Runaway: Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Chapter 6

Confession time, part three: I’m alone.  

I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone.  I’m alone and I’m busting my ass to pay bills and I’m terrified of what I’ve become, of what I’m becoming, and of something coming back to get me.  I’m stuck in my own head and miserable but with no where better to go.

Sometimes I just hole up in my room and try crying into a pillow, but there’s no catharsis.  I’ve tried crying after writing about this, and I’ve tried crying and just “letting go”.  Shit, I’ve tried just thinking of how absolutely mind numbingly terrified I am of the future and crying and whispering “I can’t I can’t I can’t”.    Yeah, the tears come, but there’s no release.  No matter what, I don’t feel any better, just more tired...numb, maybe.

 I think it’s because I’m not a person who really cries because she’s overwhelmed and just needs to get all the emotion out; that’s how most people who are “criers” are thought of: The world just got too much and to function they just need to let alllll that nasty emotion out so that she can thin kand act rationally letting.   Crying as emotional bloodletting.

 That’s not how I cry.  All my memories, what I have of them, aren’t like that.  I was never a quiet crier.  I was...I am I guess...the type who cries for attention.  When I cry tears stream and my face changes color and I get loud and bawl my eyes out and internally I’m just praying for a hug or a pat on the back or even just a quiet shushing voice telling me that everything is going to be okay.  I want the attention.  I need it just then.

Crying for attention gets a bad reputation.  “Oh, she’s not REALLY sad, she’s just crying for attention.”  No fuckface, I’m not crying “JUST for attention”, I’m crying because I NEED attention and HELP and my fucked up brain won’t let me ask for help like a normal person.  When I’m crying, it’s because I’ve tried everything else I can think of to help fix this bad situation and every instinct and neuroses in me has been shouting at me to say “I’m fine” to people because not being fine is a sign of weakness…

And then when I finally break down, when I finally have that big blow up, it’s because I’ve reached my limit and I desperately need help and part of me is counting on someone else’s decency to not kick me when I’m at my most vulnerable.  Me crying is me being desperate enough to ask for help!  It’s not meant to be manipulative, not JUST crying for attention.  It’s damn traumatic is what it is.

 But it’s hard to cry like that, to ask for help, when you don’t know who you can trust.  I haven’t cried for help like that since I escaped.  I’m terrified at what seems like the very REAL possibility that instead of getting help I’ll just get “taken care of”.

 FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!  FUCK MY LIFE!

 I’ve got roommates, yeah, but we don’t talk.  We all just leave each other alone.  Alone.  Always Alone.

(Get out of your head, Alice.  Otherwise you’ll just drive yourself even more batshit than you’re already feeling.)

I think that they’re like me; just trying to get by or run away from something, and they’re splitting the rent under the table because they don’t have much money, themselves and no one wants to tell each other where we’re getting the money from.  We don’t talk much.  We barely know things about each other.  They know nothing about me.   But I’m learning things about them.

One of them, Jenny, started smelling funny last week.  Not bad funny.  Just unusual.  Like oranges.  Not real oranges, either but that fake orange scent put on orange flavored candy.  Like an orange flavored lollipop. I’d asked her if she was wearing a new perfume and she told me she didn’t wear perfume.  

Weird, but I let it go.

A few days ago, she still smelled like oranges, but piled on top of that was the faint aroma of a freshly cut lawn in the prime of spring.  And no, I had no idea  that fucking lawn sod could smell so specific but those are the only fucking words that are coming to my fucking brain.  

That’s not the freakiest part:  “Are you jealous of someone and now you want something of theirs?”  I asked.  The words just vomited right out of me, mean girls style.  I hadn’t even thought about it beforehand.  I might have just asked if she had a new body wash or if some guy’s weird ass cologne had rubbed off on her.  Instead, I sniffed something on her and wondered if she was planning petty theft.  

She told me “no”. 

She was lying.  

And as soon as I’d asked, the smell of orange lollipops and grass was replaced with overripe pumpkins and burnt charcoal.  It washed over me like a fart in an elevator.  And for some reason I knew that meant that Jenny was both afraid and angry at me.  I didn’t need to smell that part, but I did.  Jenny was so shocked about what crazy Alice had just said, that she didn’t think to hide it.

I read Jenny’s phantom schizophrenic smells and I knew what they meant as easily as if I were reading the look on her face.  I smelled her mind?

