a private composition notebook

[Candle]

(might continue this, might not)
a privately-penned documentation of a totally normal person's day to day life
​

I never thought I'd be the type to write down stuff day-to-day in a notebook. It always seemed like something someone would do in a movie script, so I naturally assumed no-one actually did it. ..I still don't think anyone actually does it, mind you, but you already know that, because you're the book I'm writing into. I didn't need to write that last part. I don't really know why I did. Or why I'm writing this part. Or this part. Or that part. Christ. I'll write something else a bit less my-own-metacontextual-context, I guess. Is metacontextual-context a phrase? It sounds made up. I just made it up, sure, but it sounds like something a writing buff would write. I'm going to move on now.

I got a promotion today. In the engineering field. I'm an engineer, now. As much as someone can be right now, anyway. I got a shotgun, that's cool. Found some weed. That was also cool. Met a few people. Nice people. Some of them are freaks. Most of them are freaks. I'm also probably a freak. Hopefully not as freaky as the other freaks. I feel like I'm disgracing the paper I'm writing on with this mid-level commentary. Why does anyone write like this? It's so stupid. What is it supposed to achieve? Why am I writing questions into a book that I'm relatively sure can't answer them?



I think I'm magic. Or magic-adjacent. I'm considering writing the context about this down, but I think it'll be funnier if anyone ever reads that and I just don't comment on it. That's what I'm gonna do, yeah. Sorry, future reader. If you're me reading this, though, you'll probably remember the situation. Think of the docks, I guess? I dunno.

I saw a big fucking fish the other day, too. I will write about that. It had a lot of sharp parts. Almost killed my boss. We had to push a car into the water to get its' attention. Boss survived. Fish left after a while.

Pictured, fish.​

 

[Candle]

A worm showed up last night. Broke right through the rocks outside the compound. One heck of a night, that's for sure. Also, I'm being asked to 'tutor' someone, now. That's neat. Oh! I got a promotion. Did I write that last time? Whatever. Still did. It's cool. Almost vaporized last night, too, but it could be worse.

 

[Candle]

Well, today was hectic. Two people died, two bad guys- well, three bad guys died, and one bad guy drowned. Could've been worse, but on the bright side, I got to use SLAMs again! I'm not used to setting them up 'tactically,' since last time I just wired them up to cut off a tunnel, but this seems easy enough. Surprised the cyclops let me do it in the first place.
I felt bad, honestly, because one of the people we were chasing was a Vortigaunt, and they hid under a boat for so long that I think they drowned. I hope they just went unconscious and woke back up later, because- damn, what a shitty way to go that'd be.

​

 

[Candle]

This is broadly unrelated to the events as of recent, but I am being BESIEGED and HAUNTED by a terrifyingly adorable creature! Xenian, I think, of origin- I mean, I don't know of any other creatures (aside from a frog) that are anomalous or otherwise Spooky, so I'm defaulting to Xen-based for this little dude. He's made a home somewhere in our camp, and I'm trying to keep an eye out. I've hidden crackers and other food items around the camp, and I KNOW they're being eaten, so the dude's eating well enough. I would LOVE the chance to pet this strange frog.

​

 

[Candle]

I think I died today.

..Man, that felt weird to write. Let me elaborate, dear journal.
We'd all gone back to that big outpost with the dead strider inside- went in to fix it up, see if we can salvage anything good- or otherwise bring some systems back online to get a read on the place. We got inside, and, well. It was occupied- by three people. Er. Two people, one.. thing. I'll have to dedicate a page to the thing I saw later- but as for the people, they weren't supposed to be there. It was a bad time, honestly, and they got stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don't blame them for doing what they did next, but--
v (Really, really wish they hadn't have picked me,)
Well, I sure wish they hadn't. Boss of the day had me go up to search the two, so I start to bind them with some ties, and- the second guy, the one with the weird eye- he had something weird on his hand. Next thing I know, it's glowing green, and we're both fighting to keep control of the thing- I've got my arms wrapped around this gauntlet he's got, and he's trying to slam it into the ground-

Then something just-- clicks. I don't mean this metaphorically- I mean, literally, the gauntlet, which was previously glowing like a Vortigaunt's hand, clicked. It broke. Over his hand, with me grabbing onto it with both of my stupid, dumb mitts. Next thing I remember, I'm coughing up a lung and trying to fumble for morphine- half my mask was melted on my face, and someone ripped it off. That hurt. I felt cold air on my face-- and, well. Then I passed out completely.

