A pic came through the grapevine. Now, this happened from time to time naturally. Cracky threads would be seen by certain people who were sitting on huge piles of crackyshit, but had no real knowledge of how valuable their little jpg's were. Like an internet antiques roadshow this long lost content would be dredged out, appraised by the experts, and then fed to our esoteric obsession.

It wasn't the oxford house, that's for sure. The aesthetic was all off. It was a group of people, not like a family... more a class photo for a very small school. I don't recall how many were there, but these young teenagers and pre-teens were all lined up smiling for the shot. There, hiding out near the back, was that unmistakable head of red hair.

My co-stalker was happy to provide details. It was, if you'd believe it, a photo quite serendipitously rightclick->saved from some youth-boarding group's web community. The group was stationed in LA. L fucking A.

I got the word out to my fellows and fellettes. None of us being LA natives, or even west-coasters, we were all going to fly down and check it out together. All of us dropped what we were doing. Actually come to think of it, none of us were doing anything that would make too much noise when dropped in the first place. We just booked flights and went there.

First impressions of LA? Well, there weren't any. I wasn't even conscious of the fact it was LA. I wasn't conscious of the fact it was real life for that matter. When I met with my stalkers, we barely spoke. We were like ghosts, silently floating forth trying to find somebody worth haunting. We drifted down to the addy of the youth-home. It was in a pretty ratty neighbourhood. The whole lot of us piled out of the car together. A bunch of Mexicans (or Kosovars knowing my luck) were eyeing our rental car. We went into the big box apartment building together. Considering it was 2 in the afternoon on a work/school day, I was surprised to see so many people just hanging out in their doorframes and running around the halls. Up a flight of stairs, and again we hooked local eyes as we made our way to the end of the hallway. We got to what I was told was the right door.

Somebody knocked. Honestly, the identities of my partners in -this- crime aren't really relevant. I know who knocked. It could have been any of us. There wasn't an answer. There wasn't a sound. For a place with twelve youngins crammed into one apartment sized area, you'd expect a little noise?

I checked back down the way we came. Nobody in the corridor now. The eyes had wiggled free and shut themselves safely away. I mentioned this, though not in as eloquent terms. Knocker stalker knocked with his shoulder this time. The frame gave way, and the door flung into the room and embedded the doorknob into the gypsum. We all walked in.

The interior was burnt with char. Most of the furniture was similarly crisped. There was no sign of any people in the main room. For some reason what stands out in my mind is a gigantic stain of ketchup and mustard on the floor in the open kitchen. Two large bottles must have been upended onto the floor after the fire had tongued the linoleum black. The bottles, however, were gone.

Without a word, or a gasp, we fanned out and began to search. I was shit scared, personally. I don't think any of us little internet boy-scouts making our first trip into real life wasn't terrified. However here, in real life, I suppose I had the advantage over my internet-centric peers. I went to a side room filled with empty metal frames of beds and began to inspect the walls. Beside one particular frame, located in the corner, I saw the walls had charred bits of pictures and artwork hanging. I figured, correctly I suppose, this would be Hers. A little bed-table with a single drawer sat next to Her mangled, twisting iron coil framework. Luckily the contents weren't damaged when the room was kissed by flame. I dug some photographs and a small notebook out, then I closed the drawer and left the room.

My cohorts were still checking cupboards, counters, cabinets, and the like. I casually walked out of the door. None of them noticed. This was actually the first dishonest thing I'd done through the whole debacle. Unless you count all those times I lied to my fiancee, and said I loved her.

That got the heart pumping though! Nobody watched from the other rooms in the apartment as I left. I figure they didn't want to know who we were or what we were doing. Not only for their own sake, but likely out of some pity for our status as unwittingly novice participants in whatever it was that was happening around those parts.

I got into a taxi. Told him to take me somewhere. Where? Around the block. No, to a hotel. Not the closest, but next closest.

I didn't even dare to peruse my find there in the taxi. Gods no. I wanted some privacy to look it over and see what there was.

