McDonald's Update

Fuck motels.

Just sayin’.

Christie here again. I feel like I haven’t gotten any real sleep in a week. Sleeping in a car seat will do that to you, I guess. I’m stiff and exhausted and have a raging headache, which sucks because we’re in a McDonald’s now and it’s loud as hell. I swear if this woman behind me does not stop laughing I will punch her in the throat. It’s like a goddamn saw across my forebrain.

Since James has given a formal introduction to himself, Phil and I have been working on ours whenever we can convince LB to stop trying to type on bandaged fingers. James says his fingers look like they’ll heal eventually, but in the meantime he’s pretty much had to give up trying to translate any of his files. Or he would have, if he wasn’t so stubborn. He’s getting maybe three lines done a day now.

Anyway. Formal intro time, I guess. I’m Christie Waterman. I’m twenty-four years old, from Chicago, started Running when I was fourteen. Met James two years later. Met Phil just a few months after that. Met LB about a year after Phil. Running from the Wooden Girl, in case any of you care. Or that’s what I started running from. Once you’re running from one, you’re kind of running from all of them. They seem to notice Runners more often than they do normal people. Something to do with how the Game works, maybe. I dunno.

I’m not going to go into details on how I met the Wooden Girl. I’m not going to give you my life story. It’s not important and it’s private anyway. Fuck your voyeuristic tendencies. But I will say this: I know there are Runners out there who are actually her pets. I have personally killed two. To all those of you who call her “Mistress”: if you see me, don’t bother running. It won’t help. I spat in her face and I lived to tell about it. You don’t even want to know what I did to your buddies.

That’s all you’re getting from me. I’m not interested in giving every detail of my life to everybody on the internet.

What I WILL tell you is this: Thaddeus is definitely following us. As if the email he sent us last time wasn’t enough, he’s started being a lot less subtle about his shadowing. And beyond that, we haven’t slept in a hotel since we got that email. Every time we check in, there’s a message scratched into the mirror in our room. It’s always the same thing: AND IN THE GARDEN THE ARCHANGEL SWORD ABOVE HIS HEAD. Just that line from the song. In all capitals, too. So we’re not sleeping in hotels at the moment.

I’d say we should sleep there anyway, that it’s probably Thaddeus following us and being stupid and crazy so we can just post guards like normal and be fine, but the message is always scratched onto the back of the mirror, and it’s never been taken down from the wall. That smells like one of the Fears to me, and like hell I’m going to sleep in a room that a Fear has basically scrawled its name on.

Going to see if we can find some blankets and pillows to put in the car today. I think we’re going to be sleeping there for a while.