(Please read the tags first!)
So… today (yesterday now technically) was weird. It’s… 12:27 a.m. right now and as exhausted as I am, I can’t sleep. Hell, I’m not even sure I’m alive. With how bizarre the last 8 hours have been, I’m not half convinced I’m not already dead and this is some strange afterlife. Or maybe I’m still dying and this is my brain trying to cope. Let me restart.
It was around 4 when I was writing earlier, I know that seems like an unnecessary detail, but it’s not, trust me. Anyway, I was rather abruptly interrupted by someone knocking on my window. So I open the door and there’s this weirdo in a half-mask, y’know, the kind bicyclists sometimes wear? And they’re holding up the hook of a tow strap, the other end attached to a truck that I Did Not Hear Pull Up. But the oddest thing about them was their hat. I don’t know if it’s, like, a hunter thing, or a rural Oregon thing, or just them, but the damn thing had antlers on it.
Anyway, they said their name was Cedar, and asked if I needed a lift somewhere. I asked if they had a last name and you know what they said??? Waxwing. Like the damn bird. So either their parents hated them or it’s a fake name and I’m about to get murdered. But, well, between a slow, painful death of cold or a comparatively swift death by serial killer, I figured I didn’t have much choice. It certainly didn’t help my nerves that they didn’t take the damn hat off once, not even in the car.
That aside, they did get me to a garage. A closed one, but a garage nonetheless. I filled out a contact slip and dropped it in the slot but… I don’t know, there’s something weird about that place. I know it’s the dead of winter, but what business is closed at 4:30 on a Friday? What’s even weirder is I could’ve sworn the sign in the window said their hours were 9-5 AT NIGHT. I must have read it wrong. Either way, if “Cedar” really is a murderer, they’re terrible at it. They dropped me off at this dingy hotel without stabbing me once.
Oh, yeah, this hotel! There seems to only be this one lady working here, and she must be, like, hardcore into cosplay, cause she was grey. I don’t mean ashy, I mean her skin was the colour of a Homestuck troll, with purple contacts to boot. I mean, to each their own, but doesn’t the paint ever get on the sheets? She was nice, though, said I had my pick of room since I was the only one staying here, and didn’t even charge me when she heard what happened to my car. Thank god, I don’t think I could’ve handled another night of car camping, especially not in this weather.
… I’m just stalling now. Trying to write about anything else but what happened. It’s not like anything big actually occurred but I… I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s just…
“Cedar” kept calling me ‘stranger’. They said it in a friendly way, don’t get me wrong, but at a certain point it felt… idk, dehumanizing, if that makes sense, and I kinda snapped and told them to quit calling me that and then… They asked for my name.
As weird as it sounds, I couldn’t answer them. I said it in my first entry of this doomed little roadtrip of mine, didn’t I? That name belonged to someone else. Someone I’m not sure ever existed. So I… I said I didn’t know.
I don’t think they believed me, but they asked if there was anything I’d like to be called, so I just said it was fine.
amandla
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
origamiaround
