Not working out.

O.k, only one person voted on the last poll, and I can take enough of a hint to get when something isn't working out.  This little idea of mine has flopped, and frankly it's not that big of a surprise. Since the beggining I've been too distracted with other projects and activities to give something like this the attnetion and forethought it needs and deserves.  I mean sure I could try to push through on this a little longer, see if I couldn't get a little more momentem going, but that wouldn't be fair to the readers, to my origonal vision, or to me, because I know right now that I can't deliver my very best to this.

Now I'm not scrapping this project completly, but I am  putting it on hold until I can invest the time and experince it deserves.  Of course, if anyone out there wants to take this idea and run with it, feel free, if someone can do this better then I did than I'd love to see that happen.  All right people, that's all I've got, nothing to see here, move along, I'll replug it when it restarts but till then this is going to be a very boring blog (because I won't be posting here, in case you didn't catch that).

FreedomCaged

5-D

I never used to have nightmares.  I had the occasional bad dream, but for the most part my sleeping hours were pretty good.  But since I started looking in that notebook I've been having more and more restless nights.  I don't have a nightmare every night, and sometimes when I have them they aren't even that bad, but its still often enough that I've spent less time sleeping than I'm used to.  It probably doesn't help that when I can't sleep I read the notebook.  I spent at least an hour going over the first picture in it when I looked at it a second time.  The tree was so smooth, and all of the branches were so intricate.  I followed each and every line checking to see where each branch led, looking for any extra or missing lines.  I couldn't find any, the drawing was perfect, almost frighteningly beautiful.  

I made sure not to pay any less attention to the pages with schoolwork on them, but after looking at how amazingly detailed the drawings were I was convinced that they had to have been made by someone other than Tommy.  I began to think that whoever it was had written the strings of random numbers, as well.  At the rate I was going it took me well over a week to get through most of the notebook.  It would have been a chore, but all of the drawings were so well done, and even the ones that weren't as neat or detailing were still fascinating.  While I was looking at them I truly forgot about how much time was passing.  

One drawing was of a playground, and the details in it were so precise, it looked like the entire area was perfectly peaceful, they grass was untrampled, the see-saws were smooth and level, and the swings sat motionless.  It was like staring at an exhibit in a museum, everything was too perfect, like no child had ever played there or had any reason to.  

Then another picture was of the children looking at a man in the center of the frame.  It was odd, because everything in drawing was drawn in sketchy jumbled lines, like the artist had been drinking too much coffee.  But the head of the man who took of the center of the frame was perfectly smooth, like nothing was supposed to be certin except for that.  The children were all stuck in diffrent poses, too.  The two girls on the right looked like they had been haveing a conversation when they saw him, they were facing each other, but their heads were turned to look at the smooth sphere in the middle of the page.  One boy stood a little furthur away from them, and was even blurrier, but seemed to be looking over his shoulder at the man.  Then there was another child on the left side of the page, he was sitting down and looking up as if to see who had interupted one of his imaginary games.  The body language of them was all so clear, but the faces were so blurry I could barely make out their features.  For some reason I really wanted to see who they were looking at, and I was disapointed that I couldn't see his face.

There were several other drawings as well, and each of them captuered my intrest, but as I got closer and closer to the end of the notebook I felt more and more anticipation about the final page where the map had been in my dream.  Then, last night, I finally reached the final few pages, there was one more drawing I didn't understand: a man with no face, wearing a suit, standing in the center of the page, and holding his arms out, as if to embrace to viewer.  I finished looking over that page more quickly than usual, for some reason it creeped me out more than any of the pages before it.  Then I flipped to the next page, expecting another drawing, only to find it and the two pages after it were completly blank.  I sat staring at the second to last page, not sure if I wanted the final page to be blank as well.  For some reason I was afraid to look.  My alarm went of seconds later, but I ignored it, I was so close to finishing the notebook that I didn't even care.  With the blaring from my clock in the background I turned the last page.

