Current mood:	thoughtful
Current music:	Miss Independent - Ne-Yo

Stranger In A Strange World
Thought for the Day: People won't be people when they hear this sound that's been glowing in the dark at the edge of town. No, the people won't be people when they hear this sound. Won't you show me what begins at the edge of town?

Whatever brought you to this moment, wherever or however or in whatever form you’ve found these words, this is your last chance to turn back. Go check your email, or look at pictures of kittens or something. Log off and erase the history list from your browser. Do this and maybe — maybe you’ll be able to go back to the life you used to live. I can't guarantee that. But I can guarantee that if you don't stop now, if you don't give up on the idea of reading what you're not supposed to read, learning things you're not supposed to learn, and (sooner or later) seeing things you're not supposed to see, you're bound to reach the point of no return. You'll reach it sooner than you expect, too. Then you won't be able to live in the same world that everyone else does. You'll want to - God how you'll want to - but it won't be possible.

This is your final warning.


All right.

You didn't listen.

If you've come this far, it's likely something happened to you recently. Something lifted the veil from your eyes for just a few moments and now you want to know more. If you're determined to poke your nose where it doesn't belong, I basically have two things to tell you. The first is something you already know. Something you've known all your life, something we all know but don't want to admit.

We're not alone.

You knew it when you were a kid, didn't you? You felt their presence in your bedroom late at night. You saw them from the corners of your eyes as you drifted off to sleep. Every culture in history has known this truth, that there are other in this world with us, other intelligences, other "beings". They have a thousand names: spirits, gods, giants, angels, devils, fairies, ghosts, ghouls, magicians, monsters... Every human society since the dawn of time has insisted that there are things keeping us company, things, with their own agendas, things not afraid to enforce their will when we get in their way.

It's only in recent times that we humans - at least some of us living in industrialized "modern" countries - have decided that we stand alone at the top of the food chain. It's only now that we've decided that centuries of wisdom should be ignored, discounted or ridiculed. But try as we might, the truth has a way of forcing itself to the surface.

I learned this myself a long time ago. That story I wrote about the kitten? Maybe you should check and see how much of that was real. Everybody knows that I have an interest in horror and the occult, but did you ever stop to ask yourself why? You know I have a kitten named Cortana that I got from Stephanie, I put pictures of her on livejournal once or twice. Did you know I had a cat named Mittens growing up, who was a a stand in teddy bear more nights than not? I take karate, and use to play football with the big kids just like I wrote. How much more of the truth have I been telling?

What if I told you that something isn't right in the world we live in? That we lie to ourselves to stay comfortable. That every now and then we catch a glimpse into the real world, but we ignore it so that we can continue on with our lives in peace. How much don't you know about the world we live in?
I'm telling you that if you begin to look, you're going to see it. You'll wonder what that weird tattoo on that woman's hand is, why you've never seen anyone go into that house, but it always seems like there are people inside, you'll wonder why your pets suddenly freak out without any seeming provocation.

The closer you look the more you realize that the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit. The more pieces you find the less of the puzzle you can understand. Finding the truth is not a reasonable goal. The best you can hope for is to achieve some sense of how much you don’t know. Each mystery will only lead to more mysteries. It goes against every instinct in the human brain, but if you want to survive, you have to make peace with the fact that all your questioning and searching and attempts to make sense of it are doomed. The best you can hope to do is record what details you can, and wonder at them.

Each shadow conceals only more shadows.

(I'm looking for material to write a new story, so I want to know if anyone out there has seen something that can't quite piece together, or something they can't explain. Preferably something scary. Pass this challenge along to friends if you think they'd be interested or if they have a good story. Thanks!)