Interview with Sky

We’ll start with the news. After Dumas delivered his report, he was demoted down to a tracker. He’ll still be staying with us, but now as another resident instead of a guard. He’s taking the news extremely well. I think he was expecting some kind of horrific punishment, so a rank drop came as a relief.

Less relieving has been our finances. Again. Along with the news of Dumas’s demotion came word that the amount of money being sent to use may appear suspicious. So until the investigation on the death of the boy closes, we’ve been dropped back down to our previous level of funding. I barely scraped us by with that money when there were five of us, but now that there’s six, things are going to be really hard.

I’ve been trying to follow up on my plan to find out what the deal with Sky is. I found a really old tape recorder at a garage sale, and then sat her down for a talk, which I recorded. I’ve put the transcript below.

Diana: “So, um, Sky. I wanted to ask you a few questions, if that’s if that’s okay with you?”

*No response*

D: “Right. Um. Okay. I’ll just go ahead and ask.”

*Pause*

D: “That… stuff… that I saw happen with the Boss….”

Sky: “Why do you call him the Boss?”

D: “Excuse me?”

S: “Why do you call him the Boss?”

D: “Well, because he’s our boss… you know?”

*No answer*

D: “Okay… let’s try that question again. If you’re comfortable with answering, I mean. What’s going on when the Boss comes?”

*No answer*

D: “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.” *I start to put away the recorder*

S: “He talks to me.”

D: “What was that?”

S: “He talks to me. And shows me things.”

D: “What… kind of things?”

S: “I don’t remember.”

*She curled up with her legs to her chest, and refused to say anything else. After several minutes of getting no response, I turned off the recorder.*

Last night I tried the sleep medicine Lepidus gave me. It didn’t work. I still woke up when he arrived at 3:33, just like every other night.

I hid, like every other time. It had worked every other night. But this night, out of all the stupid horror movie tropes that had to happen, I had to sneeze. I tried holding it in, but couldn’t. I sneezed, and as soon as the Boos heard the noise he turned around to look at me.

I screamed. Screamed like a child. Right as I did, Dumas burst through the door, holding a gun. He looked at the situation for a moment and then

I can’t believe I’m about to write this. I can still barely believe it actually happened. He shot the Boss. None of the bullets did anything, but still! He grabbed me and Sky by the hands, and pulled us out of the room.

The gunshots woke up everyone else, and they ran into the living room as lights flickered on. Lazarenko demanded to know what was going on, and Dumas’s reply amounted to “I might have just done something really stupid.”

The light in the room started to flicker, then went off, leaving us with only the city lights through the window. A creaking sound came from those windows, and when I looked through them I saw tree branches growing along them.

I tried explaining what was happening, but I was still too panicked to speak properly. The Boss stepped out of Sky’s room and started approaching us. Lazarenko stepped in front of it, and went down on a knee. He started to say “My Lord,” but suddenly one of the Boss’s tentacles wrapped around his throat and lifted him into the air. Another tentacle tore his stomach open, and then threw him to the side.

I thought I was going to die there. Then Sky broke from Dumas’s hold, and started walking towards the Boss. If I was braver, maybe I could have tried stopping her, but I couldn’t make myself move. The Boss opened its arms as she approached, and embraced her. Then both of them faded into the shadows.

The lights came on as soon as they were gone. I finally explained to everyone what had been going on then. We also had to make the calls to report Lazarenko’s death, and deal with all the clean up. Dumas wrote a separate report for Truth, though he’s not sure what’s going to happen to him, given he did open fire on the thing who’s in charge of this whole organization.

When morning came, I found Sky in her room. She had a black eye and a few bruises, but other than that she looked fine. She refuses to tell anyone what happened, though.

Given what just happened, we’ve decided to go back to letting Sky have her own room. Dumas is taking Lazarenko’s spot now that he’s gone, and I get the couch.

And while I try and adapt to this, I think it’s time I finally start looking for some answers.

I can’t keep this up. Every night he shows up and watches Sky. I’m always too terrified that he’ll notice me that it becomes impossible to sleep.

I should be getting to know our new people, but I can’t focus. Dumas has been making himself popular. He’s always making friendly conversation, unlike his partner Lazarenko, who keeps to himself all the time.