I'm not sure how long I stared at that page.  It must have been a while, just sitting there, stareing at that one word, wondering what it meant.  At first I didn't even notice the knocking on my door, I looked over in surprise just in time to see it open.

"What are you looking at, you'll be late for work!"  John looked at me like he was about to yell some more, but then he noticed the notebook.  "What is that, and why are you looking at it instead of turning off your alarm?"

I didn't know how to answer him.

4

As I put the notebook down on my desk I ran my finger down the middle of the cover, wiping off a thin layer of dust.  For a moment I was afraid to open it, all of those images rushed back through my head, for some reason I was afraid that when I opened the notebook it would be like the dream.  But the more I looked at it the more I felt I needed to look inside, so I opened to the first page.

When I had looked in it at the park I skimmed over it for the most part, but this time I looked at each page slowly and carefully.  I probably took at least fifteen minutes to look at each of the first few pages; I worked out all of the same problems Tommy had, I made note of the mistakes he made, how he wrote his numbers, where there were smudges and eraser marks.  After a while it felt like I was watching him write the problems, I could see him jot down the problem quickly, then watched as he worked it out, speeding up and slowing down depending on how well he knew what he was doing.  Sometimes the numbers were written a little differently, more smooth and deliberate, as though someone, his mother perhaps, or a friend or tutor, was explaining what to do.  Other times an answer would be wrong, and there would be a red circle crossed out next to the problem, sharply but neatly pressed into the page.  I could sometimes see the indentations these made on the pages behind them, and I would trace them with my finger, feeling these little valleys on the paper.

On every page there were those numbers that didn't make sense to me, even on the pages where I hadn't noticed them at first.  At first glance I had assumed these to also be Tommy's work, but after I took a closer look at them I noticed that they were neater than his numbers, as though someone had gone to great trouble to make sure they weren't crooked or smudged.  To be honest, I don't think I've even seen numbers that neat before that weren't printed off of a computer.  I tried much harder to make sense of them this time, I compared them to their spots on the page, the other problems on that page, and the string on the pages before and after them, but I still couldn't find a pattern.

I had started reading the notebook around 4:00 in the morning, but while I was looking over it I wasn't really aware of how much time passed.  I never spent less than fifteen minutes on a single page, I'm sure, but on some I took even longer, and I would sometimes go back and forth between pages while trying to figure out the pattern with the number strings.  Every now and then I would get a weird feeling on the back of my neck, too, that would make me pause for a moment.  A couple of times I even got up and looked out the window, though I never saw anybody down on the street.  So time passed much more quickly than I had expected.  I was on the last page before Tommy's first drawing when my alarm clock went off, I had spent almost four hours reading that notebook.  I was a bit upset that I didn't even get around to looking at any of the pictures, and for a brief moment I considered flipping to the last page and seeing if the map from my dream was still there.  But I held off, if it was there I didn't want to be thinking about it all day while I was in class or at work, and if it wasn't then it didn't really make any difference.

When I left my room John noticed I looked tired, and asked me if anything was wrong.  I thought about telling him about the notebook, or the dream, but for some reason I didn't really feel like I should before I got a closer look at the notebook.  School and work both went o.k. for the most part, even though I was tired from such little sleep.

I've been obsessing about the notebook even more now, I think that I'm going to look through it again soon, for some reason I feel like I really need to see if I can recognize anything important in the drawings.

"2-D": Keep it, 3

After a lot of thought I just decided to keep the notebook with me, I didn't see how it could help the cops at all, and I wanted to take a closer look at it, even if it had freaked me out a little bit before.  I took it home, put it on my dresser and mostly forgot about it.  Every now and then I would see it, and tell myself I would look at it later, but mostly I just let it gather dust.  Over the course of less than a week the entire incident was mostly gone from my mind, just another mundane event in my uninteresting life.  The notebook would probably have sat there for weeks or months before I looked at it, realized I wasn't ever going to read it, and just threw it away.  But then I had a dream.

