muckraker.

Hey everyone. In light of recent events (recent meaning November), I don’t have much energy or motivation to keep this blog up and running on its own. I still love Outlast very dearly, and would like to continue writing Miles, so he’ll be over at @fictionborn, my multimuse. I’ll be happy to move any threads we might have had going over there, if anyone is interested. I’m also always looking for new partners!

Sorry for bailing, but I haven’t been in a very good mental place since probably October, and I think Miles will thrive better on a multimuse.

last sunday, on november first, my little sister died unexpectedly after a series of seizures. she was 16. the cause of death turned out to be a pulmonary embolism. there was nothing anyone could’ve done to prevent it, really.

i’ve always been incredibly close with my siblings. i played a very prominent role in raising them, and i’m glad that i got sixteen years with her, even if that wasn’t nearly enough. she packed a lot into those sixteen years, and toward the end, was really working on turning her life around and growing up. the house feels empty and cold and quiet without her here, and i’m not handling the loss well at all. my self harm urges are resurfacing, i’m not eating or sleeping very well, i’m dissociating and depersonalizing a lot, and the whole world feels very distant.

i’m taking a break from any serious roleplaying. it’s my favorite hobby and i’m not giving it up, but writing anything real feels impossible right now. i need to let myself come to terms with the fact that someone i’d have done anything for was taken from me. i need to let it sink in that my sister is never coming back, and i need to start learning to live a life without her in it.

illness meme

Objectively, he knows there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Or at the very least, he’d know that were he in a better frame of mind. Sometimes he just... forgets where he is, mistaking every rattle for the sound of Mount Massive’s cell doors, every slam or creak the sound of footfalls following him down impossibly long corridors. He smells blood sometimes, startles at the phantom pain of a knife, a fist, shudders when he can hear those twins and their calm voices even when they aren’t there.

(”Let’s pull him in and slit his belly open.”)

Today, it’s something as simple as a movie, and one that he personally picked out, because it’s Halloween and Waylon is probably off trick-or-treating with his kids and Miles has always liked this holiday, doesn’t want it ruined by his experience. He even picked a comedy because he knew that anything too serious would probably trigger him. (Trigger him -- he sounds like a gun. A weapon of Murkoff’s design.)

Shaun of the Dead. He’s seen it at least three times before now. Nothing should’ve surprised him. It’s his dad’s favorite zombie movie, it reminds Miles of home. And yet as soon as he can visibly see the scenes of disarray, the gore, the blood, it throws him rather violently right back to Mount Massive. And suddenly every sound is a danger to him and the remaining fingers of his right hand are curled instinctively around where there should be a camcorder.

He’s going to throw up. They’re right there, they’re coming for him. He can smell the vomit, and the blood, coppery and sour. He can hear the drip-drip-drip of it and the clanging of cell bars, the rattling of chains, over the sound of his own thundering heartbeat. And he’s not screaming, but he’s frozen and terrified and looking for a place to hide, a place to run to.

Electricity crackles in his veins. Behind his eyelids. The static is starting up again, makes the hair on his arms stand up, makes his fingers ache. Blood drips from his nose; he tastes it over his lips, he’s shaking so bad he can feel his bones knock together.

Not now. Not now.