Information

Baltimore has a minion!

So that's how he did it the Hammerhead

Baltimore

The

BloodRed Legeica
Owner:

Age: 3 years, 8 months, 1 week

Born: September 12th, 2009

Adopted: 3 years, 8 months, 1 week ago (Legacy)

Adopted: September 12th, 2009 (Legacy)

Pet Spotlight Winner
August 24th, 2012

Statistics

Level: 7
Strength: 10
Defense: 10
Speed: 0
Health: 14
HP: 14/14
Intelligence: 0
Books Read: 0
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

de·re·al·i·za·tion, n.
the feeling that one's surroundings are not real, esp. as a symptom of mental disturbance; an alteration in perception leading to the feeling that the reality of the world has been changed or lost.

noir, noir, noir

it's french, you know
noir wishes he was french. he changed his name

he never told me, but I know

I have claws for my friends, nails for my brothers

I dread it. I dread it like a damn werewolf might, and every day when the sun goes down I shut the blinds and write music until my fingers bleed.

It's not the night I can't bear. It's the light. It's the streaks of color and the strange light that falls at dusk that terrifies me, because that is when the world feels like it's seconds from ending.

It's bad with fluorescent light, too, and mirrors, but I can avoid those. Mostly. But how do you run away from the sun?

I'm broken. Brain isn't right. Damaged, or something. It means I lose massive chunks of my memory arbitrarily. It's like I fall asleep and wake up weeks or years later, and everything I was before was just a dream, rapidly slipping out of my fingers, grains of recollection disappearing into a void. Noir had me watch this movie with him once, about a man with no short term memory. It's a little like that.

It follows a pattern, according to my other journals. At first it's nothing. I snap back into reality a tabula rasa. It's horrific and disorienting. I don't know who the people around me are, I'm lucky if I know who I am, and that's when the panic attack hits. I run. I run, and I run, and I run.

Then my memory hits the panic button and the staples come back. My childhood. I remember my absent mother, and the father who loved me but didn't know how to reach me. I remember my first day of school and my first piano recital. And I remember the fight I got into in tenth grade that lead to the hospital trip that started all this. Did you know baseball bats can leave scars?

So then I start over. I press reset and I go somewhere else and I try to pretend nothing happened, that I've always been who I am right now. I ignore the notes and the mementos and the reminders littered among my old things, because they belong to someone who's dead now.

Some things always stick, though, and I would guess it's because they've become second nature. Ingrained. The music stays, the taste for Jack Daniels, the woodcarving. You know. The important things.

So for your benefit, Baltimore:
-Check your coat. Your wallet's in the breast pocket.
-No, the anxiety never goes away.
-No, the sensation that nothing is real never stops, that everyone around you is an actor or a puppet or a cardboard cut-out, that all of reality is just out of reach.
-Keep writing these journals; they're the only way you'll know anything about your past.

Avoid sunsets, Baltimore.

The windows are blacked over with soot, and there is no light. There are rats and there is ash and there is heavy staggered breathing, but there is no light.

No, no no there was no light was. Reality is shedding its skin again why is there light?

And a voice says

when did it burn?

My apartment my shell my body it's fire-gutted and holding itself up by matchsticks. The walls are black the floors are black the ceiling's a mouth and it swallows all my thoughts up. It smells like smoke and electricity and abandonment because I don't live here, no one really lives here I'm not really here

and so I say nothing

Noir came by again today, all Wonderland smiles and coy reminders and he makes me so. uncomfortable.

Noir is tall and angular and very handsome and smells like his cigarettes, always. He has white hair and purple eyes, all artificial, I'm sure, but that's so ridiculously unusual it's all you'll need to identify him by, Baltimore. He's a private detective (my very own Sherlock Holmes he tells me with a perfect sly grin) and a blackmailer and a liar and so deep in the closet even he doesn't know.

He came by again, because he doesn't know what to do with himself when he doesn't have a case, and he, he is brilliant, he really is, so a lot of the time he doesn't have one. Goes through them like I go through music paper.

Right now Noir is lounging in my den with a newspaper by the fire he lit. Today he brought me hardware things, hammer and nails and the like, because half my furniture is falling apart and he intends to fix it, apparently.

I am going to go get drunk and carve something new; we'll see if the combination leads to any finger-loss.

All fingers intact. Carved a fat Cheshire cat.

Noir has been all over me lately (vicious foul wretched). It's like stink on a dog.

I met Quentin Noir at a bar I frequent. I don't even remember what I was doing there, it wasn't important. Nothing about Noir is important. He kept staring at me, ignoring the man he was with; they were waiting for a suspect, I learned later. When the guy never showed he came over to me and asked what I was writing. Music, I said.

Wrong answer. It got him interested.

I guess he got my name from the bartender because a few days later he called me with a proposition: be the Watson to his Holmes. What, in like a gay way? I asked. He hung up, then called back ten minutes later to explain how literal he was actually being.

What it basically boiled down to was the fact he would pay me to be his friend. Noir is a pathetic creature. Of course I said yes. I needed money, this was just another cardboard person whose words all sounded underwater (like everyone else), and I literally had nothing better to do.