I was walking through the park where I found the journal.  It was at night and I was lost, there wasn't a moon or any stars, but somehow there was just enough light to see the trees all around me.  The trees were different, several were burned, the branches were all knotted and tangled, and they were all so close to the path.  For some reason I felt scared, like someone was watching me, like I was intruding and someone didn't want me there.  I was running, but I couldn't see where I was going, I kept running into tree branches and getting cut or scrapped, it was like the branches were reaching out for me.  I don't know why but I couldn't stop running, I knew it hurt, I knew it kept throwing me running into these branches, I knew that I had no idea where I was going, but I just couldn't stop running.  Somehow I felt that if I stopped something even worse would happen.  It felt like I was running for hours, but suddenly I broke through the trees into a small clearing,  The trees were still all around me, but I could stop running.  In the very middle of the clearing was the notebook, partially buried under leaves like it had been when I first found it, only this time the leaves were pitch black.  I cautiously picked it up and started flipping through the pages again.

It was like someone had taken the book and chosen one thing about each page and then removed everything else.  Each page only contained one of the things it held before, I noticed it first on the pages where there had been math problems.  Before the page had been filled with work and equations, but now there were just those strings of numbers I didn't understand, exactly where they had been before, only surrounded by the emptiness of a blank page.  Then I came to the first drawing of the large tree, where before there had been an intensly complex aray of branches, now there was only the trunk, the tree somehow seemed even more intimidating with all its limbs removed.  Then when I got to the second drawing  the tall bussnisse man was gone, and only his tie remained, the bottom half of it still obscured by the suit that was no longer there.  All the drawings were like this, everything gone, except one thing, usually something in the center of the page, but sometimes something off to the side.  When I finally got to the last page I found something unexpected: a map of the woods, a way out.

I laughed with excitment, but the woods swollowed the sound before it even reached my ears, I looked up to see the trees closer than before, bearing down on me.  I took a close look at the map, and then I started running again, I knew where I was now, I knew were to go.  The trees cut and scrapped me more voilently now, trying to stop me, trying to keep me trapped.  Blood started dripping down my head and arms, the trees cuts finally breaking skin, but I didn't care, I could finally escape, I could be free of these woods.  In the distance I saw a light, an opening through which I could escape.  I was almost there, I almost made it, but then the roots uprooted themselves from beneath my feet throwing me forward.  I landed on my chest, inches away from my freedom, and as I reached out I felt smooth oily coils bind my body and legs, and drag me back into the waiting trees.

I woke up terrified for my life, and it took several moments before I realized it was all just a dream.  I tried to relax, to go back to sleep, but I just couldn't make myself sleep, the dream kept me from being able to so much as close my eyes without feeling all those trees reaching out towards me.  I finally decided to look at that notebook, as long as I wasn't sleeping I might as well look at the thing keeping me awake.

2-D

I got to Kim's apartment around 11:30, she smiled when she saw me.  She was dressed in her sweater and jeans, it was simple, but it made her look cute.  "So where are you taking me for lunch?" she asked.

"I'm not sure, where do you want to go?"  I've never been very good at committing to a restaurants for meals, I'd just as soon go with what anyone else wanted.

"How about Subway?" Kim was a very healthy person, she tried to always eat something a little healthy, and I've only ever seen her eat a burger once.  So with all the important details out of the way we made our way to Subway.  Kim got a turkey breast and black forest ham 6 inch, and I got a turkey BLT.  While we ate we talked about lots of things, I asked here how her family was doing, she asked me about work, but mostly we just hung out and enjoyed each others company, it was nice, one of those precious moments between two people you never want to forget.

Then after lunch it was time to go to the park.  Kim and I have visited lots of different parks around the area, we always enjoy just being out there with nature, and we usually try to go places we haven't been before.  Sondermann Park was a smallish park, mostly surrounded by houses or roads, but it was supposed to be surprisingly secluded in some of the longer trails, where you wouldn't even be able to hear the traffic.  There was even a small playground for kids out front and as we drove up one of the swings was still going, some kid must have just left.  I remembered what John had said about that Tommy kid, but it looked like the police had cleared the area, save for one lone cop car across the street.  "I guess it's good they're keeping an eye on the area," I mentioned to Kim as we started down one of the longer trails, "makes it seem a little safer I guess."

