I have quite a tale for you. Quite a tale indeed.

If there's anyone out there that actually reads this and just chooses not to comment and was concerned about the lack of posts, I'm fine...I assure you. Weirded out lately...but fine.

(EDIT: Now it says I have 32 posts. But I counted. Including this one, there are only 30. Where are the other two coming from?)
The original reason was because I noticed that I had 31 posts of random babble about stuff in my life and it hasn't even been a whole two months. I decided that was kind of ridiculous and decided to cut down on posting. I was waiting for interesting things to build up. That happened, just...not the way I intended.

While I was busy being all lazy and not writing about IM or BPA or any of that nonsense, I was catching up on the Slender Blogs. I've finished Just Another Fool, Dreams in Darkness, Lost Time, Dare 2 Die, and I got half way through Seeking Truth. (From what I gathered in comments from other blogs, Zeke Strahm seemed really awesome. So far he's just been annoyingly skeptical. I'm waiting for the awesome, folks. Don't quite see it.)
Apparently The Tutorial should be my next stop. I would have gotten there, had a series of what I'm going to call "disturbing coincidences" (for the sake of my sanity) not happened. But they did. And I panicked. And I dropped everything related to this Operator or /Construct/ or whatever He is. Including this.
This became my second reason for not posting.

My last post was on Monday. I told you guys how Sammi and I were the only ones of our group there that day. Seth just wasn't there (he told me he slept in) and Skye had some sort of stomach flu.
Semester projects were due Wednesday, so we didn't talk much. Just worked away on my comic and her photo manipulation. Nothing was out of the ordinary here at first. Something I didn't tell you guys in that post is that my best friend Casey - I've talked about her before - she wanted to know what I was talking about that was so creepy. So I told her. I warned her first. She watched anyways. She started flailing around on Facebook and started this huge chain reaction. A few people thought it was dumb, but most of them got to only Entry #3 and were ready to cry. At that time I felt like a mastermind. I toppled one domino and they all fell. Now...I'm not so sure. Now I don't think that was such a good idea. I feel kind of sick thinking about it...

Tuesday the whole group was back - Me and Sketham (Skye, Seth, Sammi, in case you didn't see it). I noticed that Skye was coughing. I feel like I only noticed this because of this stupid ordeal. There was a snowstorm in the forecast. A huge cloud headed right for our area. There was NO way we weren't going to get hit. Oesch told us not to bank on a snow day for our semester projects. I decided that was wise and continued to work on the comic.
I got home, saw some more frantic statuses about...it...and decided to read some more blogs despite how creeped out I was. I would like you to take note at this point that I'm an idiot and I am the driving force of my own fear of the paranormal. It's all in my head. Most of the time. I think. Anyways...I go to get something from the kitchen...a cup of water I think...and another light bulb blows. The third one. (The second, gone unreported here, also occurred in the kitchen.) I'm starting to get really upset about this phenomenon...and then the nightmare. You know, the one all the characters have of being chased in a dark forest and running and running and running and hiding but you can't get away because it's after you and you can't escape but you keep running anyways and you see it and it's getting closer somehow...
This isn't useless drabble. I promise. I need you to remember the details here, and besides...that snowstorm leads...

...into Wednesday. My high school had already canceled the night before. The Career center canceled that morning. This was awesome, because I got to sleep more. And I wanted to sleep, because my REM cycle was relatively untainted then. Some friends had planned a little sledding party at one of their houses. I really needed to hang out with people and get out of my accursed light bulb killing house. I didn't care how much I didn't like being outside. I MADE myself go hang out with them.
And it was great! I was having a wonderful time with Brian and Cara and Jason and Jackie (Cara's sister) and their dog Fisher who is possibly the most cuddly animal...next to Ace. We played Reach after coming inside and I discovered that I'm suddenly more awful at this Halo than the previous games. But it was okay because I was Jason's teammate and he made us suck less, despite how much I accidentally killed him. It was really hilarious.
Then Jonnie, who couldn't come to the actual party, joined our game from the comfort of his own home and we talked to him through Jason's headset. And then I learned that Jonnie turns invisible almost all of the time. And when he turns invisible and he's near you, your radar freaks out with red dots and you run away and you hide but he catches up to you still and the next thing you know he's knifing you in the back. This was insignificant until I made the connection with my dream. That was probably a coincidence, but I didn't have to be comfortable with it.