Fake orange lollypop means envy, fresh grass means covetousness, rotting pumpkin is fear and burnt charcoal is anger.  I have no idea why or how I know these things, but even typing them out seems as obvious in my mind as me telling you that grass is green and the sky is blue.  Like...duh!

Yesterday, Jenny didn’t smell like oranges anymore.  She smelt like Las Vegas Shrimp Buffet and cold sewer water.  She was feeling sated,  and guilty, and the guilt was starting to win out.  I peeked into her room this afternoon and found the new handbag she was hiding.  It was easy to fish it out of the bottom of her hamper underneath piles of dirty clothes.  It smelled just like oranges and grass.  It’s what Jenny had wanted bad enough to steal.

Evidently, I can smell emotions.  The fuck is THAT about?  I don’t know.  I don’t know and that’s the problem.  At my job I’m beginning to be able to tell what the kids are wanting and how much patience their parents have just by breathing through my nose.  Either that or the two boys that wanted those Nerf Guns both just smelled like hot dogs.  (A distinct possibility, I’ll admit.)

And it’s a cool trick, but it came out of nowhere!  I’m getting a sixth sense regarding toys, everybody wants to help me a little too much, and now I’m SMELLING emotions.  I thought once I got out of There, that I’d be getting better, but I feel like it’s getting worse.  I’m getting worse.

When I first started writing this I told you it was to warn you, but that was a lie.  It wasn’t an intentional lie, I don’t think, because I realize I’ve been lying to myself.  I can read my own writing.  I’m smart enough to be figuring out the limitations and rules of the weird shit that was done to me over There.   I know that when I read this I sound like a crazy person, and no one but crazy people and freaks are going to read this, and even most of you won’t believe me.

So what’s the point of writing a warning if no one is going to believe it?  Does it matter what truths I tell and what I discover about myself if I’m the only one who knows that they’re truths?  Should I change my name to Delphi?

I’m not writing this anymore to warn you.  That’s over and done with.  If you’ve read my blog entries this far, you either know what I’m saying as truth, or you don’t.  Most of you have probably stopped reading by now.  Yeah yeah, you get the premise, now onto the next piece of click bait garbage fic. 

I’m writing this right now because I feel alone.  I can’t talk to anyone about this directly because...well you know.  As far as I know I’m the only person who’s ever escaped from the Land Beyond the Real.  Though fuck all if I know how I’d find anyone else like me.  I’m not even on a missing person's list as I no longer technically exist.

I don’t know how I got out, but I figure it had something to do with luck.  How else would I have gotten out?  It’s not like Mommy Dearest would have let either of us go.  Over the past few weeks I’ve been fantasizing that maybe I got out because I was better, or stronger, or more willful.  At least that’s how I survived I’ve been telling myself.

But with the smell-thought-telepathy-thing this week, and my slip ups in the toy department, I’m really not sure.  Fuck! With my pointy ass elf ears and what they do to people I don’t even know if I’m technically human anymore.  

I’m an alien species, now.

Some alien species thrive in foreign environments.  They throw the entire environment out of whack because they don’t know how to control themselves and they have no natural checks on their growth or consumption. It’s pet pythons in Florida. Shit gets fucked up and snakes get fat.  

Others just die.  This land wasn’t made for them and they have no equipment or support to help them adapt.  

I’m a panda that’s running out of bamboo and I don’t know what to do, but every instinct in me is terrified that I’ll be dragged away back to the zoo.  The zoo, where I’m fed and allowed to live, and surrounded by strange on all sides.

I wasn’t going to survive over There for long, either.  But I did.  Way too long.  Long enough that much of it is still blocked out and coming back to me in spurtz.  I survived though, not because I was smart or inventive or clever or strong or any of that.  I made it through back to here, away from Mommy Dearest and the Fay and all of Their terrible madness because I had help.  I don’t know if I had help in escaping, but it was at least help enough to survive.

I was lucky.

I had help.

I had Peter.

It was a few days after the shopping incident.  At least it felt like a few days.  Like I’ve said, Time doesn’t flow as much as it stops and starts in little jerks like a kid with ADHD messing with the lights.  It could have been days later, or Mommy Dearest could have decided that it was later that same afternoon.  All I can say is that I’d slept, eaten, and been changed more times that I could count when this conversation happened.