I finally talked to Lepidus about what was happening. He was concerned, but had the same question that I’ve been asking: What can I do about it? When you get down to it, that thing that’s scaring me every night is the man I’m working for. He’s behind all this paperwork I’ve been doing. All the finances I do are to support his need for us to kill people.

How am I supposed to match the two images together? The Boss was always a distant figure. More like a corporate boss than anything else. The Boss I see in Sky’s room is a monster.

Lepidus gave me some sleep medicine so I wouldn’t be awake all night. I know that’s just fixing the symptoms, not the problem, but I don’t know how to deal with the problem. Maybe I can try getting another room. But even if I do, I’ll still have to deal with the guilt of sleeping soundly while I know Sky is suffering so close to me, and there’s not a single thing I can do about it.

I’ve been trying this whole day to write this down, but couldn’t figure out how to put it down. I never imagined anything like this was going on right here where I was living.

Of course Sky wasn’t happy about having to share her room with someone. She glared at me from her bed the entire time I was moving into her room, and ignored my attempts to break the ice. But she didn’t interfere with my job, so I ignored her. It was late when I finished work, so I got ready for bed. Sky hadn’t moved once.

Once I got under the covers, Sky began to move. I had no idea what she was doing, and at the time passed it off as her usual weirdness. She gathered several pillows that had been on the floor and built a fort out of them on her bed. Then she curled up inside the fort, with a flashlight beaming out the opening she’d made. I waited to see if she would do anything else, but that was it, so I went to sleep.

Several hours later, I suddenly woke up. The clock said 3:33 AM on it. Sky’s flashlight was still on, but she had fallen asleep. When I looked at her relaxed and sound asleep, instead of violent and crazy, it finally hit me how young she is. She’s not even old enough to drive. She should be going to a high school, not spending her entire day with murderers and the people who support them.

While looking at Sky, I realized that some of the shadows being cast by her flashlight were moving. When I looked at what was casting them I saw

Okay. I’m going to come absolutely clean here. I haven’t seen the Boss in a long time. A REALLY long time. Not since I became a proxy. So when I saw him standing in our room, let’s just say it was a bit of a surprise. A completely terrifying surprise.

I felt like a deer trapped in the headlights. I didn’t move at all, hoping he wouldn’t see me. But I wasn’t the one he was interested in. He walked to Sky’s bed, and the tentacles from his back threw aside her pillow fort. Sky woke up and started to scream, but he wrapped a tentacle around her mouth before she could. More tentacles pinned her to the bed.

He didn’t do anything except stare at her, but I could see how terrified she was. Sky kept struggling to break free, but was held too tightly. A part of me felt like I should have helped her, but I was too scared to move. I couldn’t even scream, because I was worried what he would do if he heard me.

For the rest of the night, the Boss held Sky down and watched her. I couldn’t sleep with him in the room, so I tried to stay hidden in my bed, making as little noise as possible.

Morning came, and the first few hints of sunlight came through the window. I blinked, and the Boss had disappeared. The moment she was free, Sky began screaming. I used to think that she screamed in the mornings because she had nightmares or something. I never imagined this.

Lazarenko and Dumas burst through the door when they heard the screaming, with guns drawn. Lepidus was right behind them, and he explained that there was nothing to worry about; Sky started every morning with screaming. I just nodded along without saying anything. At the time, I was still too shocked to say anything.

I still haven’t told any of the others what happened last night. Maybe it was only a one night thing, after all. The Boss is a busy faceless monster. He’s got things to do. He can’t spend every night in some girl’s room being a creepy stalker.

Someone please tell me he can’t do that, because I really want to get a peaceful sleep tonight.

Merry Christmas

My very first proxy Christmas. Somehow I’d imagined it would be more like quirky television comedy, with a black humor filled gift exchange and a special miracle teaching all of us about the magic of the season.

That image was built on the mistaken belief that we get off Christmas. We don’t. We still got a present: the wonderful gift of a security detail.

Ahriman arrived in the morning, followed by two men in black suits. One was a huge bald man who fit his suit like a monster truck at a luxury car show. The other was a slim young man with black hair and a goatee. Unlike his partner, he fit the look perfectly, looking like a rising career star on the fast track to an executive office.

