welcome

it started with the slender man. the tall, faceless businessman was terrifying in his own right, but then others appeared. they werent members of the slender mans race (if he had a race), but were similar in what they inspired: fear.

thats stupid. everything inspires fear. you can be afraid of anything. pencils. paper. beets. the kitchen sink. water. being eviscerated. fear is everywhere. fear is everything.

fear fear fear fear

far far far far

fa fa fa fa

a a a a

screaming theres screaming outside i can hear it but maybe its inside maybe im the one who is screaming why am i screaming are they here are they coming for me

i tried playing the game i tried writing something but the writers block was too much i couldnt think i couldnt write anything and the rules dont make sense and the game isnt a game it isnt a game at all oh god please help me

we made it up and it all came true anyway

every single word



welcome to
the fear mythos

A List of Fears

A list of Fears. I need to make a list. I don't know why. I've already made them I know, but I need to list them again. Make a list and check it twice.

The Slender Man
Fear of strangers, fear of the unknown, fear of the woods, fear of tall men, fear of faceless figures peering into windows, of black tentacles ripping apart bodies.

The Archangel
Fear of the afterlife, of the invisible god, of religion and stark reality and nothing you ever do will ever matter and you will die alone and suffer forever and ever.

The Black Dog
Fear of being found, of your deepest secrets being let loose upon the world, of everything you ever wanted hidden away set free and all you can do is open the door and let the dog in.

The Blind Man
Fear of forgetting, of getting old, of waking up one day and not remembering who you are or how you got here or where here is or where the blood on your hands came from and the blood on the walls and the gun on the floor and the bodies at the table.

The Choir
Fear of what others think and say about you, because you know you are worthless, you are never good enough for anyone, always a disappointment to your parents and your friends and everything you ever did was crap so why not just end it all.

The Cold Boy
Fear of being cold, being cut off from those around, because why would they want to associate with an outcast, with someone as distant as you, as cold as you, so cold your heart has frozen.

The Convocation
Fear of being taken away, of being grabbed by hundreds of beaks and claws and being swept into the sky, into the wind, and the ground goes away and everything goes away and you are just a worm, a worm in the vastness of the sky.

The Dying Man
Fear of dying, of feeling that ache, that sickness in your stomach, that split in your mind that tells you "We are dying, our skin is sloughing off like siding, we are dying, let us in let us in let us in."

EAT
Fear of drowning, drowning in water, drowning in obsession, obsessing over everything, every neat little thing, everything in its place, a book over there, a CD over there, a glass of water right here and a tendril rising from the water and taking out everything that was you and putting in itself instead.

The Eye
Fear of judgment, of knowing that no matter where you go, how you hide, you will be found and judged for your sins, for your crimes, for everything bad you have ever done.

The Empty City
Fear of being lost, of wandering down empty streets and looking backward and not recognizing anything, of worrying and rushing from building to building, hoping to find shelter from the city that never stops, the city that's always changing, always different, always hungry.

The Manufactured Newborn
Fear of the future, of what the future may bring, of machines that crush and kill and stab and build more of themselves over and over again until they have replaced you, until they no longer need you.

The Nightlanders
Fear of the unseen, of the things in the dark, of the shadows that pass across your wall and you jump until you realize that it was nothing, it was a trick of the light and then you start to feel woozy and lightheaded and nothing is where you left it and you fall to the ground as your mind is reordered to their liking.

The Plague Doctor
Fear of disease, of contagiousness, of watching your skin break with boils and pus, of becoming a walking infection that feels only pain and can only scream in agony.

The Quiet
Fear of nothingness, of oblivion, of complete and utter void.

The Rake
Fear of brutality, of waking in the night with whispers in your ears and knowing that it was only by its whim that you are alive, until the moment when it runs its claws across your throat and the thin red line starts bleeding.

The Wooden Girl
Fear of being a puppet, of being controlled, of being a toy (remembering perhaps some of the things that you did to your toys when you were a kid) and knowing that all of your actions are hers, everything you do is because of her, and without her you would not move a muscle.

Yesterday Upon the Stair

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wore a dark brown coat and a fedora, even in the blazing sun. He said his name was Dalmas and that I had created him. He said that I wasn't real. Not real like them. That I was just a shadow of a thought. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it and then told me to play the goddamn game.

He was playing the game, too, he said. He was playing the game because I made him play it. And now I was playing it.

How can I play without rules, I asked him.

There are rules, he said. But they are unheard and invisible and ineffable. They cannot be understood or explained. But rules are rules, he said. And we have to play by them.

And then he slowly faded, like words written in disappearing ink.

Little Slices of Death

I think that's what Edgar Allen Poe called sleep. The dark doorway of dreams. I'm getting less and less of it these days. I know why, you know why.

It's Isaac's fault. Why did he show me them? How did he show me them? I was blissfully unaware. Ignorance was bliss for me.

And now I can't find him. I've looked in the library each day, in the same room, but he's never there. He's gone.

Disappeared like a dream.

Headaches

I get these fucking headaches. They just...don't go away for a while. I hope it's not the doctor. He always scared me the most after the Slender Man.

Fuck. What am I going to do?

Nothing Known

Can't concentrate. Every time I walk down the street, I think I see them. Birds in the sky. Dog in a yard. Man with sunglasses.

