Halloween alone

Dear Mother and Father,

I haven't left Der Hut des Jaeger since Thursday evening. Strangely, I'm beginning to feel a trifle lonesome, although I do spend so much time by myself no matter what. Last month, at least, I had all manner of fantastical mirages to keep me company. I've been using the time to improve Squeezy, so that now it's at the point where it can move on its own when I set it down on the floor. Still, Squeezy is not an intelligent lifeform and isn't quite what one would call "company", no matter how wonderful a pillow it makes.
Tonight will most likely be the most hazardous night of the year. I wonder how all my friends are doing. Is Mrs. Lowey safe when she "shifts between planes", or will she accidentally end up in some Elder Thing's lair? Will Miss Dreamscape defeat the sea monsters? Are Miss Gearbox and Mr. Bayn safe from said sea monsters? How is Miss Blackheart managing her magical powers? Has Mr. Paine gotten himself into any more trouble? Is Miss Corryong's life as perfect as she is? Does Mr./Miss Bermann have everthing he/she needs?
I wish there were someone I could ask about all this. In fact, some of those things I should have just asked on Thursday, if I had been able to think of it with so many people around.
I imagine you two are still safe, as Boston was never one of the more aetherically unstable parts of the world. Do enjoy yourselves, whatever you may be doing!
Love,
Your Shaqad

Back to square one

Dear Mother and Father,
I'm back to where I "started", so to speak: I'm spending the night in that little tavern in Winterfell. I did miss the gingerbread, I'll admit, though of course that isn't why I'm here. A girl from Steelhead gave me a copy of the Landmark I'd dropped earlier, so I had a chance to go back again--to someplace that wasn't Steelhead nor the middle of nowhere. I took that chance, and it felt like returning home.
The place was quite crowded this time, and the aether could barely handle all the projectiles in motion! Some of the people I was so glad to see again I could hardly stand it (though I composed myself!), and some people were here whom I had never seen before, most of the latter category being close to my age. But they weren't like the Boston children who look at me strangely no matter what I'm doing. They were very polite and courteous, and the girl who gave me the Landmark was all in all very sweet. I think there is an actual chance of making friends my own age!
I got to sit next to Mr. Captain Veles this time--not that that means anything to me or anyone else, of course. It's just a minor observation.
The theme this time was Halloween, and if you remember my reasons for running off on the lovely Steelhead folks, you will know that Halloween is not a good theme for me to hear about at this point in my life. Indeed, I had intended to just stop by for the poetry slam and then follow somebody home to find secure lodging, but after a steady stream of unsettling poems, I decided not to go anywhere after all. (Nobody reacted helpfully to my inquiry about being taken back to America. If only...)
One thing of note that separated tonight from every other night was that I had found a poem. I didn't read it, of course. Somebody else had a poem by the same author, and I would have felt strange drawing attention to myself anyhow. It's this poem by Mr. Lovecraft, the only writer I know of who ever expressed interest in little Dunwich, and it's called Hallowe'en in the Suburbs:

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
And the harpies of upper air,
That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
Never shone in the sunset’s gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
Where the rivers of madness stream
Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind blows through the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power
Spreads sleep o’er the cosmic throne,
And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and plain
That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw
To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,
The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
Shall some day be with the rest,
And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,
And the leprous spires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
Of horror and death are penned,
For the hounds of Time to rend.

It's most dreadfully gloomy, perhaps to an even greater degree than the poems that did get read tonight. Instead of that one, I found myself repeating near-silently to myself the little rhyme the parson in our first neighborhood used to say sometimes.

The stars have got aligned again:
It isn't if, but merely when.
The hills may roar, the earth may shake,
But we've got hope no power can break,
For patterned stars and shattered minds
Can never touch the Love that binds
Our souls to God upon His throne,
Though in the flesh we stand alone.
So hold Him tight throughout the night;
His grace will hold us strong--
The whip-poor-wills can't bear you any place you don't belong.
So don't you ever tremble at the wonders in the sky:
For we know at the end of things, Death itself shall die.

It's strange, since I know his theology is entirely heretical next to yours. Why did I even retain that poem in my memory? I guess it's not uncharacteristic of me to recall irrelevancies above things of import.
Yet, I really do need a lot of comforting right now. I'm squeezing Squeezy right now, and it's helping a little, but not to the point where I'd be interested in going outside.
The Jaegerpeople were joking about eating brains tonight, but I know they wouldn't really do it. They're such a lovely bunch, and if they wanted to go on a brain-eating spree, they would have done it by now.
Did I mention that Mama Valdy Miss Dreamscape was here? She had things she needed to urgently focus on, though, so she barely got to interact with anybody. On the bright side, she doesn't seem obviously upset at me. Of course, either way it's best to keep my distance. If she really is upset, that could be dangerous. If she still likes me by some miracle, I oughtn't test her patience. That would be like collecting all the most beautiful glass Christmas ornaments in the world and taking a bath in them.
You know, I'm a bit worried about the Steelhead citizens who aren't Jaegerpeople. What if someone like Miss Gearbox, who gave me the Landmark, were gone tomorrow due to a head-stealing alien attack? I think I would feel rather guilty.
I'm glad at least you're safe back home in Boston where there are no monsters.

