File 20

WHY. WHY WHY WHY. My god, Archie, don’t you have anything better to do with your time than leave cryptic death threats on my blog?! And moreover, you deleted my ENTIRE FUCKING ENTRY IT TOOK ME THREE HOURS TO TYPE THAT DAMN THING OUT. It was mostly me raging at the lack of ability to find the Mother of Snakes, but STILL.

          Anyways, we didn’t find the Mother of Snakes today either <insert rant here> but we did find the Rake. He was actually really easy to find.

          Since Sylvia is doing much better, she decided to come with us today. So we had three in the car today. Sylvia in the back, of course.

          So either way, we went to the Library of Congress, and we looked at recent newspapers, as they have quite a few there. We looked through all the various papers they had recently, and figured out there was a rather concentrated amount of “knife murders” in Las Vegas, and I’m talking more than usual. So we decided to go to Las Vegas to see if he was there.

          We quickly realized that the Rake was probably not on the strip. So we idly drove around the business district of Vegas (Seems the Rake prefers non-residential areas of cities) until we found an intriguing bar. It was called the “Fraidy-cats” and had a sign under it that said “Proxy hour 10-11PM” Well, that’s blatant. We decided to come back then, and continue to look for the Rake.

          We finally found him, munching on some corpse behind a Bed, Bath, and Beyond out in the southwest section. You know, the sandy part. He didn’t notice us at first, as he was hunched over, trying to get the organs between the rib cage. Odd, I’d think a fellow such as himself would be rather adept at getting things like that out. I leaned out the window for a while, drawing a rough sketch of him. I’ll be frank here, I can’t draw for shit, but I try anyways. I also took some notes down of him.

          And then he saw us. The Rake jumped up, turned at us, a length of intestines trailing from his mouth. He stood up at full height, which I guessed to be 9 or 10 feet and began running at us at full speed. “Drive.” I said, pulling my head back in the car and rolling up the window.

          I can’t even tell you how long he chased us. All I know was when we got on the freeway, he followed right there behind us. I don’t know what the people we passed saw, but based on the skidding and crashing behind us, I’d say they saw SOMETHING.

Finally, Elise did something that most people would consider stupid beyond any hope of salvation. She cut off a Tractor-trailer. Well, only sort of. Basically, she swerved into a lane right in front of a Tractor-trailer. Since she noticed the Rake merged when we did, he crashed right into the truck.

Noticing it was 9:30PM, we began heading back to the bar for Proxy Hour.

File 20: The Rake

Alternate Names: PRE02, Fossil-Type SMILE, The Anathema, Subject Romeo Alpha, The Whisperer, The Behemoth, The Bodysnatcher, The Wild King

Attitude Towards Humans: Hostile

Control Over: N/A

The Rake is a strange being. Some people believe he was once a human that loved the Fears so much one of them came and transformed him into one, others speculate he may be the last of a dying species, still others think he’s just god’s way of natural selection. Though the way he does it is anything but natural. The Rake eats humans. He stands about 9 feet tall, with lanky, bony limbs, and the strangest head structure. No noticeable features buts black pits for eyes, and his head looks slightly pushed in. Usually crouching or hunkered down, but is quite fast when running at full speed. It’s right hand has a metal rod attached to it, which extends up to his forearm, from which three metal claws extend from the other side, making it seem like he may be created. The Rake is often thought to be just putting on a beastly act to fool people into thinking he’s unintelligent. He’s supposedly capable of human speech, but only whispers. Makes one wonder, how does one speak without a mouth? Then again, I suppose if The Slender Man does it……

I finally finished just as we were pulling up to the bar. We got out of the car, and we were all looking pretty badass. I had my knife on hand just in case. Sylvia was toting a bazooka for whatever reason, but she left that in the car. Elise had sunglasses on. Her heterochromia tends to either unnerve people or cause a lot more of them to hit on her.

The Bouncer glanced at me and said “Thompson?”

“Who’s asking?” I replied.