I don't want to leave my apartment. I don't. But I have to. Have to go to work. Dont be afraid no fear please no fear

No Ledge

What do you do? When you know? When you know the world is a lie?

A Game

He was waiting outside my building today. Isaac. He had set up a checkerboard, red and black, on the steps leading up to my building. As I approached, he starting placing pieces on the board - but not checkers. Some were chess pieces - I saw a rook and a bishop - but there were some Legos and Monopoly pieces and even some from Candyland. It looked like a jigsaw board game made out of anything you could find.

I stopped at the steps and Isaac looked up at me. "Do you ever wonder where ideas come from?" he asked. "Or, perhaps, where they go? After you are done with them, after you have written them down, do they just stay there? Or do they go, perhaps, to some other place, a place filled with unused ideas, just waiting for something to think of them?"

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Now that's a question," Isaac said and turned back to the board. "I'm playing a game."

"With who?"

"You," he said. He waved at the board with one hand. "Go on, it's your move."

"I don't want to play," I said. "I just want you to leave me alone."

"You have to play," he said. "You were already playing before I got here, you just didn't know it."

"Please," I said. "Leave me alone. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know-"

"No, that won't do," he said. "You know more than you think."

I was tired. I closed my eyes and removed my glasses, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "What are you talking about?" I asked.

"A game," he said, waving his hand in front of the board again. "A game of reality. Alternate reality, one might even say."

I looked at him, realization dawning. "An ARG?"

"Ah, finally," he said and smiled. "This is the game you play. The game we play together."

"You think this is part of the ARG? This...this is my life."

Isaac looked at me and laughed. "If you believe your life is not a game, you are in for quite a shock." He turned back to the game board. "Look at it. A random assortment of pieces, following no apparent rules except that which you set. And yet the idea of them came from somewhere. Someplace else. Perhaps the place where all ideas come from." He looked back at me. "And as the idea of them is real, so are they. Look." He pointed behind me and I turned around.

I saw. I saw them. I saw what I was avoiding. I saw them all.

I saw birds, hundreds of birds rising in the sky, lightning flickering between them as they rose.

I saw a dog, huge and jet black, red eyes and sharp fangs.

I saw an old man with a heavy coat, his eyes hidden, his face wrinkled, his arms holding a heavy book.

I saw shadows on the ground. I saw strange blurs out of the corner of my eyes. I saw a boy with skin like ice.

I saw a pool of water waiting. I saw open doorways leading to strange cities, which I realized was all one city.

I saw a dead man in a gas mask before a symbol of twin triangles. I saw a puppet who had taken control of her strings and the strings of those around her.

I saw a man with a bird's face and a wooden cane. I saw another man, deformed and sick, with a wicked smile and a waiting touch.

I saw the blink of an eye and the scuttle of mechanical legs and the silence of empty space.

I saw a beast kneeling on the ground, a beast with pale white skin and black eyes, a beast red in tooth and claw.

I saw a man standing tall, a man in a black suit, without a face but with arms outstretched.

I felt Isaac pull me back and I fell to the ground and everything I saw disappeared.

"What," I said. "What."

"You have seen the true nature of this world," Isaac said looking over me. "I am sorry. You know what kind of game you are playing now. I thought once you could stop playing, but now I am not so sure."

I couldn't move. I had seen them, the Fears we had made up. We had just made them all up. But they were real. We made it all up and it all came true anyway - the words floated back up into my mind.

I closed my eyes and tried taking deep breaths. "What can I do?" I asked, but when I opened my eyes, Isaac was nowhere to be seen.

I slowly got up from the ground and walked to my apartment, carefully looking behind me each step of the way.

Dog Days

There was a dog on my way home from work. It was a medium-sized dog - not huge, but not small. Black fur with streaks of gray. It had a piece of paper in its mouth.

When it dropped the paper on the ground, I saw that it was one of the fliers for Isaac's "Snapshot Simplicities" trap. On the page was written "You aren't really there. There isn't anybody but me here alone in the dark."

The dog looked at me and then scampered away.

Overpass

There's an overpass near by apartment. I have to walk across it in order to get to work. The fence between the sidewalk and a sudden drop down to the freeway is...not very high. A little below my waist, actually.

It's kind of scary sometimes. Especially since I'm afraid of heights. I have to keep looking straight ahead of me when I'm on the overpass and not look to the side. Sometimes I look and I'm kind of mesmerized.

Lately, I've been imagining what would happen if I fell over. Or jumped over. Why would I jump? I imagine a car careening out of control or a giant bird overhead that forces me to run and then jump and fall.

Down down down.

...

How could Isaac have possibly known what I was dreaming?

...what the fuck?

(between two mirrors)

You created me. Who created you?


You made them up but they have always existed. They existed because you made them up.


Who created me? I created you.


 -- Dalmas

(false awakenings)

wake up

you are dreaming


you are having a nightmare right now

you are sitting at a table in a cafe in a city devoid of people where the walls move like waves and the buildings shift and the streets breath and the windows watch you with avid interest to see just how you are going to die


you are walking up a staircase made of thirty-nine steps and at the top of the staircase is a door you can never open a room you can never enter a life you can never lead


you are having a nightmare right now


you are dreaming


wake up

-- Dalmas

(all that you see or seem)

You still don't get it. Maybe you never will, but I feel it is my duty to explain it to you yet again.


