((This is an IC journal for Ary, scraps of paper she scribbles her thoughts on and throws in a pile. Please note that all views and thoughts represented here are Ary’s… not the writers. Immersion, people. Immersion.))

They came today..

I don’t know who THEY were… but they aren’t friendly. I just don’t understand.

When this all started, it was the walkers we ran from. They wanted to eat us. Simple. Run, hide, kill or be killed. So we ran, we hid, we killed… and we survived. Some of us even managed to form pockets of ‘Sanctuary’. Little places that were the closest thing you could call home in this Hellhole we call The World.

I was fine with running and hiding. The killing. It was so hard at the start… it broke my heart. When they came, I hid. Then I ran home. I’ll never forget my first kill. She still haunts my dreams, whispering to me as she brushes my hair and sings to me. I cried for a day, hiding in my closet. Her blood was still on my hands and on my face. I thought it would be different. The sound as the knife went through her eye.. it haunts me. It squelched, and went in much easier than I thought it would. Probably because there was no bone. I lost myself that day. I feel it. There’s a piece of me missing… deep down inside. It’s that ‘black’. It came and went before, but the meds hid it. Now… I’m certain not even meds can make it disappear. I feel the emptiness.. like something ripped out of me. My heart. She was my heart and now she’s dead. How do I fix something like that?

I know it’s horrible.. but sometimes I think it would have been easier if it was Dad. Then I wonder why. I feel bad at the thought. I loved Dad. It’s not that he deserved it, and I sure as fuck didn’t love him less. He wasn’t my heart though. He was my head, my voice of reason. I’ll never forget what I found when I got home. The dreams, they come to me over and over. Sometimes, I wake thinking I can smell her, hear her. The black comes then… and I curl up in a ball. Please Mum.. come brush my hair and sing. She can’t sing though. She’ll never sing again. She’ll never brush my hair, or tell me she loves my drawings. I try to tell myself.. “It wasnt her… Mum was gone before you got there. It was a walker. The walker that killed Dad.” It still doesnt make it easier though, and I wish I had my meds. Something to numb the pain, make it all go away for a bit.

It isnt fair. I hate this world for what it took from me. I’m not loveable, and I don’t love well in return. Only a few people knew that, but they loved me… and I loved them for it in my own way.

Now I’m ‘safe’. I’m with people around me, some I’m even starting to like. Just for a few moments I felt like I could relax. Sleep with both eyes open, you know? Maybe the shadows would stop haunting me.

But then the horror started. The Four…

Then the people changed, it was like peeling an onion and finding the inside layers were rotten. The deeper you get, the more ‘bad’ you find. It’s not just the walkers now. It’s the cultists. The crazies. The DoGooders with more macho than respect.

Now they come.

They wear uniforms. Aren’t they supposed to protect us. Protect and Serve even? I don’t understand and the harder I think about it the more that my head aches. Who the hell do we trust? I say noone. The darkness seeps back into my core.

I don’t want to be this black. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to sleep with an eye open, waking in cold sweats from nightmares and rocking on the bed, waiting for the sun to go down.

I want to be loved. I want to be happy. I want to feel safe. I want to feel trust.

I want the Good Guys to wear white and the Bad Guys to wear black.

I want the madness to stop.