A compendium of the horrifically fantastic going-ons of a small town
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Latest Posts by miserycollections - Page 2
"Mommy, why does that boy keep dying?"
"I think it's more of an accident than a statement now."
~After Colem got struck by lightning
Today In Misery
The Net was shut down today, which was inconvenient since everyone had some kind of project due.
So a girl with pink hair took the router and drew a circle around it with black sand (she carries a bag of it with her at all times....apparently). She whispered something to it, spat on it, then plugged it back in. Everyone had wifi immediately after.
She still won't tell me what she did.
"This isn't magic. This is the dark science--it's perfectly quantifiable.
....It's mostly quantifiable."
~Said by a cheerleader to a goth girl on how to summon a star god for their sociology project
i really enjoy learning about misery and hope to get the chance to read more about it :)
Thank you. Spread the word--people need to know about this place. ((For real though, thank you~))
How do vampires pee
Th-that's....I-I don't...
"Meet me under the screaming tree when the moon starts to blink."
~A conversation I overheard between two students. Possibly a couple
"The red skull favours those who consort with beasts and corpses."
~Told to me by a flagpole with a face
Angels & Demons
As you know, you will only see an angel or demon several times in your life. Perhaps a black spot at the corner of your eye causes you to crash into mailbox. Or maybe you'll see a soft mote of light hover over your friend when they pass a test they didn't study for. Collectives are rarer; meeting one is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
In Misery, they are an integral part of life. No one has ever gone a day without seeing an angel or a demon; some even follow people around at two or three at a time (the townsfolk call these Collectives, fittingly, familiars). And there are enough Collectives at a large enough volumes to be considered citizens; Angel and Demon Collectives make up 2% of the town population, and there's even a business completely run by Demon Collectives. (All human employees are required to be possessed--I'm not sure why, but Micah thinks its so the Demons can practice possession).
As a newcomer, it was a bit....overwhelming. I have only seen three Demons before coming to Misery, and they were all motes. To have clouds of these creatures flying around was an....expirience. Further study is required--no one has seen this many Collectives in one area. It's unprecedented.
It's like something in the town is attracting them....
Today In Misery
As you remember, Colem Arth died from a cougar attack.
Well today, he walked into class, perfectly fine. Now, I know what I saw. There's no way he could be alive, walking, or even in...one piece.
Yet, there he was. Laughing and joking, as usual.
When 5th period came around, a piece of rebar came through the window and stabbed him through the heart, killing him instantly. While my classmates were shocked, they treated the incident mostly as a nuisance, rather than the tragic event I saw it as. They mostly tried to figure out how Colem managed to "pull that off".
I was sent to the guidance counselor after the incident. Despite being a literal anteater in glasses, Mr. Lingua was good at his job.
Today In Misery
The cougar came back today. This time, it had stayed past sunset, so everyone was forced to spend the night. Luckily, the staff stocks sleeping bags for this very scenario.
I was given a good glimpse at why no one is called to deal with the cougar whenever it shows up. One student, I believe his name is Colem Arth, came to MSAA late, and was immediately attacked by the lion.
I will spare the gory details, but let it be known that my hands shook as I typed this, and I didn't get any sleep that night.
Several dogs tried to attack the cougar, only to meet the same fate as Colem Arth. In fact, the only thing that went out into the courtyard and survived was Principal Lee Anders, who decided to wear a jester hat today. He was too far for me to see what he was doing, but he came straight to the cougar and touched it. When he left, he held 8 bloody cougar paws. Where he got them from, I don't know. The cougar still had all its paws, since it walked away fine come sunrise.
The school gave us the next three days off due to the incident.
Today in Misery
As school ended and all of the students left their respective buildings, a murder of crows descended and swarmed around a random student, carrying her away. No one seemed to register what was happening, even as she struggled and and kicked and screamed for help.
When I asked Julia what the fuck just happened, she informed me "That's just Margo. This happens every day."
Mists of Misery 2
Dear Readers, I have made a breakthrough in my study of the mists.
A classmate of mine, named Julia, mentioned a friend of hers named Cynthia. She went missing a month before I came into town, and right before her disappearance, she was suddenly overcome with a desire to study the mists.
When Julia heard about what I was doing, she gave me Cynthia's notebook, as a warning and a message, to get word out about her friend's disappearance.