 Peter and I were “playing” in our playpen.  I used the quotation marks there because “hanging out” wasn’t a babyish enough concept for our warden.  We were plopped down in the middle of a living room that only existed some of the time, and wooden bars, vine trellis sprung out of the carpet, surrounding us.  

We were left with a handful of baby toys: a xylophone, a red rubber ball, and a speak-and-say; and the Green Lady walked off into the kitchen, to do I-don’t-know-what. Every now and then she’d poke her head out of the kitchen, looking at us expectantly, and Peter and I would have to put on a kind of thirty second performance.

Yup, look at the babies playing with their toys.  Aren’t they cute?  Sure are!  And then she’d disappear again.  Peter’s shadow kept a lookout of sorts, sliding along the ceiling on patrol from the kitchen to the playpen.  I had to sit with my back to the kitchen, following Peter’s lead.

“Whenever she comes in, let the ball drop,” he whispered, “but do not count the bounces.  Clap like crazy or ooooh and ahhh, but do NOT count the bounces.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll lose count.”  I wasn’t following him and it must have shown on my face.  “Literally…like I’ve had to work my way back to a hundred.”  That did it.  He reached over between my legs, took the ball and traded me the xylophone.  “This is safer, anyways.  Give it a try.”

I took the tiny mallet off the side and banged on the little metal slats.  Nothing came out.  “Why is it quiet?”

“You’re not trying to play anything.  Think of a song.”  He held out the palm of his hand to stop me.  “Not just ANY song.  Think of an easy song; a little kid’s song.”

“Will it only work on kiddie songs?”

“You’ll only want it to.”

I thought about it.  Mary Had A Little Lamb.  “Okay.”

“Now hit the xylophone.” I did.  A single euphonious middle E came out. Maaaarrrrr.  “Keep going.”  I did.  

Mary-Had-A- Little-Lamb,

Little-Lamb, 

Little-Lamb!

Mary-Had-A-Little Lamb,

It’s-Fleece-Was-White-As-Snow!

It didn’t matter where I hit it, or what bars I smashed with the mallet, the perfect note came out.  It was a master’s class in Mary Had A Little Lamb.  If the world’s greatest xylophonist played Mary Had A Little Lamb, it would sound like this.  “Will it work for any song?”  I asked.

Peter pointed at me. “Sing it.”

“Sing what?”

“Mary Had A Little Lamb.”

“I don’t know that song…” I dropped the thing on the floor and shuffled away from it like it was a poisonous snake.  “WHAT THE FUN?!”  I couldn’t remember the words or the melody.  I could barely get myself to say the title out loud.  I KNEW that I knew it, but it was now locked behind a door with a child proof lock on the knob.

Peter’s teeth clenched and he hissed.  “Keep your ding-dong voice down.  That’s how it works here.”

It was like waking from a dream and how only the last little bits and vaguest impressions get carried with you into the waking world by the time breakfast is over.  This time, it was a child’s song.

“Why the fun don’t I know Mary-Had-a-Funnin’-Lamb?”  There was a quiver in my voice that I hadn’t meant to be there.  

Peter looked like he’d just sucked on a lemon. “Be glad you can recover that one.  They teach that one in daycare...a lot.  Me? I can’t remember any Panic! At The Disco, anymore.”

“Seriously?”

He sighed.  “Yeah…”

“That’s a sin, not a tragedy!”

Peter stared at me blankly.  “Umm…I’m the opposite of Mary’s Lamb.” he said.

“I don’t follow.”

“Exactly.”  The joke went right over my head, and it was a lame reference to a lame little kids’ song.  Oh...ooooooh.  

“That’s so shiny,” I said.  “This whole place is shiny.”  I looked around.  The living room was deceptively normal.  A big comfy couch, a wide screen T.V., and a playpen big enough for two grown-adults to crawl around in.   But it was just a coat of normal over a waking nightmare.  The toys fucked with your mind.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that the couch had teeth and a tongue underneath its cushions, or the T.V. only broadcast the moment of your death.

Then I slid the xylophone farther away with my foot, into the corner. I bent forward and reached for the Speak-And-Say. Peter’s eyes went wide.  “NO!” He shouted before swatting it out of my hands. “Do NOT try the Speak-and-Say!”  

“Why not?!  Will it make me forget animal sounds?”

