-four human people

~~four~~three human people

this story is ongoing; read if you dare! also sift through the history. things about the story will change. that's intentional ;)

trigger warning

*We should meet.* That's what the note read. No signature, just a ripped piece of paper with the text roughly scrawled with a Sharpie. In fact, the ink was still fresh when she found it in her locker, left on top of her piles of sketches.

*Her sketches.* The sketches she drew from atop the vast horizon of the wasteland she called "Home".

*Meet.* She knew what this meant. The meeting place on top of the hill she snuck out to every night, the one that never seemed to end but when it did, she'd see it; Eric-Sanford Planetarium. There were no others of course, just her and the stars; providing some sense of hope that her title made sense. The title of the meeting place, of course.

*We.* This word most off-putting for her, as she knew many; at least from afar. Not so much as a mutual knowledge of existence, but she knew they were there, and they were somebody else, and that was all that mattered.

The note in the beginning held no meaning for her,*"probably the wrong locker,"* she thought to herself. But she realized that that could not be true, as her locker stood alone, at least, it was the only locker occupied in the group of the lockers, in fact, she had her name displayed on the front.

Sitting in her bedroom that night, coming to this realization, she dropped the note in horror, as she was a nobody, and known by nobody. This person knew about the meeting place, of which she told no one and was sure nobody was aware of.
She pulled out her phone to text somebody, ***oh dear God please somebody***, for any sense of reassurance, but remembered once again; she had no friends.

*Space.* That was a funny word to her. A word she had dwelled upon for years on end. A black void with some burning gas every few miles, or years, or even light-years.

*Gas.* That word was funnier, almost because it meant everything to her, and she didn't know why. Gasoline, maybe? She had not a clue. Or, apparently, a good sense of humor. ***Or a pretty face**. Stop it. **But why? You know it's true.** Cut it out, now.*

She contained herself as best she could, but sometimes, things just don't work out. Sometimes some ***mONstERs*** are unintentionally released at point blank. So when she got a break from it all, she enjoyed the ecstasy of being somewhat and utterly, *"normal."*

She entered the bathroom, pulled out the knife, opened the cabinet, took out the pills, and split one in half. She swallowed it, free of water or any sort of lubricant for her throat, washing it down with saliva.
*"Here it comes,"* she thinks to herself, *"normality."*

Ah, yes. The fresh sensation of the serotonin production in her brain was almost orgasmic to her in a way she could not explain.

She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door, eager to fall asleep and explore the void of darkness; *space.*

***ShE IS cOmING**. No no no stop stop stop please, go away!*

She jolted awake from her journey into slumber, that of which she valued more than life itself.
She reached beside the bed to the black nightstand with the journal.

The journal. A dream journal, that is. A portal, a wall. A wall keeping her dreams from reality. The wall that screamed until she wrote in it, *"Please!"* it cried. *"One more page!"*

So that was how her life went. One page at a time. And the notewriter knew just that.

*But how?* But how, indeed, was a question burned into her retinas.

*My eyes. My fucking eyes. What's happening to me?*

She pulled out the note from her pocket, the words scrawled on it echoing throughout her head.
***We sHOuld Meet WE shOuLD MEet mEET MEET MEET MEET***.

*STOP IT*.

She firmly decided to herself that she would head out that night to the meeting place.
And with that, she lit a match, and held it up to the paper.

The day sped by second by minute by hour. Minutes became seconds and hours became minutes until finally, nightfall.

She opened the window, climbing out carefully as not to disturb any silences. She closed the window quickly behind her, shooting dust into her face.

She began coughing. And coughing. And coughing until finally, she started to choke and then, she collapsed. And with that, the spinning image of yesterday slowly lit up in the color bars of her vision, almost like that of an old television with no more functional channel spaces. Just the sound of...nothing.

In the center of a restauraunt, she cries.

In the middle of a war, she flees.

She abandons her team, thus further seperating her from civilization.

The searchlights pan in and out, searching rivers, lakes, wooded areas, cities, alleyways, apartments, everything.
They keep searching until more go missing.

And more.

And eventually, under the blood moon, they come together.

They sit, huddled in an abandoned convienience store on the corner of Blood and Artery.
They howl together, and they don't stop, until eventually an ambient roar is heard.

