Today In Misery

The moon was bright and full, visible even as the waning sunlight cast a purple glow on the remaining clouds.

I watched as they drifted lazily around the celestial body, and soon they covered its face, cutting off its light.

This was a mistake.

A single blade of red light fell to the ground , slicing its way through the offenders.

The clouds screamed; not an audible one, mind, but one you heard with your very soul. Scarlet bled into the clouds, creating a beautiful corpse. The moon stared at the town of Misery like a bloodshot eye.

I stared at the spot where the light fell, and I shudder to think of what would happen if it had fallen on someone.

The stars themselves cower from the moon, their light dimming to avoid offending it.

The peacock won't leave my neighborhood. Everyone sees it 3 to 8 times a day just....walking around.

Every day.

How do vampires pee

Th-that's....I-I don't...

The Town Called Misery, 1

Let me tell you about where I live.

According to town history, Misery used to be a collection of four hamlet sized colonies, each founded by one of the four sons of Finely Misery. Because of the loss of Finely's will, the four hamlets essentially ostracized each other for a few decades until the arrival of something records call "Winter".

There is no description of what Winter actually is; all that is said is that Winter was a devastating blow to resources, and forced the four colonies to band together for survival. When Winter ended, the four colonies remained banded, and thus Misery was born.

Despite the town's supposed unity, remnants of its time as hamlets is still prevalent to this day. Four wards, or neighborhoods, each named after the four brothers, make up Misery. These wards are scattered and an organized mess, even within themselves. Even with the roads and community centers placed in between each ward, entering another neighborhood was basically like entering another city.

The only truly neutral place between each ward was the Misery School for All Ages. Equidistant from every ward, it was the center of town, and every child in Misery was enrolled there, from pre-K to Senior year. Almost like a reflection of the town, the school was actually made up of several buildings of various sizes, thrown almost haphazardly on it's hill without any rhyme or reason. The only consistent building was administration, a building the size of a trailer at the bottom of the hill. Everything else is thrown to the wind--you can have science in building J class 7 one day, and the next J7 is reserved for advanced algebra, or theoretical transmuatiom, or lenormand.

And that's just the mundane oddities. One rule of the school is that you can't look in the space in the doorframe; Principal Lee Anders even employs hall monitor like figures to prevent students from doing specifically that, who are recognizeable by the red armbands that they wear. Of note: I -did- witness a custodian slip some raw meat into the space though.

A daily event at MSAA is "Puma Time". Every building goes on lock down while a mountain lion, from Gods know where, prowls around the campus. This can last anywhere between half an hour to an entire day; in the event of the latter, guardians are called and the situation is explained. Either way, classes can't continue until the puma leaves of its own volition.

Beyond the events, such as the sudden screaming from the next room over that was suddenly cut short, and the third grader who levitated four feet off the ground for an hour [she's okay; she was unconscious the whole time], the faculty and students only add to the strangeness. One boy who shares two classes with me and refuses to give his name is always drenched--always. Hours will pass, and yet he will always appear to have just crawled out from the ocean. A custodian has to follow him around for all the puddles he leaves. Another boy, who appears to be the drenched boy's brother, always wears welding gloves. He wore them even when he helped the pre-K kids with finger painting.

A girl who had slit pupils and a tail [a real tail--she says she has Irre's Disorder] had showed me around campus. She waved to a girl who had deer eyes [the girl constantly smiles and spoke in riddles] and even introduced me to her brother, a boy who had turquoise hair and a slab of lapis lazuli in place of a tongue. Their names are Meiriam and Constant Lee Anders; they were the principal's kids.

Principal Lee Anders was a magician--through sleight of hand, he pulled a coin out of my ear. Then he turned the coin into glass, shattered it, and melted the shards into a flower shape using only his mind. Principal Lee Anders kept half mentioning events that hadn't happened [amongst which involved the time that Puma Time would happen that day, his daughter tripping over a loose floorboard, and a teacher by the name of Mr. Slins having his desk spontaneously combust. The last of these had no obvious causation, but it happened anyways] and claimed that the moon was his child. I was speechless when I left his office. More so when those events actually happened.

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]

Today In Misery

The cougar came back today. This time, it had stayed past sunset, so everyone was forced to spend the night. Luckily, the staff stocks sleeping bags for this very scenario.

I was given a good glimpse at why no one is called to deal with the cougar whenever it shows up. One student, I believe his name is Colem Arth, came to MSAA late, and was immediately attacked by the lion.

I will spare the gory details, but let it be known that my hands shook as I typed this, and I didn't get any sleep that night.

Several dogs tried to attack the cougar, only to meet the same fate as Colem Arth. In fact, the only thing that went out into the courtyard and survived was Principal Lee Anders, who decided to wear a jester hat today. He was too far for me to see what he was doing, but he came straight to the cougar and touched it. When he left, he held 8 bloody cougar paws. Where he got them from, I don't know. The cougar still had all its paws, since it walked away fine come sunrise.

The school gave us the next three days off due to the incident.

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THERE ARE NO BEES IN MISERY

Here goes nothing...

My name is Story Page.

It has been three months since my family relocated to Misery, a town sequestered somewhere in the Northern Rock Coast.

And I will be the first to say it--this town should not exist.

Misery is a hub of supernormal activity. Danger stalks the night, and bloodsuckers watch their prey from the shadows. Spirits and invisible men walk amongst bakers and businessmen. Anything can be anything, and nothing is as it seems.

Out of the ordinary events happen on an hourly basis, and yet the townfolk are not only completely aware of this, they have embraced this.

Unfortunately, no one has ever tried to explain this weirdness; they've made their peace with and grown up with it.

So I've taken it upon myself to look at this town with fresh eyes. Through study and interviews, I will share what I've learned with you. Ask me anything; as long as the information gets out to the rest of the world, nothing is off limits.

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.