Woke up an hour later wrapped in in gauze like a mummy, scars all up and down my arms, (No feeling in them either, yay, I love nervous system trauma!) and covered in medi-gel. Apparently my heart stopped twice.

..I also got another promotion today, so, you know. I guess life-threatening trauma accounts for something in this day and age!

​

 

[deathwolf]

me on discord to @Candle
Deathwolf — Yesterday at 15:36
roller 5 is the one cop i want to meet
i’ve loved your bio and your aa reports

me and @Candle five hours later

 

[Candle]

Been a really long day.
Finally finished up securing the new site- it's all locked up, and all the old gear got towed away or distributed. Spoke to the.. 'new guy,' Harland, in the cells. His life's work, he called it. The result of hours upon hours of research, development, so on- vaporized in a few minutes. A few seconds, really. Along with his arm, and part of himself.

Myself, too.

I wonder if he feels it? Or-- feels the lack of it, too. It's like something stayed behind, or got-- crushed into dust along with the rest of my nervous system. God knows I don't know what. Just the vague concept of a 'thing' in me.
..Honestly, I'm starting to learn a lot about the camps that just-- well, make sense, they just-- ugh.
They make a lot of sense. Puts a lot of weird bits together in my head. Locked rooms.

I should be mad at this guy. Beyond furious- he almost killed me, hell, he almost killed half of the 'friends' I've made people I know here. I just feel guilty.
Found the guy he was with. Kyle Smith. We cut him loose. Not in the-- bad way, we literally cut his ties and sent him off with a 'Don't go snooping around.' warning.

..anyway. v Feel like I shouldn't have.
I fixed up that 'WINDER' area with one of the uglies today. I'm explicitly banned from knowing what it is, what it does, or how it works, but when you're directing a guy who already knows the whole of the insides of it, and needs your opposable thumbs to fit things into place, and run the terminal diagnostics, and connect the cables, and- blah, blah, blah. It's a surgical slash brainwash slash mind-fucker-inator. Some kind of 'transhumanizer,' I'd wager. Stasis pods on the walls, storage areas, an entire facility sucking enough power to light up a small town.

..Four-ten, one of the 'servitors.' I never got a good look at its face. I always thought it was just a plate of metal welded over. What with the visor, so on, it blocks everything out that really-
I don't even know how to write this. It's like someone pried a human skull open lengthwise and shoved a terminal in it, fitted with laser-diodes, and called it a day. Four-ten even has a still-blinking, milky goddamn eye on the side of its head.

..And the machine we fixed up mutilates people into makes them
Whatever. I should've stayed in bed. I can't tell if it's the steroids making my stomach churn, or the days themselves.

​

 

[「🖤 Morpho-Syntax 🖤」]

Yoooo my stalkers famous!

 

[Candle]

​

jesus christ

the past day has been a fugue state of medications, stolen alcohol and stuffing tissues under my mask
what the fuck even happened? did i really we really i really do that?

it's not like i could have done anything else. after seeing all of that, all of-- everything that was going to happen to us
i don't want to be like one of those things. i won't be one of those things. i can't.

i can't even tell them. they can't know. if they know, they'll think i told them. i can't tell anyone
i can tell you
you, nameless journal. penned by someone who is totally, totally fucked

we're all fucked

i need to get the hell out of here.
can i even get out of here? after what i did?
if anyone finds out, even if i run, i'm dead. noone could forgive that. noone could forget that.

so what. run away, lose, die? run away, lose, get turned into one of them?
run away, win, hope noone finds out? i go off grid, i run away, they welcome me, and what if they find out?

i guess that's what it's always come down to
humans /vs/ humanity

i hope i can still call myself human at the end of this
i certainly don't feel like one anymore

​