"I'm sure the kid just got fed up with things and tried to run away or something, there isn't much crime in this area, and we all tried to run away when we were kids."

"I never did, I mean I guess I thought about it whenever I had to do chores or got grounded or something, but I never actually did anything."

"I did!" Kim said adamantly.  I raised my eyes questioningly.  "One day I just got feed up with brushing my teeth, I walked right out the front door and went to live in the grocery store instead."

I laughed "And how did that work out for you?"  I didn't doubt her sincerity in the least, I'd already heard several stories about her childhood, and this she had definitely been the kind of kid who would run away from home for a day or two.

"Well I made it about two hours before one of the more observant employees there noticed that every time I came to get a food sample it was without a parent, he kept an eye on me and after it became clear I was just wandering around alone he took me to the manager's office and they made me call my mother.  After she brought me home she said how scared she had been, how I shouldn't do things like that ever again."  Kim smiled, "then after she got through worrying over me and hugging me and crying she sent me right into the bathroom to brush my teeth."

I grinned at that, "So did you ever try to run away again after that?" 

"No, I figured that running away was boring, and you got way less food than you normally would for lunch, it really wasn't worth not having to brush your teeth anymore."

By now we had made it a fair way into the woods and stopped to rest on a bench.  It was in a nice secluded area and a chilly was blowing.  I was about to ask Kim another question when I noticed a black notebook on the ground, partially covered by leaves.  I went over and picked it up the cover said "Thomas Allard" and below that it said "5th grade math".  Kim came and looked over my shoulder as I flipped through the first few pages.  At first there was nothing of note, just a few geometry or algrebra problems worked out, frequently incorrectly.  Every now and then there would be a string of numbers somewhere on the page that I couldn't figure out what they were referancing, I assumed the were just solutions that he hadn't worked out on the page, answers to problems in the textbook.  Then I started flipping through it a little more rapidly, tired of just seeing more of the same, till I came to a page with a drawing on it.  In the middle of the page was a tall, elaborate tree taking up the whole page, it looked almost scribbled, but you could still see all of the the branches as they split off and intelocked with each other, it was actually quite difficult to take my eyes off of it.  When I turned the page again, there was just more math problems, I quickly flipped past them and several pages later I found another drawing.  This time it was a picture of a bussnisseman, but he had appearently run out of room for the head, as the body took up the whole of the page.  The trend continued for several more pages, there would be some pages of schoolwork, fewwer each time, and then there would be an image taking up the entire page.  He drew woods or trees several times, once he drew the playground, once he drew a large group of children staring at a man who took up the center frame, all you could see was his shoulders and the back of his head, though.  Sometimes the images looked like they were drawn carefully and slowly, while others looked rushed and frantic.  Some of them were actually pretty creepy.  I turned to Kim, "I think this is that missing kid's notebook."

She looked a little concerned "What are you going to do?"

"I'm not sure, I should give it to the police, but I don't know how that'll help them, maybe I'll just get rid of it."

"Maybe you should just hold onto it for now," Kim looked concerned "If you get rid of it and it could be used as evidence..." She left the statment hanging, somewhat omoniously.

"I'll just sleep on it for now," was my noncommital answer, "I'll decide what to do about this in a couple of days, but right now we should be getting back."  I moitioned at the sky, we had spent quite a while staring at the notebook and it's pictures, and it was starting to get dark.  We walked out briskly, not taking nearly as long to get out as we had to get in, the woods seemed much more onminious now.  We agreed not to go back to that park again on the drive back.  I dropped Kim off at her door, making sure she was inside before I headed home.

I don't know what I'm going to do about that notebook.

1

It's just one of those days where you know it's going to be a good day, you can feel it in the air.  It's so nice to be able to wake up and just lay in bed for a moment, thinking about life before I have to get up and actually live it. No work today, and no school, that means I basically don't have to do anything today.

