Mackenzie West

## **Soul Traits**

Mackenzie West

Height - 9ft 11 inches

Weight - ?

Hand Dominance - Right

Eye Color - Hot Pink

Mortal Name - Mackenzie West

## **Date of Death**

October 18, 2003 - Between the hours of 4 and 5am

## **Backstory**

One of Mackenzie’s trademark features is her second-guessing gaze. She lived an uneasy social life; frequently holding back from expressing her true feelings around her friends. It was a constant struggle of wanting to do the right thing but overthinking the outcomes of her actions. Her right eye frequently expresses perplexity while her eyebrow expresses her inner desire to say how she truly feels. The combination is a visual battle between her inner conscience.Mackenzie West is one of the few recruits to keep her full name after her death. Born on March 14, 1987, Mackenzie was loved and respected by many. She was a good-natured person, and usually received decent grades in school. Although she was kind to her friends and surrounding classmates, Mackenzie had a hard time with being open to people. She wasn’t the most outgoing girl in her class, but she made up for it by being a high scoring forward on the school’s basketball team; the Cedar Ridge Red Wolves. The team were conference champions in 2003; Mackenzie’s junior year.

While Mackenzie appeared kind-hearted and shy on the outside, she was constantly dealing with demonic presences on the inside. In 2003, she had been dealing with paranormal circumstances that were only witnessed by her own two eyes. Personal objects around the house had been mysteriously disappearing, she had been experiencing unexplainable nausea and mood swings, she had been feeling dark presences surrounding her bedroom window, and worst of all, no one she had told believed her. Her parents had dismissed the nonsense as being a severe case of teenage stress. Most of her friends simply didn’t believe in ghosts or paranormal entities. Her grades began to slip, and her performance severely worsened on the basketball court; resulting in her being benched until her grades improved. Her teachers eventually met with her parents. The adults mutually agreed that counseling would be beneficial to curing Mackenzie from her current state of mind.

Mackenzie was enraged. She claimed that it wasn’t a cry for help; rather her life being endangered by spirits from another dimension. She began frequently locking herself in her room and sitting in a fetal position at the foot of her bed. Her entire perspective on life was changing. She began recording her experiences on a tape recorder. In Autumn 2003, Mackenzie saw a ghost for the first time since the beginning of her ordeal. Cedar Ridge High was hosting their rivals, the Firebirds, on October 10, 2003. Throughout the game, Mackenzie had been feeling nauseous and weak; worsening as the game progressed. With the final minutes of the game ticking down, she saw a ghostly figure floating in one of the upper windows of the gymnasium. The figure had two glowing red eyes on a face that was masked completely by shadows. It followed her every move around the facility; resulting in Mackenzie sprinting off of the court in horror.

The following Friday night, at 2:12 AM, Mackenzie was awoken by a noise coming from outside of her window. She sat up on her bed and hesitantly scanned the room with her eyes; shadows from surrounding objects covered the walls. She suddenly felt light headed, and needed to get some fresh air. Quickly grabbing her tape recorder, she maneuvered her way around the dark house; eventually reaching the front door. The suburban streets were deserted, with crickets and an owl audible in the distance; the wind, lightly blowing. She closed the front door behind her and slowly took a few steps down her sidewalk. She panned her eyes to the left and right.

After taking a deep breath, Mackenzie started talking to herself; something she frequently did. She started questioning her own sanity and put her hands over her face; slowly dragging them down in frustrating fashion. She began reflecting on her life; questioning if she was really being true to herself. She began to sob and fell to her knees. She took her hands off of her face and saw a shadow overshadowing her own. Before she was even able to turn around, a pair of hands grabbed her face and violently pulled her off of the ground. She let out an ear shattering scream that was muffled by the shadowed hands. The hands didn’t belong to a ghost; rather a man dressed head to toe in black clothing.

The man sedated Mackenzie and forced her into the trunk of his car with violent force; the tape still rolling. The man drove away unnoticed. With Mackenzie tied up in his trunk, he drove 43 miles away from the scene to his private cottage; a leisurely location away from his personal home. At 3:56 AM, he opened the trunk and hauled Mackenzie into his cottage. The man proceeded to continuously drug and rape her; with Mackenzie fully aware of the actions being forced upon her. He propped her up and strapped her to a wooden chair. Her wrists were slit horizontally; blood gushing from the wounds. With her mouth covered and arms and legs tied down, there was very little that she could do to stop the man from causing harm to her. Portions of her hair were forcefully torn from her scalp. Enduring pain beyond imaginable, her screams were masked by the sock inside of her mouth, and the duct tape covering her lips.

The man kept his face masked as he carried out the gruesome act. He slowly approached Mackenzie with a multi-tool, and proceeded to slowly snap off her fingers; one by one. A pool of blood was collecting at the base of the chair. Mackenzie was rapidly losing consciousness. She began to brutally gag. The sock inside of her mouth caused her to viciously choke on her own acidic fluids. Her eyes began to rapidly roll back in her head. The man began to maniacally laugh as he watched his victim breathe her last gasps for air. He slowly walked towards the counter and grabbed a hunting knife. He slowly began cutting Mackenzie’s throat from left to right. Blood was flowing like a waterfall out of her neck. Lastly, he cut a gash diagonally in her face from her right temple to the bottom of the left side of her face.

A recruiter ghost with red eyes acquired her soul and recruited her to the squad. Although no physical scars remain from the tragedy; mental scars forever remain. Her body was discovered a day later in a swampy bog; 20 minutes away from her home. Cedar Ridge and the surrounding area was completely devastated to learn the unfathomable news. The man was never identified, and remains unidentified to this day. It was the gruesomest rape and murder crime in the history of Cedar Ridge. Cedar Ridge students were afraid to leave their homes at dusk for a month. With no clear description of the suspect, police had no leads and no direction. The news quickly spread from local to national. CRHS students created a memorial shrine inside of the school with photos, flowers, necklaces, and bracelets dedicated to the memory of their tortured classmate and friend.

Mackenzie remains a quiet and disturbed soul. She constantly second-guesses her actions, and wants to do the right thing for other squad members. As much as she wants to move on from her past life, she can never truly erase the pain and torment that she endured in her final year of living. After her death, a recruiter ghost retrieved three cassette tapes from her home. One of the tapes recorded the entire tragedy from start to finish. Mackenzie ended up destroying two of the three cassette tapes in July 2016. After being dead for nearly 13 years, the haunting memories pushed her to the limits; forcing her to destroy her final moments of life on cassette tape.

## **Mortal Views On Death**

“Entering a state of comfort and protection. Being able to be with loved ones for eternity. To exist in peace and harmony until the end of time.”

## **Notes**

* Andrew Blaze affectionately refers to Mackenzie as "M" occasionally.
* Even though Mackenzie's right eye is officially the deformed one, in some images her *left* eye is actually the one with the deformity. The reason for this is unknown.
* Mackenzie West is in an unnamed band with fellow squad members Andrew Blaze (lead singer and guitarist), Sidney Secor (backup guitarist), and Froggy (drummer). Mackenzie is the bass guitarist of the band. They are only ever seen playing covers of Send Request songs, though in the scrapped EGS episode "My Last Confession", Andrew does mention that she and Sidney wrote a song they were "saving for a rainy day".