Thursday. By this point I've dropped all Slenderman related business. The dreams are bad. And I don't like them. Our projects were due today since snow ruined Oesch's plans. I finished mine with 40 minutes of class time to spare. Awwwwright. (Okay that part was unnecessary. You don't need to remember that.)
Seth was really tired looking and quiet. Half of that's because he procrastinated on his project. That didn't make me less worried. Skye got 45 minutes of sleep for whatever reason. Her cough has grown horrendous. It was occasional, but it was loud and dry sounding. Sammi...was...well...it's hard to tell what's regular Sammi behavior and what isn't anymore. But for the sake of my worried mind, let's say she was acting more distant than usual.
I was annoyed at myself for finding these connections when I promised to forget the subject. Then I decided, "Screw it," and threw a crappy little Slendy doodle into a comic page just to make the reference. I was kind of amused. Then I was annoyed again.
Casey is totally terrified of those videos. But she's the same as me. She's just too interested now. She keeps telling me when there are updates...
I think everyone else, the collateral from Casey, has died down about it.

Friday. I only had to go to the high school today. Nothing particularly special happened, aside from the Slenderman doodle on the white board in English. What have I done...

Saturday. Oh. There they are again. This dream was different. I was being chased, but I'd managed to take some control and changed the setting. The whole thing took on acid trip properties and I can't remember much of what happened...other than there were definitely ghosts and they were haunting me because of something I did or started. And they were everywhere I hid. And anything I managed to think of to help me in my partially lucid stated ended up turning against me.
I spent most of this day playing Monster Rancher 4 because Sly 2 decided to spaz out on the audio and I got scared and punched it and shut the stupid thing off.
I remembered that I never learned where Seth heard of the videos.
He got the idea from Skyler. His girlfriend. But where did she hear of them...

Sunday. Today.
I have to ask you to remember something I said. When I first talked about taking Ace for a walk and the odd thing that happened.
Dad asked me to walk him again today. It was lighter out, so I decided to go right then. And I wanted to test something.
Also, Ripley came frolicking out of nowhere. I was relieved. He was okay. Silly little neighbor dog...
I took Ace to the other end of the horseshoe. See, on the side far from the house, the bend gets close to the woods. That's where the weird thing happened. Now, on the other side, a street branches off of the bend and turns into a dead end. Which halts. Right at the woods.
I took Ace there first. And what I expected to happen occurred. He just...stared into them. I couldn't see anything amiss. But I thought...maybe it's something he hears? So I listened. And it was absolute...silence. Not a sound. No winter birds or cars or wind or neighbors. It took some budging to get him to move. Ripley bounded around like nothing was wrong.
When I finally got Ace to move, we turned and walked to the other bend, to the first incident. He didn't stop here like I thought he would. But I did figure out where Ripley went off to the other night. He just kept walking. He went on without us to wander the rest of the neighborhood.
He never does that. He always follows us.
And then there was the smell. I thought it was the exhaust of the motorcycle being revved in the garage we just passed. Then I actually sniffed. It was smoke. There was fire somewhere. And the revving disappeared. Everything went silent again. Ace took the leash in his mouth again and started steering us home.
About halfway home, he actually started PULLING the leash. He would slow down for half a second, look to left, then surge forward with the leash still in his mouth. He only calmed down when we got to the back porch steps.

Now that I'm done chewing your ear off about the "disturbing coincidences" in my life, let me recap as to what exactly was amiss. Let's compare notes.
- Erratic behavior in both Seth and Sammi.
- Coughing in Skye, which is getting worse.
- Nightmares that are getting more vivid.
- Electrical issues of varying sorts.
- Eerie silence and smells of fire.
- Something is scaring Ace. Something outside.

Could these all just be "disturbing coincidences"? Knowing how I am, possibly. But that doesn't make me feel better. And coincidences or not, something's bugging my dog. There has to be something outside he can't handle. Sometimes he takes the leash just because he's tired. He never frantically pulls it like he did today.

I don't know what's going on...but I'm worried. Worried and scared.