Cynthia's notebook doesn't contain much; however, she attributes much of the strange behaviors of the mists to an entity she had seen within them. Appearing every night at midnight, this "Man in The Mists" appears to generate the mists, and prowls within them, watching, yet unseen. According to the notebook, it is guessed that he cannot see or move outside of the mists, as the Man avoided random holes within the mists, one of which happened to capture Cynthia's house the night she saw the Man. There is little information beyond that [she gives wildly different explanations for what he could be, amongst which a god, a fey, a monster, and an incomprehensible alien are given]. The book ends a night before Cynthia vanished, in which she states that she intends to meet and/or capture the Man in the Mists.
And so, dear readers, two questions arise with this new information: who is the Man In The Mists? And where is Cynthia Jennings?
The Mists of Misery
Misery was built somewhere on the Northern Rock Coast [not on the Horn, but close], and has two beaches--the aptly named Rock Coast to the west, which despite consisting of broken and shattered stones, remains evermore popular than the Sand Coast to the south. And maybe the town's proximity to the ocean can explain away the daily presence of the all consuming mists...but that doesn't explain its, dare I say, predatory behavior.
In Misery, every night from sunset to approximately six in the morning, pure white mist blossoms from the center of the town and engulfs everything. My neighbors claim that the mists are searching for something, but exactly what, they aren't sure.
My first night in Misery, I watched the mists' approach. It did not float, or hover, or even roll over the dimly lit streets. No, these mists slithered; they snaked over the asphalt and concrete, prowling, -watching-. As I stared, I could tell that the mists weren't vapours. They were....ethereal. The mists were barely real--they were like an optical illusion, or as if something flat suddenly decided it didn't want to be anymore, and actively fought to become 3 dimensional.
As I watched, a sharp pain grew in the back of my head. I couldn't tear my eyes away from them--my mind was trying to cope with the fact that this thing that defied the laws of physics sat before my very eyes. And as I stared, I felt something, deep within the mists, stare back.
I ran away that night, and only watched the mists from the safety of my room. But I wasn't safe; as long as those mists were there, no one was safe.
No one spoke of the mists. None of my teachers would talk about it; the library didn't have an in depth study on them. They were simply a fact of life--the mists had been here since when Misery was just a small collection of hamlets, and probably before then.
No one would explain why the mists came from the center of town, which happened to be the center of Misery's School of All Ages courtyard, instead of rolling in from the oceans. And no one would explain how they both had and lacked substance at the same time. And their eyes averted when I asked about the watching, and the hunting. They winced when I compared the mists to a predator in wait.
The message was clear.
No one talked about the mists.
The Town Called Misery 2
Now....let me tell you about where I live.
I live in the Avery Ward, to the South East of Misery. It's...a trailer park. The neighborhood comprises of mobile homes, abandoned metal barns, and ruined or half built gas stations and strip malls, of which only three are functional. The sky in the Avery District was a muted grey [a deviation of the perpetual white sky in Misery, instead of the normal blue]. The neighborhood was dreary...but it was also full of -life-. The people here were happy, there was almost no crime, and the community here was much closer to each other than in the other wards.
My neighbors include Oisin, who lives in the shed next to our trailer. He always wears a skirt, and gives really bad life advice. The Sisters of Clemency live next to him; they're all nuns from the Houses of Ten (there are 8 of them; the other two live in their temples, as their doctrine dictates). All of them are super nice, and only Charity, who follows Astros, tries to convert me.
Behind us lives Anthony and Aiseline. They're a couple in their mid 60s who, despite mirroring each other, aren't related but are married. They claim to be able to speak to vehicles, but say that lawn mowers and pogo sticks can't talk and aren't alive.
Next to them lives Whistle. Whistle is pretty ordinary looking, but is also very open about his profession in the buying and selling of drugs. The police keep catching him, but he always gets out within a few hours. How? He won't tell me; he just winks, then takes a hit of whatever he bought.
The crown jewel of my neighbors, though, is a boy by the name of Micah Prince. He's a junior at MSAA, and his brother Enos is a sixth grader. Micah Prince is infamous; what for, though, no one will tell me. When prompted, they ask me if I know "What the Blood Parade is"; when I told them that I didn't, they immediately clammed up. I would have asked him myself, but every time the thought crossed my mind, I would freeze, or the hair on my arms would rise. -This is a very bad idea-, my body would tell me. And so, even though he was in five of my classes, I never said a word to him.