“You won’t like what you hear...”  Peter looked over at my shoulder.  “Shiny...start playing with something!” 

The literal man-child let the red rubber ball bounce between his legs. It kept up its momentum, bouncing back up to his chest every time and showing no signs of slowing down, even though he’d only touched it the one time.  A tiny part of me wondered how many times it could bou...NO! NO! NO!

Quickly, I rolled over on my back, and grabbed my ankles.  I fake giggled and babbled as I played this little piggy with myself, pinching each toe and giving it a wiggle.  A shadow fell over the playpen, and it wasn’t Peter’s.  “I thought I heard crying,” Mommy Dearest said.  It was her sweet voice, the one that made my brain all tingly.  Even my fear instinct was drowning in that sweet Disney Princess bubbly voice.   “Is everything okay my darlings?”

Peter spoke first.  “Yeth, Mommy Dearetht,” he said, resuming his baby lisp.  “Just playin’.”  

“Just make sure you two are playing nice.”  She made eye contact with me as I pretended that my feet were just the best thing since sliced bread.  “Awwwww…” She cooed.  “Somebody’s found their toesies!” I wanted to be angry or afraid just then, but everything in my brain melted.  I was a school girl again and my crush had just offered me flowers in front of everybody.  “Do you like playing with your toesies, baby girl?”

Without even thinking, I nodded.  I really didn’t playing with my feet like an idiot, but I wanted so much to please Her when She talked to me like that.  It was the strangest feeling.

Lately I’ve been researching ancient methods of execution. It felt like a suitably “adult” topic to browse, and “adult” no matter how grisly, feels safer these days.  A particularly nasty way was to tie a dude’s penis and then force feed them wine until their bladder literally burst.  My first reaction?  At least they died drunk off their ass.  Hard to be scared of death when you’re completely shitfaced.

That’s the effect that the Green Lady held over us.  When She lowered Her tone and narrowed those cat eyes of Hers, or gave that wicked smile, she was Caesar sentencing me to death.  But when She offered Her tits for breastfeeding, or started cooing at me, or even just smiled in a non-threatening way, it was like a hundred-proof whiskey was being injected straight into my brain.  It was hard to be afraid, just then.

She bent over and wiggled my toes between ivy green fingers that were a little too long to be human.   

“Ten little babies going out to dine.  One broke her highchair, and then there were nine.!”  Her fingers skittered up my thighs and I laughed as if it were the funniest joke in the world.  

The game continued.

“Nine little babies staying up late.  

One rolled out of her crib, and then there were eight.  

Eight little babies took a trip to Heaven. 

One left her stroller, and then there were seven.  

Seven little babies chopping up sticks.  

One got a boo-boo, and then there were six.

Six little babies playing with a hive,

One didn’t use her bib, and then there were five.

Five little babies finding Eldritch Lore,

One learned how to read, and then there were four.

Four little babies going out to sea,

One forgot her floaties and then there were three.

Three little babies crawling in the zoo.

One threw away her teddy, and then there were two.

Two little babies having naughty fun,

One got a spanking, and then there was one. 

One little baby thought that she could run.

She got flushed down the potty, and then there were none.”

I giggled and laughed with each verse.  I hadn’t been all that ticklish before Here, but right Now, every sense felt amplified to full joy.  Every bone was my funny bone.  Peter was doing his best to be polite by not watching.  I couldn’t tell if he was jealous of me or embarrassed for me.  Maybe both?  He sucked on his thumb nervously.

“You remember that song from when you were little, don’t you Peter?”

Peter didn’t take his thumb out of his mouth, his lisp meant he didn’t have to.  “Yeth Mommy…”  He shuddered and shivered.  He was hanging on Her every word just like me, but there was still that undercurrent of fear.  Peter had gotten used to being drunk.  He was still an addict, like me, but he was a much more functioning booze hound.

As if to prove that point, the Green Lady walked around the pen.  “Are you being a good big baby brother to your itty bitty sister?”

“Yeth Mommy.”  The ball was still bouncing, chest height.  

“Maybe my little rascal will earn himself some more biddie for din dins.”

Peter sucked his breath in.  A crack addict had just had a rock dangled in front of his face.  “M...m..maybe…” Peter agreed.  “If I’m good.”

She leaned down and emerald lips gave a chaste kiss on his forehead.  “I’m sure you will be.”