*GEt OUtT ofFf My haEd*

They cry together until eventually, an ambient roar is heard.

*StoP It StOP It STOP IT STOP IT*

Even***WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING To ME***tually an ambient roar is heard.

***STOP PleAse***is heard.

*FUCK.*

She awakens, lifting her head from the grimy table, screaming as the cashier glances at her with a loss of words.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" the man shouts, a strong implication that she should get ***The FUCk*** out of there.

So she does.

The door bursts open to the restauraunt and pedestrians move out of the way, frightened by the appearingly insane female exiting the premises.

She keeps running until the soles on her shoes begin breaking down.

And she trips.

She falls deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, screaming all the way down until finally; she lands.
And when she lands she's on her feet. Running.

***WhAT ThE fucK IS hapPenIng***

*We should meet.*

For the first time in her life, she speaks.

"Okay."

So she goes to the neverending hill and climbs it and she makes it to the top. And suddenly it's night.

There are three others.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"I'm Jeremy Frederick, and I'm a human person."

"I'm Angelica Mason, and I'm a human person."

"I'm Anthony Davis, and I'm a human person. And you are?"

"Why, nobody." she replies. "Nobody at all!" Her whisper turns into a scream, and then she's crying but laughing because isn't this hilarious?

Of course it's hilarious, because they all join in. And then they're screaming, and crying, and whispering.

And with that, all four of them turn around and leave the planetaruim, and end up in a human person named Angelica Mason's garage.

They end up in that garage of Angelica's, and it's already set up.

"So you've been here before," she whispers, not much a question; rather a heartbreaking cry. And why exactly was it so heartbreaking? That she had no idea of.

Maybe it was the scenery. The red candles, the red carpet, the red walls, the red stained papers scattered everywhere, the newspapers drenched in red hung to dry for what seemed like an infinite amount of time on the walls, everything was just red.

Maybe it was the fact that none of this was new. She was just some fresh meat for their musical inquiries to devour. They had all met, played, and written before.

"We needed you," Jeremy says. "We were incomplete. We needed a singer."

She realizes how every spot is taken apart from the microphone in the center of the room.

"Fine. I'll do it," she replies, feeling slightly less heartbroken.

"Woah woah woah, hold up now!" Anthony interupts. "We don't even know your name!"

"My name," she says, "is..."

*Shit,* she thinks, *what is it?*

"You can call me Iris."

That night, they played their hearts out.

Nothing could stop them, they just kept going. They played songs that nobody had written, and it came together as an amazing group of aspiring musicians.

Jeremy played a simple yet solumn beat, accompanying dark, amble chords from Angelica on the bass guitar. Anthony came in on the guitar, playing a slow, simple riff dark as it was quiet.

Iris, however, didn't sing for the first 16 bars of the song. Then she came in.

She sang about her torturous nights in backyard lights, slashing tires with snare wires, vultures circling overhead while she cried to sleep in her lonely bed. She sang in terror alongside cries.

After the session, she left feeling a warm feeling she had never truly experienced before; *happiness*.

Why, after that, she couldn't stop herself from running to that garage of Angelica's.

They wrote songs. Great songs, unappreciated by passerby on the sidewalk in front of Anglelica's house. They didn't care.

Those kids played their hearts out, until eventually they had an album put together.

They released it on SoundCloud, and about a month later Jeremy recieved an email from a producer named Valerie Chrysanthemum.

She whispers to herself, “At least I have the light.”

At least she has the light. The light being a wall holding back a thousand warriors of darkness, pixels of fright consume her brain’s display, and suddenly she can’t take it anymore.

She overheats.

Her body convulses, but she doesn't care. At least she has the light.

But wait, she can't see it anymore, and suddenly she has a rope, and a chair, and a lock, and a foot, and she's standing on the chair, and she ties the final knot, and she kicks the chair, and she hangs there. Someone pounds on her door. The lock holds them back.

The lock holds them back until the banging stops, and the door breaks.

And Jeremy stands there, not knowing what to do. He cries, he screams, but she's gone. And she'll be gone forever.

*We cared about you. We wanted to meet you for a reason. We loved you. These 2 years have been the best years of our life. We don't know why you lived by yourself above an abandoned convenience store, and we didn't know until we tracked your phone. We should have known something was wrong when you introduced yourself as nobody. Forever bless you. -three human people*