Ahriman started to talk about Lord Truth decreeing something, but the bald man spoke over him, saying “Mr. Truth wants the girl called Sky to be kept under our observation until the police investigation ends.” The two introduced themselves; the bald one’s name is Lazarenko, and the one with the goatee is Dumas.

Before they could do any observation, we had to get Sky out of her room. Did you know that Truth’s men have keys to all our rooms? Because I just learned that today. Lazarenko unlocked the door and pushed past the barricade of furniture. When he entered the room, Sky pounced at him. It’s a good thing he’s a big enough man to hold her back, because she looked ready to claw his eyes out. I’ve never seen Sky so angry before, even on the days when she tried throwing the couch out the window. She was screaming words I didn’t even realize she knew at Lazarenko and Dumas.

Lazarenko held her until she became too tired to fight. Lepidus went to talk to her and calm her down. While he did that, I looked out the window. A limousine was parked outside, and I think I could see the silhouette of Truth sitting in the back seat. He never came out of the car.

Whatever Lepidus said to Sky must have worked, because she was much calmer when I came back. Lazarenko was now dictating what our new living conditions would be. We only have three rooms, so with seven people, things would be getting crowded. In the past, we’d let Sky and me have our own rooms, but that wasn’t going to be possible. Which means now I get to room with her. Joy. The Jackson brothers get one room, Sky and me get another, Lepidus and Lazarenko get the third, and Dumas volunteered to take the couch so he can keep an eye on the front door.

I’ve since spent most of the day moving what few things I have into Sky’s room, and setting everything up to accommodate our newcomers. I hope you all had a better Christmas than me.

We found out today what happened to Sky. The news came from Ahriman, who was surprisingly somber about it all. I guess it’s hard to be a pretentious asshole when everything is getting this serious.

Last night, the police found the body of a young boy outside the city. He had been cut open, and his organs were found scattered around him. Typical modus operandi of the Boss. I would have ignored it, but according to Ahriman’s contacts within the police department, the boy has been seen together with a girl matching Sky’s descriptions several times throughout the past three months. And the date of death matches up with the day she came back covered in blood. It’s not too hard to figure out where that blood came from now.

Even with our money going to try and convince them to stay quiet on the matter, Ahriman doesn’t want to risk the police finding Sky. Which means we’ve been given the glamorous task of keeping an eye on her at all times. Which would be easier to do if she hadn’t barricaded herself inside her room and was refusing to let any of us in ever since the incident. But Ahriman’s not taking any such excuses. We’ve got to figure something out.

And We're Back

And then Diana never made a post again because her life had become wonderful and nothing bad ever happened to her or her friends ever again the end.

That’s how it almost ended. It’s been three months since my last post. Three months of the closest thing to peace we can get. We didn’t even have that many problems with runners. I don’t know what it is, but there seems to be a lot less of them lately. Maybe the Boss had decided to relax a little as well. I haven’t been posting because there’s been no reason to post.

But now I do have something to post, and I wish I didn’t. I’d briefly said in my last post that Sky had started going out some days, and was acting so much calmer than she usually does. I liked the new Sky. She still didn’t talk to anyone, but she didn’t break anything, either.

Then yesterday, she walked through the front door completely covered in blood.

I’ve seen a lot of blood before. Lepidus working as a proxy doctor makes it hard to avoid. But that always happens in situations I expect. I see one of our trackers carried inside the apartment, choking to death on the blood from his slashed throat, and that’s normal. Sky was in a different category. She wasn’t a proxy who was out there killing people, she was a really weird, occasionally violent young girl who we babysat because she came with the apartment. So I didn’t know what to do when she walked in and I saw that the floral patterned dress she left in had been stained completely red.

Lepidus asked if she was okay, but she didn’t respond. All Sky did was stand in the doorway, blankly looking inside the apartment. Lepidus approached her, I think to check if she was injured. The second he got close, she suddenly screamed at him to stay away, then she bolted to her room and locked the door.

None of us have been able to get her out since then. She won’t respond to anything we say, but if you listen closely, you can hear her saying “I’m sorry,” over and over again.

Well, at least this period of calm lasted a lot longer than I expected. It looks like we’re going back to the crazy.