All is real. Everything. Everything you write, every thought you have, is real inside your head. Thus it is real outside your head. Thoughts are things. Put them down on paper and they come to life. They can affect the world. They can change the world. They can be changed by others.


Some ideas are different. Some ideas exist independently of everything. Independent of the world, of the universe, of space and time. Some ideas seek to creep inside people's minds and become real.


Are you listening? Are you sitting comfortably? 


You made it all up, but they were always there.


Truth and fiction are closer than you think.


 -- Dalmas

"He was carried away by that mania of the storyteller, who never knows which stories are more beautiful—the ones that really happened and the evocation of which recalls a whole flow of hours past, of petty emotions, boredom, happiness, insecurity, vanity, and self-disgust, or those which are invented, and in which he cuts out a main pattern, and everything seems easy, then begins to vary it as he realizes more and more that he is describing again things that had happened or been understood in lived reality."

 -- Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

A Rondel About the Slender Man

I tried writing a poem to get rid of my writer's block. Don't think it worked.

It's that feeling in your stomach, that pit of dread,
  Seeing the man standing out in the rain,
  You know you will be next to be slain,
Because fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

There's a pounding ache inside your head,
  It feels like a sledgehammer in your brain.
You wish it were over, wish you were dead,
  You can't take it anymore, this great pain.

There is nothing you can do, nothing can be said,
  You cannot live under this strain.
  You've almost snapped, nearly insane.
It's that feeling in your stomach, that pit of dread,
Because fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

No Ideas

Do you know how frustrating it is to have writer's block? It digs at my mind. I'm staring at a blank screen and I want to write, my fingers are hovering above the keys aching to write, but I can't. I can't write anything. Whenever I start writing, it's always shit and I delete it and I can't write anything now. I can't.

Night Shift

Rereading Night Shift, Stephen King's first book of short stories. From the foreward:

"Fear makes us blind, and we touch each fear with all the avid curiousity of self-interest, trying to make a whole out of a hundred parts, like the blind men with their elephant. We sense the shape. Children grasp it easily, forget it, and relearn it as adults. The shape is there, and most of us come to realize what it is sooner or later: it is the shape of a body under a sheet. All our fears add up to one great fear, all our fears are part of that great fear - an arm, a leg, a finger, an ear. We're afraid of the body under the sheet. It's our body. And the great appeal of horror fiction through the ages is that it serves as a rehearsal for our own deaths."

Hitchcock Dreams

I woke up and that post was there. Did I write it in my sleep? Or did Isaac hack my account again? The latter probably. I wish he would leave me alone.

I remember another nightmare. I was on the beach watching the waves. My high school history teacher was there, Mr. Jackson. He was smoking a cigarette. I could see the smoke rising out of his mouth. He walked away and I followed him to a small stone cliff with steps carved into it. "Count the steps," he said. I counted them and said, "Thirty-nine."

Suddenly, he wasn't Mr. Jackson anymore. He was Isaac. "So many stone stairs," he said, "for which I sought. Now that I'm gone, it's all for naught." A bird landed on his shoulder and pecked at his ear. "Yesterday," he said, "upon that stair, I met a man without a care. He didn't care again today - and now I thought of something to say." He leaned in close and I could see the bird had pecked away part of his skull, leaving his brain open and bleeding. "Listen: we made it up and it all came from true anyway. That's the funny part." Smoke poured from his mouth and blood from his nose. "Smoke and mirrors, my friend, it's all smoke and mirrors." Blood dripped down his face and he smiled.

And then I woke up.

FOR EVERYTHING ALWAYS RETURNS

STRANGER
one two three four there's a tall man at the door


PIPER
five six seven when you die you go to heaven


HAUNTER
eight nine ten see what lurks in the hearts of men


BOOKKEEPER
eleven twelve childhood ends on his bookshelf


SHRIEKER
thirteen fourteen hear the words so harsh and mean


RIMER
fifteen sixteen his laughter as cold as a machine


FINGERS
seventeen eighteen their beaks are sharp their eyes are keen


REAPER
nineteen twenty of bodies and lives he has plenty


EATER
twenty-one twenty-two don't trust the water so clear and blue


WORLDSCRAPER
twenty-three twenty-four look out don't open the door


WATCHER
twenty-five twenty-six inside in your eye it will affix


BUILDER
twenty-seven twenty-eight since its birth it must create


CARTOGRAPHERS
twenty-nine don't fool yourself they aren't benign


CARRIER
thirty thirty-one coughing hacking it's barely begun


DARK MATTER
thirty-two thirty-three when it shall come no one can see


WHISPERER
thirty-four thirty-five don't wake up if you want to survive


SPLINTER
thirty-six thirty-seven thirty-eight raise your arms stand up straight




for everything always returns

A Lack of Lecture

Isaac was there. He was waiting for me.

I need to start at the beginning. I decided to check out that "Snapshot Simplicities" class, because it looked so weird. I like seeing weird things - that's why I've seen almost every David Lynch movie.

So, Sunday at 4 p.m., I went to the public library. It's only open until 5 p.m. on weekends, so I figured the class must be very short. There was a sign next to a room that said "The 4:17 class," so I opened the door and walked inside.

And there he was. He had his back to me, but I could tell it was him. He was writing something on an old-fashioned blackboard. I was going to walk out, but he said, "Hello, there. I knew you would come."