There wasn't much. The photos were of the apartment and Her fellow occupants. Meant nothing to me lost from the context of Her memory. The only one of Her, with that gracefully fragile neck and killing eyes, was miss L out on the street with some blonde haired boy who was sporting a bowl cut. The notebook, which I went through, was unfortunately not a complete diary. I guess She's more into the online journals, instead of the type to keep up a pen-and-paper record. The book had doodles, notes like, "don't forget to pick up ketchup", and phone numbers. As I flipped a small wallet sized photo of the above mentioned bowl-cut kid fell out. I read the page. "8:00pm, (some dumb cafe), every day."

It was within walking distance. Since my time the army, walking distance was anywhere I could walk a return trip to and back from in a full day. It was in fact nearer Her apartment than my hotel, and it brought me uncomfortably close to the main roads where my spurned stalker crew would be driving down during their egress.

Laptop in hand, I left. When I arrived at the junky-cafe I checked my watch. About half an hour early. I realized that with my tanned skin and black hair I wouldn't stand out badly amongst the mostly, uh, "colourful" inhabitants of that neighbourhood. I guess I passed as a well to do Mexican. The white kid, with the bowl cut? Now he must be the oddity.

He came pedalling down the road on a bike around 8. Despite what I thought, none of the people milling about on the street paid him any mind. He entered the cafe and began to look around. He glanced at me, and waited until it was a solid gaze. I turned the laptop screen towards him. Sup 4chan?

"Where is she?" I started
"Are you the police?"
This was before I was going to be a cop, so I didn't think that was ironic at the time.
"No."
"Are you going to call the police?"
The notion of getting them involved hadn't even occurred.
"No."

He came to my computer, and typed something into the url bar.

"It's been a few weeks, at least." And then the kid left.

That's pretty curt, by my standards. I don't know why I didn't sit him down somewhere quiet and give him a full interview. But then again, I didn't really know anything back then.

I turned my laptop back. The url. Simple. It was really simple. I'm not going to SAY what it was, but it was a simple URL. You'd think somebody with a conscience who happened to find it would say, tell somebody? But no. Apparently not. Then again, there I was, and I didn't consider it at the time either.

I hit enter. The website advertised the rental services of a bus. The bus was painted black, had bars on the window. There was a fucking picture of it on the homepage. I read around a bit. Right there in plain second-rate English, was a form where you'd put your credit card information, and your address, and they'd bring the bus down to pick you up. With a loli of some description, and all the privacy you wanted.

I really regretted the fact that I didn't bring my gun. I was out of place here not having one on me, in fact.

Did I make a booking though? No. I didn't really want these kinds of people to have any information on me. For sure, they'd make sure they knew who I was before they'd engage in this level of illegal business with me and I couldn't really fake it out. Somebody who talks to these guys must have seen me, and I thought it was fair to assume they'd recognize me.

You're going to think I'm an idiot for this. Really, you are because it's so stupid. I hung out at gas stations in the area and watched for people buying diesel in drums. I assumed they wouldn't just drive the big bus down there and have somebody hop out and pump in a full tank. These guys must be more careful than that to stay in operation this long.

I suppose there aren't really any monsters out there. Like, sure we act monstrously sometimes, but we're all humans. We all have to pee.

A big black bus showed up about three days into my vigil. This guy got out and ran to inside. A second later, just as I had stood up and was about to follow, he blew past me key in hand to the bathroom on the side of the Amoco or Texaco or whatever it was. Cracky works in mysterious ways, I guess. I suppose the next part would've been ideal for knocker-stalker, but my shoulder did just fine. There was so little room in the bathroom, that I knocked the door into the fellow as he was standing in front of the mirror. His head fell into the mirror, and they both broke with a crash.

What happened next, I suppose I would later come to use the term "interrogation" for it. But it's not like they're supposed to go. Before I even said anything to him, before he had even started to peel himself up from the sticky restroom floor, I took the keys. Both bathroom and the ringful from his pocket. I ran back to the bus. He'd left the side bus door open, in fact. I had to use a key to get past the wrought iron cage door to the next compartment.

Chains, shackles. I guess that's as far as I want to go on about the interior, and what I found in there. It was clean. Really... clean. No girls though. No cracky. Darkness inside. Complete darkness too, except for whatever light was shining from the wide front window behind me. I went to talk to my driver.

