*Trigger warnings: All of them. Yes, you read that correctly. No, I’m not joking. Why? Because horror to me isn’t jump scares and ghosts. It’s psychological, and physical. As a gender fluid, fem bodied person, the world is a big scary place. So, I’m gonna fight back. I’m not going to pull punches. I will be in your face with things. Because I’m tired of being told my voice doesn’t matter.*

The Instructions:

These streets are all too familiar to me. Stories told over and over, a repeated litany with no end. I am man. I am woman. I am both, I am neither. I have been here since the first word was spoken, and I will be here when the last word is said. And no, I’m not that shit stain punk Ass angel what’s his name Metadrone or some shit like that. With the exception of the Metatron from the Dogman Universe. That guy is pretty chill.

But I’m getting off point. Happens a lot, when I have nothing to focus on. Or too much to focus on…

I don’t have a name, because I was never given one. Just Keeper… So inventive, right?

Apologies, I’m older than all dirt of all realms combined, so I’m a bit salty in my old age. Or am I young? I really do have no idea sometimes. Purgatory is a strange place where time does not exist. Makes my job a real pain in the Ass too, seeing as my job is the keeper of all knowledge, secrets, so on and so forth. Yes, I see the redundancy. No, there’s not much I can do about it. Not much I want to do about it either.

See, the problem with a being such as myself is that after a certain point, everything starts repeating. Like, everything. Music, stories, games…

I’m bored. Of everything. So, I’ve decided to do something about it. Not quite sure if it will work, if it will drive me insane, or if it’ll fizzle and poof like a bad firecracker. Granted, I think I’m already insane, so that would be nothing new for me to deal with. So, it’s down to the flip of a coin. A fifty-fifty chance that I can somehow, some way weasel my way out of this gods awful job and be Free, or it will just blow up in my face. And that’s not taking into account that those chances can then be broken down into chances of their own, so on and so forth.

However, there’s a stagnation point, where all the stories converge into one and while they are different in the variations that they have evolved into, they are literally the same. The same stories, just subtle differences that one wouldn’t notice at a quick glance. Therein lies the problem.

After a certain stagnation point is reached, a bleed effect starts to take place. Now, normally, that wouldn’t be an issue…if not for the fact that sometimes there are those born who can see, for just that split second, into the closest reality next to theirs. Only sometimes, from the perspective of the people who knew that person, they’ll have just disappeared from the world without a trace.

You’ve heard the terms. The Mandela Effect. Spirited away. Taken by the wild hunt. So on and so forth. All of it is real. And yet it’s not at the same time. Have I lost you yet? Most likely, but I’ll carry on anyway.

Things are never as they appear, more so with Purgatory. I have seen it grow into the monster that it is now, and know that even should I succeed in what I plan, that it will only grow more so. No surprise that it has achieved Elder God status.

Me? I’m not a god. Not even a demi-god. Or goddess, if you swing that way. Not even that pompous freakshow God with the capital ‘G’. I don’t even know where that wackjob came from.

No one does.

Sorry, getting off point again. Purgatory was created to protect one place and one place only. And I only need to say one name for you literates to start crying. Trust me, I cried as well when all the other libraries were burned as well, since this is the last of them. Though, it’s actually the first. The first Library of Alexandria. Mind you, the person who came up with the name in the first place was drunk and feeling impish. I may have helped…

Ahem…

Like I said, brain is…scattered. I need a break. I will have one, one way or another. And that’s where you come in (insert name here)! If my nefarious plan has come to fruition, and I no longer exist, or at the very least have turned myself into a chameleon, you will be taking over my duties!

There are, of course, rules! Because of course there are rules! Rules are how you survive! Hells bells, you never know when you’ll end up in a gunfight at the Dark Tower, or slinging spells with a certain wizard in Chicago! If you do, stop by Mac’s, man brews his own ale. Top notch stuff!

Errr…RULES! There’s a few, so I’ma list them in order of what comes to mind:

1. Don’t trust the gods. Least of all trickster gods. Especially Loki!

2. Don’t listen to the books. They don’t have anything interesting to say.

3. The being at the center of the vault is completely trustworthy. Do everything it says.

4. You do not have access to the secret areas of the vaults. Don’t even try!

5. The vault has total control of what it looks like, and changes according to its own whim. It doesn’t take suggestions.

6. Question everything. Including the rules.

(The rest of the notebook is blank, as if waiting expectantly for its owner to return.)