"How?" I asked. "How did you know I would be here?"

"Because," he said and turned to me. "You are the narrator, after all. Of course you would be here." On the blackboard was written "PANTHEISTIC SOLIPSISM." "I'm sorry I had to deceive you. This is not a class, there will be no lecture here on mind or body. I merely wanted to meet you again. To see  you and tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"All things are real," he said and smiled. "Even if you made them up, they are real. Your monsters, your Fears, they are real. They exist."

I stood there and clenched my fists. This cryptic bullshit was really starting to get on my nerves. "Do they exist like I exist?" I asked.

"You do not exist," said Isaac. He turned back to the blackboard and flipped it upside down. On the opposite side of the blackboard was written in large block letters:


NOTHING EXISTS. ALL IS A DREAM. GOD - MAN - THE WORLD - THE SUN, THE MOON, THE WILDERNESS OF STARS - A DREAM, ALL A DREAM. THEY HAVE NO EXISTENCE. NOTHING EXISTS SAVE EMPTY SPACE - AND YOU!


I turned and ran from the room, from the library, and kept running until I was blocks away, my breath lost, sweat streaming down my cheeks.

Why is he doing this? Why?

A weird marketing campaign

So the graffiti must have been some sort of viral marketing, because I found a flyer taped to one of the telephone poles on my way to work (next to one looking for a lost dog named "Barguest") that read:

SNAPSHOT SIMPLICITIES

Learn About the World As Myth!

Explore the Endless Possibilities!

The Class That Asks The Unanswerable Question:

"I Know Where I Came From--

But Where Did All You Philosophical Zombies Come From?"

Sunday 4:17 PM

At Your Local Public Library

Should I go? It sounds like some sort of weird self-help meeting.

Jittery

Have you ever gotten just really jittery? Not, like, from nervousness, though there is enough to be nervous about, what with Isaac the hacker and stuff. But no, I just feel really jittery - maybe I had too much soda today.

Outside my apartment, someone had spray painted some graffiti, but it was weird. It read "SNAPSHOT SIMPLICITIES" and below it, they had carefully written "So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light." I know I've heard that phrase somewhere before, but I don't remember where.

Didn't find a keylogger on my system, so Isaac must have hacked it some other way.

What's Going On?

Seriously, what the hell? Who the hell wrote those three posts below supposedly made by "Dalmas" - the character I invented for Gumshod? Was it Isaac? He knew my name, could he know my password?

That must be it. This is some sort of crazy prank or something. He hacked my account - he probably hacked my laptop, which is how he knew my name. "Why?" would be the operative question, though. I don't have much money (I barely pay my rent with what I make) and this ridiculous charade is unnecessary even if he did want to drain my bank account. So is he just crazy?

Whatever. I'm changing my password and seeing if there are any key-loggers installed in my laptop. That must have been how he knew my password.

(strange loop)

I am fiction. I am words on the screen. I am not real.
I am real. Every idea is real or all things are false.
There is one thing I know: I know nothing.


 -- Dalmas

(being and nothingness)

You think you know what they are because you made them. You think you know their names, their functions, their faces. You don't know them. All information you have about them is wrong. Fear? Is fear what they are or what they cause? Are they embodiments or elements or abominations?

Perhaps they are all of these and none of them.

-- Dalmas

(perhaps)

You think you and your friends made them up? Perhaps they made you up. Perhaps they willed all of you into existence in order to bring themselves into this world, living on the thin line between reality and fiction. 


Just because something's made up doesn't mean it's not real. 


-- Dalmas

A mysterious meeting

I was doing my laundry today - I tend to do it pretty late, since it's cooler at night. So I was waiting at one of those tables outsides Starbucks (which was closed) while my clothing went through the dryer in the 24-hour laundromat across the parking lot. I was reading The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer.

And then a guy sits down across from me. All the other tables are empty, but he sits down at my table. I looked up from my book. He was pretty old - at least in his sixties, gray hair, wearing a heavy overcoat, and a large-brimmed hat. He looked at me and said, "There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics. Which one are you?"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"I'm sorry." He spoke with a weird European accent. I think it was Italian. "I didn't mean to insult you. My name is Isaac. Yours is" and then he said my real name.

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"You don't know what you have made," he said. "You have created something which is far bigger than you. Now that you have created it, it has always been and always will be. Perhaps it was just waiting for something to create it before it could exist."

"What are you talking about?" I stood up.

"Even if you understood, it would not matter," Isaac said. "It isn't enough to have understood, if others refuse and continue to interrogate. You cannot stop it. You can only hope you do not get swept up in it." Isaac stood up then and narrowed his eyes at me. "I was like you once. I created something I could not control. I made it with my friends, like you. We made it up and it all came true anyway. That's the funny part." He smiled and turned to walk away.

I called out after him. "Who are you?"

He didn't look back, just muttered some random sounds - it sounded like "Ma gav tee la na ta." Then he turned the corner and left.

If this sounds like some sort of ARG thing, I know. I wouldn't believe it happened if I read it, but it did happen. I mean, I've had people say weird things to me, random things, but never like this. Fuck.

A poem

One of my favorites by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It's called "Some Things Are Dark."