“Just never expected to see you here. Go on in.” The Bouncer said. He was wearing a hat, but I could see blue hair under there. Camper.

Once inside, it was actually really well set up. There were sections of the bar with various tables, and a severe lack of bar. Above the sections were signs like “Maenads” “Timberwolves” “Slenderproxies” and “Dolls.” They wanted to keep the proxies separate so no fighting would happen. I moved over to the Doll area, and was surprised to see 7 or 8 Willing Dolls.

“No way…….is that seriously Daniel Thompson?” one of the Dolls stood up. “It is. I recognize the trilby, glasses, and slightly psychotic look!”

“You guys know me?” I asked, stunned.

“Of course, dude! We all read your blog! We had no clue you were coming here to Vegas! You find the Mother of Snakes or something?” Another Doll spoke up.

“The Rake, actually.” I replied, and could feel the entire section of Maenads glaring at me.

“C’mon over, man, sit down! Your little silver-haired friend, too! Glad to see she’s doing well.” The Doll beckoned to us to come sit down with them.

“Am I….welcome here?” Elise glanced around nervously, looking at the empty Grayskin section.

“Sure.” The Doll shrugged. “We are allies, after all.” Elise took a seat on the other side of Sylvia. “By the way, the name’s Sol Celestriac.” The Doll who had been talking to us the whole time said. I could swear I recognized the name from somewhere, but I shrugged it off.

“Can I get you something handsome?” A waitress who I instantly recognized as a Blood Vessel asked me sweetly. The saccharine in her voice made me immediately want to stab her in the face, but I managed to keep my temper at bay. “Just an Coca-Cola.” I said calmly. I then turned to Sol and the others. “I thought Sylvia and I were the only Willing Dolls around.”

“Nah, you two are just the only ones who live in the Screaming Tower.” Sol’s twin sister, Luna, spoke up. “But we live around the Vegas area.” She smiled at me. She was cute, but not really cute enough to instill any lust in me.

The waitress brought me my Coke, and Sol thoroughly checked it for poison before handing it back to me. “You can never be too cautious around here. Especially with those assholes around.” He pointed over at the 20-odd Timberwolves.

One of those stood up. “You got a problem with us, fucker?” He asked, and they all stood up. We all stood up as well. We walked forward to the middle of the bar. A nice open space.

I recognized the Timberwolf. He was one of the ones alive after the fight where we got Sylvia back. He grinned at Sylvia and made a blowjob motion. Sylvia cringed behind me. I finally understood what they had done to her. I grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled out my knife and stabbed the bastard right in the face. The bartender looked up from his glass he was cleaning. The Campers cringed. The Slenderproxies looked shocked. The Maenads looked amused. The waitress jumped behind the counter.

“ALRIGHT, WHO ELSE RAPED SYLVIA?!” I screamed, dropping the corpse at my feet. “WAS IT YOU?!” In my enraged state, I grabbed the next nearest one.

“I-it wasn’t me, man, I sw-swear. I don’t even know wh-who this Sylvia chick is!” The timberwolf threw up his hands in defense.

“Alright, look at her!” I pointed at Sylvia. “That jog your memory?!” I yelled.

“N-no. I didn’t rape her…” The timberwolf’s eyes were wide with fear.

“But you know who did!” I shouted. “I can tell by your fucking voice! Now tell me, or get a fucking knife in your head!”

“That one, that one, and that one.” He pointed them out, and the timberwolves not pointed out moved away from them. Stab. Stab. Stab. All dead.

The timberwolves, slowly, in single-file, shuffled out of the door. We heard a gunshot just outside. Later we would find out it was the one who told on the others.

“Dude…that was…” Sol started. “FUCKING AWESOME. Hey, it’s getting late. You want to crash at Luna’s and my place tonight?” Sol asked. Sylvia and Elise nodded.

“Sure.” I responded.

I’m now writing this from a recliner chair in Sol’s living room. Sylvia has the couch, and Elise has a cot. Will provide more updates tomorrow when the three of us go searching for the Mother of Snakes once AGAIN.

~Thompson out.