Love always,
Your Shaqad

Regarding this blog

((Okay...I guess I haven't had much luck hand writing my blog entries, either. How many media have I attempted this in so far? Okay...let's see...with this format, I guess I can sprinkle the illustrations among typed-out text. Will that be okay? I guess if typing works out for everyone else...))

((Here goes...))



((P.S. This is my first entry on the blog. I've dated things according to when they happened to my character rather than when I wrote them.))

Flash Fiction [third person]

((Okay, I don't think I'm going to submit this to Canolli Capolini's Flash Fiction contest thingy, but I did want to see if I could get this entry a)done and b)within the 600-word limit, since I'm usually the most verbose creature in the world. I may have broken Second Life TOS by quoting Miss Dreamscape directly from a private log, but it's only one in-character line and I don't think she'd mind too much, in spite of the bleh quality of the context. Here's what I came up with.))

It was funny to think that Shaqad had once been afraid of locomotives. Here she was riding one of her own free will for the second time, and fear was the last thing on her mind. Actually, that last part was strangest of all: Her first trip was to hide from a monster, which was still there. But this time...this time she was going to make lemonade from life's lemons.
"Mirage Mother," she said to the hypnogogic hallucination beside her, "do you think my real parents will like the new me?"
"Don't be silly," the hallucination replied. "We are your real parents."
"Speak for yourself," said the hallucination of her father. "I still say it was the milk man."
The first hallucination rolled her eyes.
Shaqad took the unfinished construct head out of her unreasonably voluminous pocket. "I did the best I could," she whispered.
"The seams are very messy," remarked Mirage Mother. "It's hard to believe it's your best."
"It's a decent first try!" Mirage Mrs. Lowey offered.
(Meanwhile, the only other passenger on the train who actually existed got up and discreetly moved to another car.)
"I know I could do better," Shaqad decided, trying not to let her imagination's words impact her, "but this is really very urgent. This needs to be sewn onto my body before it gets unusable, and the Sparkpeople still need to give it a nice brain--"
"You shouldn't always rely on other people!" interrupted Mirage Father.
"Oh, but Father, you know how I am with machines! I'm doing this for you. I want the new me to be perfect. She--I'll be part construct and part clank, better than what nature did! I'll be clever and talented and"--here she locked eyes with her "mother"--"friendly and charming and graceful, and everyone will love me!" Shaqad took a deep, wavering breath. "Even you."
"It dun make senze, though," said Mirage Valdyr. "Forst hyu run away from der monster, und then hyu run right beck to it to keel hyuself?"
"Oh, but I'm not killing myself!" exclaimed Shaqad. "I'll only have my head replaced! The King of the Whippoorwills just said to 'Go home'. He didn't say how much of me."
She gazed out the perpetually reshaping window at a grove of trees that was playing ball with an uprooted rosebush. A solitary farmhouse stood nearby, slowly melting onto the grass.
"I wish the mirages would stop," she remarked.
"Well," said Mirage Mother, "it's as the Whippoorwill said. God punishes children for staying up a week past their bedtime."
Shaqad sighed, then smiled brilliantly. "The new me won't do such silly things. I bet she won't even have nightmares."
Just then, the subway train came to a stop in the middle of Steelhead. It took Shaqad, in her sleep-addled haze, almost a minute to notice, but when she did, she gathered her things and rushed out.
Unfortunately, the door frame in her world was melting; she misjudged what to hold onto and fell spectacularly onto the cobblestone.
"Ach! Are hyu hokay, Mizz Ashbourne?" cried Mirage Valdyr.
And then her world came apart at the seams. It was a quote from her memory: A real quote from a real person, and that gave it power. Where were her defenses? Tears came; she permitted them.
"Get up, Little Lady! You're embarrassing me!" Mirage Mother scolded. But that no longer mattered, for her world was undone. In this strange new universe, quite possibly, she was not okay. Even more strangely...it mattered.
Less than an hour later, she had stumbled into a warehouse full of soothing mint and cried herself to sleep. She awoke two days after that, having shed all her plans and waking dreams.

She never found the construct head again.

Up past bedtime

((Transcript with corrected spelling and slightly improved punctuation:
Dear Mother and Father,

I appear to have had a religious experience.
After I had been standing in the corner for three days, a magical bird appeared to me and told me secrets, but some of them were lies.

He told me you two were dead, so I tried to hurt him with a tree branch, but he flew away every time.
I love you very much.
I saw you today, but I knew you were a mirage.
...took the rags out of my stuffed raccoon...
...now re-stuff it to make it more squeezable, like so...

...stitching together organelles...
...microorganism not so micro...
...very squeezable...
...with squidgy things from off The Grid...
I will name the cootie version of my raccoon Squeezy.
...Really wish mirages of you would stop telling me what a bad job I'm doing.

The Whippoorwill says the mirages are God's punishment for staying up so late past my bedtime. How many days has it been?
I don't know how seriously to take him because he lies and also told me to kill all my friends and arrange their bodies like so:
I think he's mad.
Anyway, I love you very much.