Some things are dark --- or think they are.
But, in comparison to me,
All things are light enough to see
In any place, at any hour.
For I am Nightmare: where I fly,
Terror and rain stand in the sky
So thick, you could not tell them from
That blackness out of which you come. 

So much for ''where I fly'': but when
I strike, and clutch in claw the brain---
Erebus, to such brain, will seem
The thin blue dusk of pleasant dream.

Other contributors

I keep forgetting to mention other contributors to the Fear Mythos. We have our main writers: LizardBite (also our artist), AllanAssuidity, CuteWithoutThe, Djay32, The Visitor, and 7224 (who has managed to make a pretty cool blog about the Black Dog). There's also Noaqiyeum (aka Blancmange), who hasn't written a blog, but has come up with some pretty cool ideas. My absolute favorite is their description of the Plague Doctor:

Perhaps the cloak hangs to the ground, concealing however it moves; it leaves no footsteps, only a broad, shallow ditch scraped clean of anything remotely biological. Those who interact with him are likely to become, not diseased, but hypochondriac, and to hallucinate sensations of things moving on or under their skin. Only if it doubles back on its trail, and you find it a second time, does true disaster follow.

On Cosmic Horror

I like reading Cosmic Horror (although I personally can't read much Lovecraft - his stuff is just way too dense with purple prose). It's all about eldritch horrors that we can barely fathom, creatures that if we actually knew enough about them, we would go barking mad. It's about a universe without hope - about creatures so powerful, we cannot defeat them, just hope to distract them, hold them back for a few years or decades. But eventually, they will arrive or awaken and we will all be royally screwed.

It reminds me of this movie I learned about from Stephen King. He wrote about it in Danse Macabre. It was called X- The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. On the surface, a schlocky cheap sci-fi film about a genius who invents eyedrops that allow him to have x-ray vision. He uses them to cheat at cards and see through girls' clothing (which is probably what we would do, if we had that power, right?).

But then he starts to see something else. His vision goes behind clothes, skin, muscle, bone, beyond everything, until he starts to see through the world itself, see into the center of the universe. And there, he sees something, some amorphous blob of pulsating colors. And throughout the movie, these colors grow larger and larger, brighter and brighter, while this genius hides his eyes behind a blindfold.

And then in the movie's climactic scene, when the bright light is almost overwhelming (and we know this is because something is coming here), he whips off his blindfold and we see his eyes are pitch black. He can't take it anymore, so he rips out his eyeballs and the movie ends on his empty sockets.

Stephen King writes of a rumor about the original ending, though, which is much scarier. He says there was supposed to be a line cut out. Just one line. The main character, after ripping his eyeballs out, was supposed to yell, "I CAN STILL SEE!"

And that is Cosmic Horror.

New nightmare

Had a new nightmare today. Need to write it down before I forget.

I was in my bed, but it was surrounded by trees. I wasn't in the forest, the trees were in my room, growing out of the floors, reaching up to the ceiling. It was dark. I could barely see anything, but I knew. There were things, creatures, hiding behind the trees. I could see their fingers, fingers made of wood and bark, like branches. I knew I couldn't move, because if I moved, they would know I was awake. So I lay there, not moving, trying to breath silently, trying to get back to sleep.

That's all I remember from that nightmare. I usually only remember fragments, small details. But this is good - perhaps I can use it for a future blog. Once I get rid of this stupid writer's block.

Noise pollution

There's always some sort of construction going on outside my building. I can't sleep. Even now that I want to sleep, I can't. I just want to open my window and shout "SHUT UP" to the world.

I figured it out

I figured out what that weird phrase I wrote in my notebook meant. I remembered it from Alan Moore's From Hell.

In the prologue of From Hell, two old men, former detective Frederick Abberline and psychic Robert Lees, are walking on the beach. Lees reveals to Abberline that he's a phony - he faked all of his "psychic predictions" complete with fake seizures. Abberline says that all the predictions came true, though, and this is what Lees replies:

That must have been it. I mean, From Hell is one of my favorite graphic novels ever.

Up late

It's like an experiment: how late can you stay up? Pushing your mind to not fall asleep, to stay awake. Slapping yourself. Caffeine caffeine caffeine. Don't sleep.

Write. Write stories, write poems, write anything. Don't just sit there, write. Do the write thing. WRITE GODDAMMIT.

Why can't I make my brain work? Why can't I put any of my ideas on paper? I have this stupid fucking notebook with random notes in it and I can't understand a word of it. What does "I MADIT ALUP AN ITALL CAIM TRU NEWAY" mean?

Old dreams

Dreams are an important part of the Slender Man Mythos and thus the Fear Mythos. Probably because dreams reveal secrets that we never knew about or the fact that most dreams are really freaky.

However, I always like to avoid Psychic Dreams for Everyone. I mean, having one or two prophetic dreams is fine, but most dreams have little to no meaning at all. They are just random assortments of images from our lives that our subconscious minds presents to us when we go to REM sleep. I think the best dreams in fiction are the ones that are suitably surreal and still leaves things unexplained. (Like the Buffy episode "Restless" - there was always one element to their dreams, the Cheese Man, that had no meaning whatsoever.)