Of note, though, there is one other person in his trailer other than his mom and his brother. A meek, small girl who was about my age; she seemed familiar, but I didn't know why...
The Town Called Misery, 1
Let me tell you about where I live.
According to town history, Misery used to be a collection of four hamlet sized colonies, each founded by one of the four sons of Finely Misery. Because of the loss of Finely's will, the four hamlets essentially ostracized each other for a few decades until the arrival of something records call "Winter".
There is no description of what Winter actually is; all that is said is that Winter was a devastating blow to resources, and forced the four colonies to band together for survival. When Winter ended, the four colonies remained banded, and thus Misery was born.
Despite the town's supposed unity, remnants of its time as hamlets is still prevalent to this day. Four wards, or neighborhoods, each named after the four brothers, make up Misery. These wards are scattered and an organized mess, even within themselves. Even with the roads and community centers placed in between each ward, entering another neighborhood was basically like entering another city.
The only truly neutral place between each ward was the Misery School for All Ages. Equidistant from every ward, it was the center of town, and every child in Misery was enrolled there, from pre-K to Senior year. Almost like a reflection of the town, the school was actually made up of several buildings of various sizes, thrown almost haphazardly on it's hill without any rhyme or reason. The only consistent building was administration, a building the size of a trailer at the bottom of the hill. Everything else is thrown to the wind--you can have science in building J class 7 one day, and the next J7 is reserved for advanced algebra, or theoretical transmuatiom, or lenormand.
And that's just the mundane oddities. One rule of the school is that you can't look in the space in the doorframe; Principal Lee Anders even employs hall monitor like figures to prevent students from doing specifically that, who are recognizeable by the red armbands that they wear. Of note: I -did- witness a custodian slip some raw meat into the space though.
A daily event at MSAA is "Puma Time". Every building goes on lock down while a mountain lion, from Gods know where, prowls around the campus. This can last anywhere between half an hour to an entire day; in the event of the latter, guardians are called and the situation is explained. Either way, classes can't continue until the puma leaves of its own volition.
Beyond the events, such as the sudden screaming from the next room over that was suddenly cut short, and the third grader who levitated four feet off the ground for an hour [she's okay; she was unconscious the whole time], the faculty and students only add to the strangeness. One boy who shares two classes with me and refuses to give his name is always drenched--always. Hours will pass, and yet he will always appear to have just crawled out from the ocean. A custodian has to follow him around for all the puddles he leaves. Another boy, who appears to be the drenched boy's brother, always wears welding gloves. He wore them even when he helped the pre-K kids with finger painting.
A girl who had slit pupils and a tail [a real tail--she says she has Irre's Disorder] had showed me around campus. She waved to a girl who had deer eyes [the girl constantly smiles and spoke in riddles] and even introduced me to her brother, a boy who had turquoise hair and a slab of lapis lazuli in place of a tongue. Their names are Meiriam and Constant Lee Anders; they were the principal's kids.
Principal Lee Anders was a magician--through sleight of hand, he pulled a coin out of my ear. Then he turned the coin into glass, shattered it, and melted the shards into a flower shape using only his mind. Principal Lee Anders kept half mentioning events that hadn't happened [amongst which involved the time that Puma Time would happen that day, his daughter tripping over a loose floorboard, and a teacher by the name of Mr. Slins having his desk spontaneously combust. The last of these had no obvious causation, but it happened anyways] and claimed that the moon was his child. I was speechless when I left his office. More so when those events actually happened.
Here goes nothing...
My name is Story Page.
It has been three months since my family relocated to Misery, a town sequestered somewhere in the Northern Rock Coast.
And I will be the first to say it--this town should not exist.
Misery is a hub of supernormal activity. Danger stalks the night, and bloodsuckers watch their prey from the shadows. Spirits and invisible men walk amongst bakers and businessmen. Anything can be anything, and nothing is as it seems.
Out of the ordinary events happen on an hourly basis, and yet the townfolk are not only completely aware of this, they have embraced this.
Unfortunately, no one has ever tried to explain this weirdness; they've made their peace with and grown up with it.
So I've taken it upon myself to look at this town with fresh eyes. Through study and interviews, I will share what I've learned with you. Ask me anything; as long as the information gets out to the rest of the world, nothing is off limits.