The night in the city is never quite dark enough

In Chicago. It's cold as shit here but easier to stay warm and safe. I mostly hung out in the stairwells of buildings that you can get from their roofs until I realized that the trains here are, of course, elevated and most of time safe to be on. I'm a dumb ass. Now I mostly sleep on the trains because it's warm and there's a lot of people around, or hang out in the diner near here (though today I did see Him in an alley near here which I guess means I've been here for too long and need to change areas for a little bit. I'll miss Clarke's though). This city is different then New York. Both are overwhelming I guess, if I had more then a few minutes a day to think about stuff like that, but Chicago is huge. New York is plenty big, but not as spread out. New York is more tall, with lots of people in 1 place and lots of buildings all holding different hidden, secret, old things. Chicago is just vast. I took the train from 1 end to the other and ended up in the suburbs. They look pretty false though, no trees, no people, all the houses too small to have anybody actually live there with more then 1 other person, like they weren't made for families. It's like a bunch of runners put together a neighborhood. There aren't as many findable street kids either, though I've found some. Learning where everything is is harder then I thought it would be. I'm not from a place with a large transit system (or any transit system really) and learning all the different lines and everything seems like a waste of time at best. In general I just ride the lines closest to me that I know won't go underground right away.

I know people had stuff planned for the 21st and I guess it didn't really work. Maybe He's weaker, but I don't know. He's still here and from what I've heard Zero is gone. The hero thing isn't really my thing, as I've said in the past, but when somebody is that brave and that stupid they can do something like that it usually gets them killed, but I guess it's also pretty admirable. People ask me sometimes if I'll just run and never stop running and never try to fight and I say yes until we find something else to do, something that really works. I'm not really somebody who would try to find, or even has any idea what that could be but Zero was and it's pretty sad he's gone. I will say though a few people writing stories is not going to beat Him. I'm not for staging a coupe anytime soon, we need more information and we need more planning, but when and if we do it won't be by writing stories, at least not only by doing that. It will be a battle with whatever we've found works against Him and it will be bloody and it will be unpleasant and we won't come away from it unhurt. People ask me sometimes if any weapons work against Him (if I need to talk more about this I'll do an entry on it if people want it) and I say no.

Guns.

Knives.

Baseball bats.

They don't work on Him. The way he moves He can avoid all that and if He was that easy to kill somebody would have done it by now. We'll have to find something else if we find something at all. He doesn't even move on this plane of existence. Something that can't even kill a human everytime isn't going to kill Him. And if it can it will be something we haven't even thought of yet.

Mostly this 21st I thought about my brother. It was his birthday. He would have been 20. I wondered what he would have thought of me if he could see me now, and what he would have thought of this whole situation, and if he would have liked the people I liked who I had met on the road and disliked all the people I disliked. I wondered what he would have thought about the Hollowed and how they probably would have made him sad and he would have wanted to help them. I sat in the little house that protects the stairwell into an apartment building who's roof I was on from the snow and stuff and looked out it's little window and watched the white snow against the hazy black of the city night and wondered what he would have thought of the city. I fell asleep and had the same dream I always have and saw him and it felt even more real, yet more unreal then it ever had for some reason, him in that chair, so solid but so obviously impossibly there. Then I woke up and the night had finished and I checked the time and knew something had shifted.

I fucking hate that dream.

Now it's 2 days until Christmas. I was never too into Christmas. It's too commercial and there are too many people around and the music gets on my nerves. Even so to anybody who can still have a normal Christmas know they're rare and to enjoy it. And to people who can't, well know that at least you're still moving, still alive, and, even if we can't beat this thing right now, still able to sit and think about the world. Know that all the people who are gone are remembered and are still alive that way. I'm not too religious, or religious at all since all this started, but I think that's how it works. People die, but I guess they live on because we think about them. In all the stories we tell about them. Maybe that's how stories can help us. Less about beating Slenderman and more about all of us living normal lives. I don't know.

Since it's the holiday season I've decided to do entries on whatever people want (within reason). Got a question? Want to hear my thoughts on something? Just tired of me bitching and want to know what colours attract Slenderman already (none really that I can tell but he seems to go after the people in grey before anybody else when in a group)? Then ask! And as always leave questions and anything else in the comments and email if you have to. Now I'm gonna go sneak into a gym and take a much needed shower (time since last shower: 2 months, 5 days, 12 hours).

- M