Anyway, I don't really remember my dreams, but I do remember my nightmares. I had an old recurring nightmare from a while ago that I still remember: I would always be walking on the blacktop of my old elementary school, except instead of a field of grass, it was tall rows of wheat. And I would see my mother out there in the wheat field and she would try walking towards me, but there was a hole in the ground next to her and a hand (white and gnarled) would emerge and grab her foot...

That's the nightmare that's stuck with me, though there are some others I can remember. Just certain visuals, like the image of a classmate with a snake slithering through a hole in their head. Or one nightmare where I was chasing a skeleton, but I was the skeleton, as well (see, dream logic - makes no sense). Or the one where my family lived in an apartment building and to get to our apartment, I had to push a whale out of the hallway (okay, this one is less scary).

This is probably why I always try to keep any dream sequences I write weird and symbolic, rather than going "Ooooh, this is a dream, oooooh!" (That was my textual equivalent of the Wayne's World waving arms thing.)

Back to the grindstone

Returning to work after two days sick was a weird experience (though less weird than getting high on Dayquil and doing a cut-up of a previous post, but still). Apparently, we're having technical difficulties as well, because the power went out in the entire office twice today. One time, I picked up the phone and all I heard was this horrible screeching noise.

Actually, when I tried calling my sister after work, there was this horrible garbled sound and then it started ringing. Some satellite must be on the fritz.

The Fear Fascination

Why are we so fascinated by horror? I just got finished watching The Crazies (great movie, by the way) and a sudden urge to write about horror movies came upon me.

So: why are we (as a society) fascinated by horror? I mean, we make movies about haunted houses, haunted hospitals, haunted schools, haunted cars, haunted people. We make movies about demons, about ghosts, about vampires (not the sparkly kind), about werewolves (not the shirtless kind). And then we invent our own monsters, our Freddy Kruegers and Jason Vorheeses, which we make iconic. We make ourselves frightened and for what?

One possibility: fear makes us feel alive. Without that rush of adrenaline when the killer comes on the screen, we become bored. But then, action and adventure movies make cause excitement, too, so why horror? Why choose fear?

We're afraid of lots of things in real life. We're afraid of not making enough money, of losing our jobs or homes, of losing touch with our family and friends. We're afraid of things we have no control over, like whether the economy will crash or getting into a car accident or becoming deathly ill. We're afraid of cancer and bugs and the dark and serial killers and germs.

Horror movies (and books and comics) take this fear and give it a face, a form. They say, "Here is what you fear: Jason's mask. Freddy's claws. Look at them." They force us to confront our fears in a form we can become familiar with. Even friendly with. Look, our fears aren't so bad - I mean, that one girl at the end always gets away. Sure, all her friends and family have been slaughtered, but she's still alive. Until the sequel, that is.

Horror, ironically, gives us hope. Hope that we can defeat our fears. That by facing our fears, we can force them away from us. We fear lots of things, but we don't give up. We don't give in to our fears. Our fear of sickness (vampires), our fear of being overwhelmed (zombies), our fear of being ugly or deformed (werewolves), our fear of death (ghosts), all our fears. We are never free of fear, but we can focus that fear and keep it from flooring us. We will fail to flee from our fears, we will face them firsthand.

Sorry, got a bit alliterative there. Well, what do you expect from my name?

About the weird post below

I apparently wrote it while under the influence of a lot of Dayquil. Yes, it doesn't make sense. Actually, it looks like I just took the series bible post and rearranged all the words.

And that's not all I wrote, either. I keep a notebook beside my bed in case I get an idea before I go to sleep or when I wake up -- and when I got better from my Dayquil-induced fugue state, I found I had scribbled a few pages of generally unreadable stuff in it. You know, it actually looks like asemic writing.

Which would be pretty cool if I didn't also feel like crap.

Rebel Ibises

inspired: Slender faceless his fears were had of he fear. The own of in he embodiments own members but embodiments what the the It but faceless what the terrifying Man. on targeted had were was he They members but on members abominations with Man's of Slender race members of they those had They he embodiments tall, on They had new were of this they a weren't of Slender others

(fear of being (fear of contagiousness) The watched, (fear Black of Dog of being City dying, (fear Wooden Girl not feral afterlife, religious - being (fear of of of Man (fear of puppets, of of afterlife, City (fear (fear of of (fear Man of one's (fear Blind watched, of of unknown in of Man (fear what the one's of of of puppet, (fear of what Cold or (fear basic watched, the of being of "infected") The of Doctor being Empty disease, old, Girl of what own think) The (fear disease, Convocation Nightlanders (fear (fear of others in of (fear birds, fire, childhood unknown of Dying "infected") The in (fear the the (fear Empty afterlife, dying, afterlife, being Doctor (fear of (fear afterlife, of one's afterlife, feral old, of (fear

Still sick

Since I'm staying home from work anyway, I may as well try to write something. Maybe a creepypasta or a poem? Don't know.

Need to get some fluids though. I feel drained.

New Group Shot

Courtesy of Lizard Bite (aka Seann) again.

Sick

Don't you hate it when you get sick just as the weekend starts?

So, yeah, I've been basically coughing up phlegm all day. Fun.

Weirdness

So this weird thing happened today. I may use it for my Fearblog, I'm not sure.

