We're friends, but we're online friends - she'd never seen what I looked like before in her life, just like I had never seen her until now. Did she know who I was? Did she know I was on her side? The expression on her face, the guardedness of her eyes... I'm not going to forget that look for a long, long time.

She looked at me, and then she looked toward the middle of the room. I did too. Sage was still fighting, although he was getting pushed back by now. The proxy was, after all, way bigger than him, but he still hadn't noticed what I was doing. I looked back to Kay and... I don't know what I must have looked like at that point. Questioning? Pleading? Furious? Terrified? Whatever it was, she understood.

More than understood; she started trying to pull herself upright, biting her lip until it bled to keep from making a sound. I helped her as best I could, and we eventually got her settled on my back. She weighed nothing, I swear. I mean, I'm twice her weight to begin with, but I'm not particularly strong, I should've felt something. And I'm going to have to throw out my coat, because I don't think I'll be able to get the blood out of it.

Christ.

So I was carrying her, doing my best to hold her on without hurting her, and I edged along the outside of the room. Sage knew this part of the plan too, and did his best to keep bastard-proxy looking the other way. I had just reached the door and was wondering how the heck we were going to make it out if Sage couldn't lose the proxy (Kay was unconscious again by this point, I think), when suddenly said proxy hit the floor with a loud thump and didn't get back up.

Sage was standing over him with his bokken, breathing hard, and he kinda fell down, and I almost dropped Kay but then he got up again and he was actually okay, just really really tired. And then he started to head back toward where we came in, but then he stopped, and looked around, and said those magical, heart-stopping words:

"Oh, fuck me sideways. The maze shifted."

That... was bad. Like, really, really bad. We were counting on a quick getaway, considering Kay was unconscious and in more pain than I cared to think about, I'm useless in any sort of combat, and Sage just got out of a fight with a frigging proxy that was likely several weight classes above him and wasn't likely to stay down for more than a minute or two.

And... fuck, those mazes are terrifying. 'Cause, obviously we went through, it was our only option. We went through the only door in the room, and there was nothing but hallways filled with more doors, and the doors all looked the same, and I didn't dare touch a single one except when Sage told me to. Sage was doing... something on the way out, I think he was projecting himself ahead to figure out the right path. It probably took less time than it seemed like, but it was still the most heart-pounding experience I've ever had to go through, because I was the only one with my eyes open. Me! The most inexperienced one there, carrying one and leading the other by the arm while he figured out our route and gave me instructions as we went. Blind leading the blind? Deaf leading the blind, at the very least!

And the entire time, I kept hearing things, little groans coming from behind the doors, little moans and gasps of pain. Christ, were there people in there?! Real, living people, trapped behind those doors? Because if there were, we left them there. We abandoned them in that awful place. Was Kay about to become one of those people? Were they more victims of bastard-proxy's sadism? Sage kept telling me that there were traps behind all those doors, that we couldn't go that way, but I heard them! I think Kay heard them too, or heard something even though she was unconscious, because she kept crying in her sleep, her whimpers adding another to the cacophany in my ears...

My god.


Eventually we got out, but out of a goddamn third story window in the back this time. Still no sign of Slenderfuck fuck fuck fucking what the FUCK kind of bastard ORDERS THIS SHIT



We got out and went straight to the car. We couldn't have been in there for long, but it was already getting dark. Fucking mazes fucking time distortions... Sage drove this time, I sat in the backseat with Kay. I wrapped her up in the blankets we had ready, and I did as much for her as I could. We got to the nearest hospital problem-free, and Sage signed her in instead of me, since his address is already known to proxies but mine isn't. They wouldn't let either of us stay with her while they worked on her, since we're not family, but they also weren't allowed to ask any questions about how we found her that weren't medically relevant.

Sage was the one who came up with the story - he said we rescued her from some guy in a back alley. There's no way that should hold water, and yet it is. No one's asked us a damn thing, even with all the cuts and bruises and some of them from the very beginning are four days healed and why aren't they noticing that? And that's not even getting into all the drugs in her system! Oh god, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do if the police come, but I can't just leave her here. She's not even awake yet. They're dressing her wounds and treating her for exposure, and they're thinking about putting her on some stuff that'll make the detox easier, but they're not sure yet, since they don't know what drugs he was using on her.

So now Sage and I are just sitting in the waiting room of the hospital. He just got off the phone with Lucien - he sent us his phone number along with Kay's address, so we called when we figured out her's location this morning, and when we arrived at the hospital around 7pm, and again just now - and he'll be here soon. Not right away, but soon.


Damn, it's getting late now. And I already know I can't leave Kay, but I did manage to think of one last excuse for my mom. I'm using Darlene again - said she and the others drew up a movie night after training and session at the last minute. Mom's always glad for opportunities for me to socialize more than I do, so she bought it, but said I have to come home tomorrow. That's that, I guess.

......

...................

I really don't know what else to say. I just... I don't know.