Meanwhile, I’d collapsed, out of breath on my side of the pen.  It wasn’t quite on the level of that first breastfeeding, but it was still something good.  I was tingling all over.  Showered with kisses and affection that only made me want more.  I’d almost forgotten how I felt looking at the rows of giant Dolls...almost.

It wasn’t until after she left our sight that my panting slowed and I started to breathe easily.  “That…” I gasped, “was...intense…”

Peter caught the little red ball and slumped over.  “Tell me about it.”

I pushed myself back up to a sitting position, feeling the squish beneath me.  I hadn’t even realized, or cared for that matter, that I’d wet my diaper at some point.  I fought the urge to call out and ask for a change. 

I had to tell myself: Don’t get distracted.  Don’t get jealous or try to make Peter jealous.  Don’t call Her back in.  Sober up and get back on track.  “So what’s so bad about the Speak-and-Say?”  I finally said.

“Just look at the ‘animals’.”  Peter said.  “But don’t pull the lever.”

I wasn’t going to, and made a show of putting my hands on top of my head, just in case.  Peter was right.  These weren’t your typical barnyard animals.  No “cow says moo” or “pig says oink.”  I don’t think any of these animals existed in the Real.

I remember a bipedal half-goat half bat thing.  Also a pale corpse like ghost with a swollen belly and a headless horse rider type thing that was carrying a spinal chord.  Peter was right.  I didn’t want to know what any of these things sounded like. 

One of the pictures in particular caught my eye.  “What’s this?”

“That’s a Cthulhu,” Peter said.  “You definitely don’t want to hear that one.  Last kid who heard its call at daycare still isn’t talking right.” 

A Cthulhu?  

There was a lot to unpack there, but that’s not what I meant.  “No,” I said.  I used my toe to point, just so Peter wouldn’t freak out.  “Not the dragon squid thing.  The mer-horsey fish thing.  The one that’s on our diapers.”  I pointed down to what was wrapped and taped around my waist.

Oh yeah.  I forgot to mention:  Me and Peter were wearing nothing but our diapers at this point.  We’d both already seen each other sucking on the Green Lady’s tit, and we’d both had our asses wiped right in front of the other, and I’m pretty sure we’d shared a bathtub by this point; so yeah.  Seeing each other topless wasn’t a big deal.  It was hard to feel embarrassed or prudish or modest when at any given point you might be forcibly subjected to literally every other emotion at once.

My so called brother followed my big toe. “Oh, that.  That’s a kelpie,” he said.  “Mer-horse.  Sounds like a drowning person to lure people in, and then drowns them.”

“Learned that from the Speak-and say?” I asked.

“Naw,” Peter replied.  “I’ve seen a couple.” 

“What were they doing?”

“Drowning people…”  Yeah.  That happened.  Then he added, “One of Her friends,” he motioned over my shoulder to the kitchen, “the Blue Maiden likes them.”

I sat up a little straighter.  “I’ve seen her.”

Peter looked confused.  “When?”

“You were asleep in your racecar stroller.”

“Ah...”

“She might be getting a new face or something...like added to the back of Her head.”

“Oh…”

We sat there.  Awkward.    Mommy Dearest came back in to check on us.  We’d gotten too quiet, so we put on another show for Her.  Peter kept bouncing his ball, and I picked up the xylophone, sacrificing my knowledge of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with it (I was careful to think of that one instead of the ABC song.)

With Her satisfied, our diapers were checked and declared not in need of immediate changing.  We were left alone.  We still sat there.  Awkward.  Waiting for each other to break the silence.

It was me who finally did.  “Why are we in this mess?”

“You messed?”  Peter’s nose wrinkled.  

I felt my face get hot.  “No...I mean this.”  I gestured all around.  “And this,” I pointed to my (wet) diaper.  “Why this?  Why us?”

My new older brother just looked down at the floor.  “We got lucky is all.”  He was quiet.  He only got quieter “Better than those people in the boxes.  Better than a lot of other people.”

I crawled over and squished down beside him.  It’d be easier to whisper this way.  “Yeah, I get that,” I said.  “But why anyone?  Why do They any of this?  Why do They do what They do?”

“They’re Fay,” he said.  As if that were any kind of answer.  “It’s what They do.”