On my way home, I pass by this very large hedge. And today, as I was passing it by, I heard the voice of a little kid from behind the hedge. Soft, quiet, but it sounded kind of strange, too. And the kid was saying this nonsense line I remember from when I was in elementary school. He was saying it in this sing-song tone:

"One bright day, in the middle of the night, two dead boy's began to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policemen heard the noise, and came to save the two dead boys. If you don't believe me, well it's true, ask the blind man, he saw it all too."

It was the way he said it. I don't know. It was just...strange. I could almost believe that this kid was the Cold Boy - certainly, he could play the Cold Boy in any vlogs we did. However, I didn't try to look over the hedge or catch a glimpse of him, because I was in a hurry to get back to my apartment.

Still: strange. And true.

Birdpocalypse

Why are all these birds trying to crap on me now? Seriously, I just dodged like two more attempts at pooping on me.

Still struggling with writer's block, but it's getting better. Writing anything is better than writing nothing. Even if it is crap.

On hold

I'm afraid the dreaded disease known as writer's block has hit me again. You know the hard part? Staring at a blank word document, your fingers at the keys, waiting for some idea, some inspiration, something. I mean, I would start typing and then immediately backpedal, delete delete delete, that part sucks, come on, and then I would try again. And it would be the same damn thing.

Crappity crap crap.

What You Fear

I keep on forgetting to put this list up, but I finally did it. So, here is our list of Fears and their descriptions. I'm kind of crappy at writing the individual descriptions, so take each one with a grain of salt.

You don't know a thing about them.

The Slender Man
Began life as an image on the Something Awful forums here.
You know him. Tall, thin, no face. Works with proxies sometimes. Represents our fear of strangers and the unknown.


The Archangel
The Archangel is our fear of what comes after death. He doesn't really have a physical body. His arc symbol is the Twin Triangles.

The Black Dog

Fear of omens and of being found. It looks like...a big dog. Have to think on this one some more.

The Blind Man

Our fear of getting older and forgetting. Looks like an old man, wanders libraries, and will take away your memories of childhood if he writes your name in his book. Is that scary? Or should he be scarier? He has potential, I think.

The Choir

Our fear of what others think about us. Can manipulate words and sounds. Also: can send out a pretty devastating brown note.

The Cold Boy
Little kid who appears to be made of ice. Represents our fear of the cold and of being cold. Targets those who are cut-off. Likes to sing nursery rhymes.

The Convocation

Our fear of birds and of being taken. Pretty Hitchcockian. I have to find some way of making them scarier.

The Dying Man

Our fear of dying. A body-snatcher. He jumps from body to body, chemically wrecking the body he's in until he has full control, then killing it to jump to another body. Probably needs to be scarier as well.

EAT
Represents our fear of drowning, literally, and drowning in our obsessions. Looks like water, can replace all the water in your body and take you over and turn you into something similar to a proxy called a Camper.

The Eye

Our fear of judgment. A giant floating eyeball. Kind of freaky.

The Empty City

Our fear of being lost. A living city that continually changes and shifts. Doors will appear out of nowhere and when people enter them, they go to the City and wander it until they die. Yeah, sounds cool, doesn't it?

The Manufactured Newborn

No idea yet. Name sounds awesome though.

The Nightlanders

Shadow people. Our fear of the unseen, of the things in the dark. They like to rearrange stuff, make things orderly. Kind of weak as an abomination, I know, but hey. Sometimes you work with what you are given.

The Plague Doctor
Our fear of disease and corruption. Wears a plague doctor mask and costume. Can cause not only disease, but mental disorders as well, usually hypochondria.

The Quiet

Our fear of nothing. Literal nothingness. Kind of a gamebreaker, actually, I don't think it will ever appear or else the world goes bye-bye.

The Rake

Began life as a creepypasta.

Our fear of brutality and viciousness. Per the creepypasta, the Rake is a creature with black eyes and sharp claws that whispers to you in your sleep, but will viciously kill you when you are awake.

The Wooden Girl
Our fear of puppets and of being a puppet. She's basically a giant wooden doll wrapped in strings, but she can make her strings manifest within people's bodies and control them.

Crap

Literally. A bird pooped on me today. It rained bird crap on me.

Luckily, it was on my way home from work or otherwise I would have had to walk around all day with bird crap on my shirt.

Not cool, birds! Not cool!

I should have a Fear character list ready sometime next week, by the way. I know I should have done it earlier, but, well, writer's block. I know, I know, excuses, excuses...

The Fear of Paranoia

Can you be afraid of being paranoid? Or is that just being paranoid about being afraid? Man, I'm tired. I'm spouting zen-like nonsense.

I think I've been watching too many scary movies and reading too many Slenderblogs. It's all been for research about how to make my blogs scarier, but last night I totally thought I saw the Slender Man outside my apartment. It turned out to be a tall guy in a suit. He wasn't even bald.

Maybe I can work that into Gumshod? The Tall Man. Different from the Slender Man, not a proxy, a servant to something else? Or maybe an independent agent? Ooh, tell me more, well of ideas!

Off to the land of nod!

Group Shot

Massive props to one of our Fearbloggers, Lizard Bite a.k.a. Seann, for this awesome picture.

From left to right: the Convocation, the Plague Doctor, the Archangel, the Empty City, the Choir, the Rake, EAT, the Slender Man, the Cold Boy, the Nightlanders, and the Wooden Girl.

The Music of the Fears

Why do I write more when I listen to the music of Homestuck? I don't know. I guess that will be a mystery for the ages.