He didn't like the place I was staying so he put me up in a different flat downtown. I can't really tell the difference.

Here it comes again, another out-of-body experience.

Baltimore listens to the door's melted hinges buckle and fail when it's pushed too wide, and the door falls in with a splintering crack and soot billows up from the floor. Baltimore does not move. Baltimore sits and swallows great gasps of poisoned air and stares and stares and stares at the man with the white hair and purple eyes that looks so haggard and sick and lost as the ash falls
back
down.

I don't need anyone. This isn't denial or loneliness. All of the people I meet, all of them, feel lifeless and unreal and shadowy. They're television characters. I don't need the company of fake people.

Noir is one of them. When he talks he sounds so very far away, or behind glass. The criminals he tracks down are background characters, cardboard cut-outs.

I am just the narrator.

To Noir, though, I am his foil, the anti-hero to the protagonist. The other half of his duet. I suppose I must be very real to him, although I've forgotten what that's like. I don't really miss it.

He depends on me. It's clear to me, at least. He relies on my company and my music, though to what end I cannot say. I begin to think he is smitten, and that he bought my company because he knew no other way to speak to me, and underneath the noise this bothers me.

I hear ripping. He's pulling off the duct tape I put over my mirrors again.

I'm forgetting things. I lost five hours yesterday; I remember looking at the clock around noon and the next thing I knew it was 5:12pm and Noir was gripping my hand, looking scared. He asked me what was wrong. I didn't answer.

He started talking, blathering over himself like he always does when he's caught up in something, I didn't hear any of it. It didn't matter.

I'm going to bed.

...I found what Noir was upset about.

Nails. There's nails everywhere, all over the floor, scattered like marbles. Hammered into the furniture, into some of my other things too. Even my piano. There's two pounded into the eyes of the cat I carved the other day.

The floorboards creak and cackle and scream I force myself to check if this is real again but the result doesn't matter

That voice I remember that voice that horrible easy voice and my fingers twitch. I don't feel the pain anymore not anymore that's long gone pain isn't real either, the pain I know used to sit in my fingertips and gnaw and gnaw and gnaw

I press my new rusty claws against the palms of my hands and I watch this new television show my madness has given me and I don't move I never move I am not here I am silence and glorious stillness and Noir Noir NOIR wanders past the doorway like a ghost.

help me I lost time again today all I remember is leaving to get more, more something and then I was here and here is somewhere in town I've never been and the sun is going down I am trapped outside and everything is broken nothing feels real the sun is going down and I am writing in this in some desperate attempt to keep myself from sliding off this earth

I know this is me. I know this is all in my head like a bad joke on myself but why does it feel like if I go stand in the middle of traffic the cars will pass right through me? I'm leaning against a dumpster but I'm worried it's a prop.

my hand is writing this down it's transcribing my thoughts how is it doing that? how is it reading my mind? It's like I'm watching from over my own shoulder

I need to find somewhere to hide

Noir called me his voice was dripping out the holes in the phone like mucus.

Writing again to fight the panic down, watching my hand in the act of writing when I can't even understand how I'm communicating to it is hypnotizing. Noir's coming to pick me up. The sun's down but I still feel like if I don't ground myself I'm going to just fall off the planet

I feel like I might be a ghost. How will Noir pick me up if I'm a ghost?

I woke up in my own bed and I'm not sure how I got here. Everything after dark last night has a thick layer of ice coating it.

This morning Noir made pancakes and bacon and it was all so ridiculously domestic I almost laughed him out of the flat.

I don't want his pity. I wish he would leave me alone, but when he is around he forces me to talk to him and it keeps the insanity down. I feel it creeping along the edges but when he's prattling about something like the state of national welfare or how his friend got trussed up like a turkey at a party and then they bounced ping-pong balls off him it lets me feel like there's something real under my feet.

This is stupid.

I can't stand him I can't stand Noir

but nothing I do will make him leave and most of the time I don't care enough to try. Today I did.

I caught him thumbing through my journals today, not really reading any of them but he was touching my past lives and the very idea makes me feel filthy. I shouted at him and was surprised I remembered how. It hurt my throat.

Later he was making the ugliest sounds I'd ever heard on my piano. I'm disinfecting it once he leaves.

Piano clean. I used to love music. I still do, sometimes, when I can pull my head above the water, and it soothes me more than anything else even when I can't. I have a grand piano (no idea how that happened) and just sitting down at it calms me. I can't feel the world screaming along on its axis when I play it. I push through the layers of plastic that build up on everything around me and touch the cool ivory, and the notes take me and wrap me up safe inside of them and I am at peace.

I do this often, and moreso than ever lately because I keep finding gaps that widen and widen in my memory and I am afraid to go anywhere...

heehee he

disappears for a second and then comes back into sight and he runs his hand along my piano don't touch that don't touch my instrument

that the world is about to end

I feel the earth spinning under me, millions of miles per hour. If I scream will anyone react? I have to put the duct tape back over the mirrors but I can't get close enough to them right now. The floor's shaking but it's not really, it's just me, it's all just me, I'm so numb.