“But why?” I shook him by his shoulders a little bit.  “Why any of this? It’s not like She doesn’t know we’re not really children.  You don’t do to kids what she does to us.”  Peter didn’t move.  He just looked to his shadow.  It glanced back and flashed an OK sign.

“I don’t remember much,” he said.  “Growing up the first time. But I think it was on a farm.”

“Okay,” I said, not knowing where he was going with this.

“I remember raising pigs, and liking one of them.  I fell in love with it.  After a while, it stopped being a future dinner, and I wanted it as a pet.”

“Sure.”

“Finally, my Momm...my mother.” He stopped himself.  “My real mother broke down and let me keep it.  The rest of the pigs?  Bacon and sausage.  Slaughtered.  I kept the surviving pig as a pet for years and years though.  It was like a flat nosed curly tailed dog to me.”

I nodded.  “Cool pet.”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed.  “But I never really thought of it from his point of view.  He got taken in by pink skinned things that maybe kinda looked like him if he squinted.  Then all his brothers and sisters got taken away and eaten, but he got the good life, or maybe just life.  Did he ever forgive me for what I did?  Did he wonder?  Did he see any distinction or love or logic in what happened? Or was I just a strange creature that controlled his life?

I finally grasped at what he was getting at.  “You think we’re the pigs here?  Animals?  That we can’t understand why?”

“I’ve about given up trying.  The Fay are big on rules, but good luck guessing what they are most of the time.”

My brain was racing faster than my mouth could form the words.  “But aren’t they magic or something?  Faries?”

“That’s what we call them.”

“Aren’t fairies supposed to be good?  Like the one from Pinnochio?”

Peter lifted his head and turned to face me.  “You think turning a puppet into a boy for an old man with zero child rearing experience is ‘good’?”  My tongue turned fat and stupid.  “Sleeping beauty had a fairy in it, too.  Cursed an entire kingdom because She didn’t get invited to a Christening.  Pigs. Humans.  Bacon. Pets.  We can’t understand Them.  Most we can do is go along.  We can know the ‘what’, but never the ‘why’.”

“I don’t think so.”  I looked down at my diaper.  “Why is there a kelpie on my crotch and a mushroom on my tush?”

Peter smirked.  “It looks cute?”  The next words out of his mouth were “Ow!” because I slugged him in the shoulder.  Hard.  “Sorry, sheesh.  Humor...defense mechanism...my bad…”

I ignored him.  “But why aren’t we in Pampers or Huggies?  Why these giant knock offs?”

“Because even Fay fear copyright attorneys?”  He flinched like I was gonna slug him again.  I didn’t.

I lowered my voice to just above a whisper.  “Or maybe They can’t.  Think about Mommy Dearest and the Others.  They can imitate, but not duplicate.”  A lightbulb flashed on in my brain.  I remembered old folktales about changelings, about fairies (Fay I guess) stealing babies and leaving ugly little monsters in their place.  “That’s why they take us, isn’t it?  They can’t take real babies.”

Peter started shaking his head, muttering to himself.  “No-no-no-no” he mouthed.  The look in his eyes was positively haunted, like how soldiers with PTSD look when thinking about war.  He leaned into me.  His lip trembling he told me, “They can take real babies.  I’ve seen it.  They just don’t last very long…”

Then Peter cried, the tears rolling down his cheeks and onto my bare shoulders.  It was the only time I can remember seeing him cry.  He wasn’t like me.  He was a quiet crier.  He just had to get the emotions out, I guess.  He stopped talking, and I did the only thing I could: I rubbed his back and told him that I was sorry.

 I’m not a person who cries to get emotions out.  I’m a person who cries out for help.  And I bottle up, bottle it all up until I can’t take it anymore.  It’s not healthy, but I don’t have a whole lot of healthy options in my life right now.  A cry for help:  That’s what you’ve been reading and will continue to be reading.  My own personal cries for help, shouting out to the electronic void and hoping to find someone, anyone who believes me.

Or even better, someone like me. 

Please don’t let me be the only one to escape.

And if I’m crying out to the sky, begging the gods for some kind of savior...

Peter….if you’re reading this...

Please help.

-Alice

A note from Personalias: So, the author of this piece has stopped replying directly to my emails.  They're still sending stuff like this in, but all pleasantries have been put away.  I keep sending them emails, but all I get is new chapters.