It sounded like John woke up before me, the TV is was at least, just playing static at first now, he was probably just waiting for the local morning news, I'll never understand how he gets up so early.  John is on of those kinds of people who always knows what's going on, which makes him a great person to know, he always pays attention to what's going on and if you ever need to know something he usually can tell you the answer.  The man was lucky enough to get a job almost right out of college working as a writer for the local newspaper, it looks like all of his work with that Journalism major is paying off.  I, on the other hand, am going for a masters, as an internship at an architecture firm just doesn't pay the bills, hopefully by the time I earn my new degree I'll have proven to the company that I'm valuable enough to do more than just grab everyone coffee and doughnuts and just watch everyone else work.  Sounds like the news is on now, I guess I'll get up and make some breakfast.

John was of course ready with the condensed version of the daily news.  "Hey did you hear some kid went missing a couple days ago?  The family is really worried." He said this as though they just announced the Lindbergh baby went missing, John is of the belief that any news is big news.
"You know I never hear anything before you do, besides, you clearly heard it on the news just a few minutes ago," I motioned at the screen while it displayed a commercial advertising a dental practice, "What makes you think I could have possibly heard about something that was announced mere moments ago?  What's so exciting about this anyways?" This earned me a harsh glare, so I quickly explained my meaning, "I mean it's a tragedy and all, and I hope they find the kid, but this isn't really that surprising, is it?  People go missing all the time, it's not like we live in a small town where everybody knows each other's name, shit happens." I started to get out the stuff to make pancakes.
"That doesn't mean that it isn't something that people need to know, this is the third disappearance in the last two months, surely that's not a coincidence."  John still sounded a bit mad at my disinterest in the kid, but he's wasn't glaring anymore.
"Why not?" I asked, "Stranger things have happened, besides three in two months isn't that big of an issue.  I swear, if I go in your room and find a conspiracy board set up because of this I will have you tossed in the loony bin."  I said it jokingly, but I really wouldn't be surprised to find such a thing in John's room, he was just the kind of person who start seeing connections that everyone else missed.  The scary thing about it is that he would probably be right.  "What kind of syrup do you want?"
John sighed and resigned himself to the fact that I will never be as interesting as the news, which, incidentally, had come back on and captured the majority of his attention. "Buttermilk, I guess."

After the news was finished John and I sat down to breakfast.  In the spirit of not being completely ignorant I asked him to finish his cliff-notes version of the news for me.  "So what was that kids name, anyways?"
"Tommy Allard, he was 12 years old.  Apparently the last time his parents saw  he was going to go play at the Sondermann Park."
I looked up quickly, "I was going to take Kim there this afternoon,"
"Well the police already searched the area, they couldn't find the kid, or any evidence, so they decided not to restrict traffic there,just keep your eyes open if you go, you can't be too safe."
"So what else is new?"
"You remember that body they found burned beyond recognition a month or so back on Captain Jack's Trail Head?  The police finally identified him as some sort of drifter who had racked up numerous small crimes around the country, most theft related.  They still don't know how he got burned like that, though, but as it turns out, no one cares when you're homeless thief."  John didn't sound particularly angry about that, just sort of depressed, but resigned to the fact.  "I'll tell you the rest later, I've got to get to work."
"Sounds good, I'll see you later."

After John left I relaxed for a little bit watched some TV, and got online for a little bit.  After it was late enough that I knew I wouldn't be waking her I called Kim.  "I was wondering if you were still wanting to go to the park this afternoon."
"Of course I still want to go to the park, why wouldn't I?"  Kim loves the outdoors, and as a result some of our best dates have just been us walking around a park or nature trail.
"I heard a kid went pissing up in that area, I wasn't sure if you knew."
"Don't worry," you could hear the smile in her voice "I'll protect you if anything happens."
I laughed, knowing that in a way, it was true.  Kim was strong willed, quick on her feet, and brave, why she's dating me I'll never know.  "Well then I'll have to take you out to lunch first, I'll pick you up in a hour."
"Sounds great, I'll see you then."