He was still laying down, holding his head and grimacing. There was quite a bit of blood on the floor. He had shards of glass embedded into his face. I didn't so much as talk actually. I showed him the picture. He looked up at me and began to speak in some kind of Mexican. I raised the picture, so it was between his eyes and mine. Again, more Mexican.

"English!" I was more than a little impatient. And really, I know that this black bus must naturally attract attention, and somebody must have seen what I was doing. So I really didn't want to stand around. I was bouncing up and down. I was shaking. I was ready to call it quits on this whole deal, sprint out the door, and back onto a plane home.

"Not us anymore!"

You know what I should have done? I should have kept him. I should have taken him and the bus out, shackled him up, and tried some of the complimentary amenities his service offered on him. This is in retrospect. This is me speaking after I've had everything I've ever wanted and have become jaded and bored with it. This guy I'm telling you about? Ostensibly it's "me." I refer to him as "I". But it's a different guy, driven by different things. I didn't really care about the why and the how back then. I just wanted to know
"WHERE!"
Maybe, in different situations, where the other guy doesn't have a lawyer, or any charter rights, the one word interrogation works best. It's clear what is wanted, and it's clear there will be consequences if the answer isn't satisfactory.

That night actually, I went to the where. I walked. It wasn't quite within walking distance this time. The sun set and I paid no mind. The sky was empty. No moon, with no tidal pull dragging me forwards. No guiding stars either. They were all drowned out by streetlamps that were caught in an opressive orange smog haze. The streetsigns were all foreign and unfamiliar. Each road looked identical as I peered down one street and then up its perpendicular twin. Endless lines of lights spooled off in threads, crisscrossing each other, tangling geometrically into a gridlock labyrinth that provided me no help finding the way. Neither God(dess) nor man had any sympathy for me and my search.

But despite that universal apathy, I did find my way. It's instinctual for me to find my way. Maybe I could get lost elsewhere, in a land where intuitive knowledge of the landscape wasn't passed through me ancestrally. Maybe if this was Moscow I'd be shit out of luck. But here in North America, there's no way. There was a door, with a trail of people spilling out of it. A line of people all waiting patiently in single file. I walked by them. I looked at them, and they didn't look at me. They all just stood there, silently. Dully they stood in queue watching the back of the next's head. I followed the line in, turning sideways and squeezing past some nameless person standing in the doorway. The line continued to the right, around the perimeter of the room, and up the stairs on the left. There was screaming.

I neared the stairs. I could make out the screaming now. No. Stop. It's cold. It's so cold.

I began to hurry up the stairs, past the single file crowd. The line, with all its dozens of calmly waiting people, led to a room directly atop the stairs. The screaming became clearer. I could hear Her inflections. "nO!" with a sharp scream for an O. "Stohohop", with linked sobs constricting her battered tone. "It's cOOOOld!" Words and thoughts replaced by gutteral groans of pain.

I pushed the last person in line out of the way. I ran in without first looking or thinking. There was a crib. A woman, dressed in olive army surplus pants and army surplus shirt, was standing above the crib. She held her son, no older than 3. Both dressed the same. White. Blonde hair. The boy held a long metal pole. He was prodding vigorously into the crib. Each prod he put into my Cracky made Her scream in a way that liquified my bones.

I ran to the crib. I didn't have time to take a good look, but I saw Her. For the first time with my own eyes, I saw Her. She was laying in the crib, arms and legs obviously damaged beyond repair. She was more red than white.

I picked her up. The woman and her son didn't seem to mind. I ran out the door, holding Her. The crowd didn't try to stop me. They didn't even turn to look. They all just continued to stand there, waiting for their turn with the empty crib in the empty room.

I didn't realize it then, why nobody cared. Why the olive drab lady didn't care. Why the crowd didn't care. Why nobody running the black-bus came after me. Why my stalkers didn't track me back down. Or even, why She didn't care. The eyes weren't those soul-fuckers anymore. She never looked at me, or said anything to me either. I never heard Her voice again.
I suppose it became apparent soon, very soon after why. I took her home. To my home. To my little dimension of unreality where nothing else mattered. To my own cage, where there were no cracks for light to filter through. I wasn't the savior. I was another link. The last link in a chain that shackled her to this shit.

That was some creepy story. Is there more?

>>4
Just the true ending.