Blood, Sweat, and Tears

They cornered me on my way back to the school before the weekend clean-up. There were three of them. I noticed a thick trio of oak trees in front of someone's house. I realised as I was passing by that I pass that house every day and just yesterday there were no trees there.

Then they retracted their branches and showed their faces. It was hideous, warped, like nightmarish pieces of modern art. The black stuff

(VITAE)

was pouring out their eyes and nostrils as they shambled at my car and fixed their roots to the back wheel. Then one reached out with branches and grabbed me out of my car and lifted me in the air. I knew, somehow, that they were the ones who ripped apart Lorri's mind.

I noticed, later, that they were each leaking the black fluid out of different areas. One was bleeding profusely out the eyes, bulging out the sockets. I called this one Tears. One was leaking small rivulets down the pores, and I called him Sweat. One, just a young twelve year old girl, had a profusion of gashes. Her name is Blood.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

They lifted me in their branches and I was struggling to break away. They were chanting something about the Crier in Black and I overheard snippets such as "give him vitae and let her comfort" and "her branches will soothe" and other sorts of unnerving, cult-y things. However, they didn't get a hundred feet from my car when I heard the tinkling. It was like glass, and it made them retract their branches and dropped me. The one girl, Blood, was shaking terribly, and was glancing from side to side. Then that thing came.

It wasn't the crying woman in the school. It wasn't the tree. The clouds darkened and everything grew surreal. Everything seemed so fake. So shiny, so endearing, but it was cut through with the horrible idea that the world around us grew inorganic. Indifferent. Cold and glassy. When the world seemed like a sculpture made of fine china, it came from down the street. It was flexible, and it moved by arcing over itself and bending over. Moving in dreamlike strides and arcing its spine like it had none, it moved its head towards us. It was the half-shattered face of a porcelain doll.

It moved on Sweat like a cheeta. It began sprouting sharp porcelain daggers from its hands and began cutting and cutting and cutting. It stood over and tore all the protective bark off and then it went at the face. The screams went on and then it pounced on Tears. It went for the eyes first and they burst in black vitae. Then it began cutting that creature as well. It cut everywhere, drawing deep gouges. Then, after it finished its fun with both of them, it took their hair in its hands and dragged them off, still lithe as a tiger as it faded away and the world resumed its normalcy.

The remaining tree-thing, the little 12-year old girl, Blood, collapsed.

She's here now, at the house. She seems to be suffering from some kind of concussion but how, I don't know. It would be best to ask questions when she wakes up, get her something to eat then get her out of the house. But the thing is. I've seen the cuts on her body. They looked about as sharp and crooked as the porcelain glass jutting out of that doll-like thing's hands. Some were old, seemingly over a year old, and others were fresh, and barely closing at all, still bleeding the black substance.

Well, I have to get off now.