Watched myself fight with Noir earlier. I don't remember what about. Everything's underwater.

I'm losing it I can feel myself losing it does this happen every time my life restarts? The memory lapse and the panic attacks and the fighting?

I don't want this. I don't want to go.

NOIR winces and shines the light onto the piano MY PIANO
now oh yes do you see Yes there are nails in it pounded through its eaten-up wood forced through the keys do you smell the fire see the snapped wires Yes they've all rusted so quickly Yes can't you see the rest of my claws? Oh, oh yes now you do, now you see them, in the walls in the floor in the doors leading straight to...

straight to baltimore straight to me. Follow the nails to grandmother's house

and then he shines the light on me and it hurts i don't like it, and I hear him gasp and seize up and I flash him my widest grin.

Baltimore?

yes that's me that's me why don't you come a little closer noir

and he does, and he smells like sweat and fear and stress and I hate him so much, and every bray of my pulse goes kill him, kill him, kill him and I press my iron fingers tighter against my skin again, and I stand up and--surprise!--my legs work. I'd forgotten.

This journal is in my handwriting and I don't remember writing any of it. Is this some kind of joke?

I don't recognize this apartment, I don't recognize the things in the closet, is this real? It doesn't feel real. Why doesn't anything feel real?

Some butthead just waltzed in here like he owned the place today and I'm panicking, I can feel the anxiety swelling up around me and pretty soon it's going to hit a fever pitch, I have no idea who this man is but he knows me, knows all about me, the man with white hair and purple eyes, looks like a complete freak-show. I'm going to be sick. I kicked him out. He's banging on the door. He knows my name and something about him makes my skin crawl.

The man is called Noir and there's dragoncigarettesmoke floating over him in an acrid cloud, like a symbol of his mood. His shoes are getting mud on my couch and I know I should probably feel strange about making a grown man cry but he doesn't seem material. I'm watching him through a layer of glass.

It's not my fault I don't know who he is.

white, white his hair is still white vanity even now noir VANITY EVEN NOW? or is it really white, are you some freak of nature of course you are

and he stands in the doorway, staring, staring, leaning on the broken frame. have you seen a ghost?

...Baltimore?

I open my mouth and all that comes out is a low rattling sigh.

Fought. Got a nice shiner, but he left and said he wouldn't come back. He was acting like it was a God-damn lovers' spat or something, creep.

Now I have to figure out what to do. I don't even know what city I'm in, I haven't left this flat since I lost my memory.

Found some old mail. All junk. I'm in Mars City. Ironic, given how much of an alien I feel.

noir noir noir noir noir

my legs tremble like they're on marionette-strings and I sway, sway, sway, and every motion is far away and I gringringrin at my ghost, my monster and I can smell his terror I can see his shock I can I can I can

and he doesn't move so I do.
(noirnoirnoirnoirnoirnoirwhatdidyoudotome)

Haven't written in here in a long time. It got lost and I couldn't find it in me to care.

Last entry dated at three years ago. Nothing much has changed. I haven't been evicted, so some mysterious force is paying for my apartment. I make just enough to eat by piano-playing at bars.

That Noir character never came back. I saw him lurking outside a few times, but that stopped quickly. He troubles me--I keep getting flashes, faint memories.

My favorite bar, the one where I go to play every Saturday, just shut down. No reason given but there were police swarming it? I heard something about a rebellion and secret headquarters. Why doesn't anything in my life ever make sense?

Snowed today. Seems early for it. My ears are ringing and I have a splitting headache.

I hear screaming and cars and oh my God what is happening out there? It sounds like a pile-up, a terrible crumpling of metal and the woman in the room next to me is screaming the sun is setting the sun is setting and the world's ending

can't leave my flat I'm afraid of what's happening out there, I'm sick with anxiety and the screaming's all stopped and all the noise is either silence or rioting. Trying to stretch out my food supplies. Don't understand why Noir keeps coming to mind. Yesterday someone tried to kick down my door.

I think I smell smoke.

yes that's right noir skitter away like a spider when i open my rusty jaw

the flat burned noir the flat burned down and you left me you left me here for the fire

he smells like death and decay and things outside

i don't remember outside

He looks sick he looks so sick and NOIR NOIR NOIR IT'S ALL COMING BACK he steps forward, shaky. and then he asks if it's really me ha ha ha

I lunge at him and we hit the ground, and the claws I hammered into the floorboards pull at his skin and he screams and it sounds amazing yes yes so I kneel on his cold cold body and I press my new claws to his face

and Noir just stops and his fingers are in a death-grip on my arm and he just stares stares stares oh my god what did you do to your hands? and the glass is shattering, the clouds are pulling away are those nails? you put nails through your fingers? the pain comes shrieking back and i embrace every second of it what about your music?

baltimore oh god baltimore what did you do

so I lay open his flesh to see the porcelain underneath to watch crimson ink pour over us and it hurts it hurts it hurts oh noir

i never forgot you noir