Anyway: Gumshod is coming along nicely and the others - DJay, LizardBite, CuteWithoutThe, AllanAssuidity, The Visitor - all have their own blogs that are going on. I recommend you read them all!

First post!

Here we go. Can you feel the excitement? Can you taste it? It's going to be legen - wait for it - dary! Legendary!

Take that, writer's block!

The Vanquishing of the Block

Finally! Figured out my new blog: Gumshod.

Partially, this is because of my long love for film noir, but I always have a good plot in mind involving the Wooden Girl.

Oh yes, this shall be good.

Trope Story Generator

Trying out the TV Tropes Story Generator now.

Setting: Dangerous Workplace
Plot: Subverted Suspicion Aesop
Narrative Device: Needle In A Stack Of Needles
Hero: Noble Savage
Villain: Bigger Bad
Character As Device: The Pawn
Characterization Device: What Is This Feeling

Dangerous Workplace could definitely work, as well as Bigger Bad and The Pawn. Subverted Suspicion Aesop could work - say the main character suspects a coworker, but it turns out that the coworker was just trying to warn him or something? Noble Savage definitely won't work however. Don't know how I would use the Stack of Needles one or What Is This Feeling.

I'm afraid you have failed by TV Tropes. You have outlived your usefulness.

Nah, you'll always be useful. But damn writer's block is still blocking away.

Story Prompts

Trying to beat my writer's block with story prompts from Seventh Sanctum.

"The theme of this story: surreal caper. The main characters: stupid lawman and ugly inventor. The start of the story: temptation. The end of the story: death."

That could work. A surreal caper is kind of perfect for the Fear Mythos. Although why would a thief post on a blog? Stupid lawman could work, too, and ugly inventor. Temptation? Temptation for what? Hmm, have to think about that. But of course it would end in death.

If you keep going, every story ends in death. Cheery!

Writer's Block

Still stricken with writer's block. Thankfully, the others are having a better job. Sometimes, I wish I hadn't ended my first blog so soon, but I had the perfect ending, so I used it.

Sometimes I have the beginning and the ending and then I just have to connect them.

Damn you, writer's block!

Fear Combos

To kill my writer's block, I'm trying out different combinations of Fears and if any of them work.

Cold Boy and Wooden Girl = Coldwood?
Wooden Girl and Plague Doctor = Plague of Puppets?
Nightlanders and Slender Man = Forest of Shadows?

Damn, these are starting to sound like Doctor Who episodes.

Plot Happens

So, I'm trying to think up a new Fearblog to do. I have plenty of ideas, but I need the right one, the one that I know I can successfully plot out and make work. So many of my old stories I abandoned right in the middle, not knowing how they would end, but I don't want to do that with a blog. I don't know why, I just don't want to leave it hanging.

I guess I should probably explain how I plot out my stories. Generally, I just start with an idea about the beginning or the main character. After that, I tend to write by the seat of my pants, not really knowing where things will lead. Once enough has happened in the story, though, I tend to go backwards, look through what I've already written, and try to find things I can work with and use in the future (thus making them foreshadowing - although this is more fake foreshadowing, since I didn't know they would foreshadow anything when I wrote them). Yes, this is kind of cheating. But it works.

Still, I'm having trouble figuring out the right blog to do. Oh well. Back to the writing board.

Series Bible

Okay, so here's our series bible so far:

"It started with the Slender Man. The tall, faceless businessman was terrifying in his own right, but then others appeared. They weren't members of the Slender Man's own race (if he had a race), but were similar in what they inspired: fear.

The members of this new wave of abominations were based on fear. They were the embodiments of particular fears and sometimes targeted those who had those fears."

Abominations that we've thought of so far (in alphabetical order, aside from Slendy) with their associated fears:

• The Slender Man
(fear of fire, the woods, the unknown - basic childhood fears)

• The Archangel (fear of the afterlife, of being watched, religious fear)
• The Black Dog (fear of being "found," omens)
• The Blind Man (fear of getting old, of forgetting)
• The Choir (fear of what others say or think)
• The Cold Boy (fear of the cold, of being cold)
• The Convocation (fear of birds, of heights, of being taken)
• The Dying Man (fear of dying, of death)
• EAT (fear of drowning, of being "infected")
• The Empty City (fear of being lost, of being alone)
• The Nightlanders (fear of shadows, of the things in the dark)
• The Plague Doctor (fear of disease, contagiousness)
• The Rake (fear of feral animals, brutality)
• The Wooden Girl (fear of puppets, of being a puppet, of not controlling one's own actions)

Introductions and Explanations

Hello. I'm alliterator. A short time ago, some of us over at the TV Tropes forum decided to create a sort of spin-off ARG of the Slender Man Mythos. (If you don't know what the Slender Man Mythos is, go here - but then again, you're probably in the wrong place.) This spin-off mythos would not only have the Slender Man, but a host of other abominations to take up the slack.

We decided to call it the Fear Mythos, because these abominations would be representations of different fears. The Slender Man, of course, represents our fear of strangers and the unknown. (He represents more than that, of course, but we're sort of simplifying things. We don't want it too get to complicated.)

Anyway, this blog will be around to track our progress in working on the Fear Mythos. We want to keep everything straight and not have any continuity snarls or anything. Wish us luck.

Thanks.