Love,
Shaqad
))

As the shock dies down

Dear Mother and Father,

In case you were curious, the locomotive took me to a house for sale and a large garden. I have not seen any people yet. I've been here for a day and a half but not yet seen any people. It serves me right, really, to be alone after abandoning everyone in the whole Grid who thinks more of me than of a heap of dirt. I can't believe how pathetic I am. Why did I do that? I certainly didn't increase their odds of survival by taking off like that. What was I thinking? No, I suppose I wasn't thinking. I was feeling. I do that constantly. Looking over past letters I have waiting to be sent home to you, I see a sickening recurrence of phrases like "I felt". How could I let a stupid thing like this control me when there are more important things to do? With God as my Witness, I swear on my honor as a lady and a woman that I will not abandon those close to me out of fear or any other frivolous emotion.
Do you think it will be necessary and possible to catch some future train back to Steelhead? The grasses and the walls of the buildings around me have begun to shift and breathe a bit for some reason, so I'm concerned that it may be not be a simple task to undo my foolish mistake.
Would you like to know more about my last night at the tavern? I met new people, so maybe you would like to know.
The two who stick in my mind are Ms. Aaoee the Chinese fairy princess (except they call them "honnio" over there) and Ms. Requiem the vampire witch, both friends of Mama Miss Dreamscape's. "Fairy princess" gives a decent impression of Ms. Aaoee, but you really wouldn't expect a vampire witch to be like Ms. Requiem. She's nothing like the witches of Dunwich: She was trying to help Miss Blackheart the music lady with the latter's magical powers so that everyone could fight against the evil monster better. She's also nothing like the vampires in storybooks: Far from being a beastly abomination, she is beautiful, elegant, confident, and cultured--so much so that she reminds me of my own beloved Mother. Perhaps all the people who wrote stories about vampires were ignorant about what kind of creatures they really are. In fact, Ms. Requiem looks more like an angel than anything else. Do you suppose vampires might be a misunderstood breed of angel?
The two of them and Mr. Paine were talking about a Yucoozah. I don't know any Chinese, but it sounds like a kind of boat.
Mr. Paine was there looking alive, well, and human. I'm so very glad things turned out okay for him.
There was a clank-person called Anevka who looked and acted exactly like a human except for a wind-up key on her back which made explosions in distant locations when wound too tightly. You like clanks, don't you, Father?
My filthy digression is not fooling anyone. I know I've been bad. If it helps any, I've located a corner and am standing in it, thinking about what I did. When we next meet, you may want to pray for my soul (not that I deserve it, of course). I wish the corner would hold still. I don't think my head is quite right. Perhaps that follows naturally from my heart not being right.

Love,
Shaqad

This world has experienced a fatal error

Dear Mother and Father,

I have sinned. I have abandoned from not only you two but also Miss Dreamscape. I am afraid. I left without permission on a train--yes, a train--because there are more frightening things in this world now than trains. I'm on the train right now, as I write this, and I'm barely even thinking about that fact.
Those dreams I mentioned are real. That's a strange thing to say, but everyone who gathered at Mama Valdy's this evening was talking about the head-stealing monster as if it were real. Okay, that's not too shocking in itself given what I've already seen since coming here. I mean, I knew from the stories that places like this had fearsome alien monsters from beyond the Grid, though the cleaned-up versions the neighbors told me only had them trapping ladies in music boxes and forcing them to dance. But it gets worse: The grownups were afraid. They were worried. They didn't know what to do. I am in a city full of Sparkpeople and Jaegerpeople and magical creatures and clanks! If something has the adults worried, this city is in deep trouble. I did not expect anything like this to happen. I guess this is why Miss Dreamscape has been out hunting so much lately, but I didn't expect anything this serious. If she can survive falling from the upper atmosphere, I'm sure she can survive a confrontation with an evil pointy sea alien, but what if she never finds it? What if it can hide magically, and what if it kills everyone in Steelhead who can be killed? I didn't think people could die in the Steamlands. Mr. Baron said they had the medical technology to raise the dead. What of that? What's the problem? Miss Blackheart said they don't resurrect royalty (So much for being a princess!), but that does not begin to cover all of this. This world is so much more complicated and scary than my worst nightmares had hinted.
I'm so stupid. Nobody else is running away. They even said that since Mama Valdy's is high above the water, there's less of a chance that the monster will climb that far. I'm so stupid. I left myself more vulnerable running out in the middle of the night to find a train than I ever was huddled under the bed on the top floor of the barracks. I made it here alive, though. What does that mean?
I don't know where I'm going. The old subway station was nearly shut down and there was only one area other than Steelhead that it still goes to. I've never heard of that other place, so I don't know where I'm going. With my luck, I'll be even farther from you than before, but there's a teeny chance I'll find some way to get home.
Will I be any safer outside of Steelhead? They listed places that don't have monsters. But if the Steelhead people can't handle this, how could anyone else? It might get stronger and spread its territory. There might even be more of its kind out there. Is it only a matter of time? May God in Heaven help us all!
I am glad that at least you are a long distance from the sea alien. I hope you remain safe forever.

Love,
Shaqad