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Okay, laying everything out for myself, part two. I got so distracted the other day with all the Birdie bullshit that I didn’t even think about the stuff I do know because I’ve experienced it. Once again, seeing my world through the lens of someone else instead of just fucking trusting my own instincts. 

I’m going to try to go through anything and everything that’s felt slightly off or unusual, no matter how small or inconsequential. 

So, let’s start small. The dog in Kansas. Stray dogs are one thing, but that one looked so well loved. So clean. But Kansas was so empty—felt like one of the emptier states I’ve been to—and I looked. I tried to find the dog, to see where it lived, to see if anyone was there taking care of it and came up with nothing. 

Speaking of Kansas, the tornado. The tornado isn’t weird in of itself—Kansas gets tornadoes—but the alarm…there wasn’t very much power in Kansas. And I’m not sure how those sirens work, but presumably they’re on some kind of grid, which would suggest that I would’ve seen some kind of power on somewhere, but there wasn’t. So another case of phantom power? A grid for just the warning system that didn’t power anything visible? I have too many questions about it. 

Vegas had a lot of power, so the fire alarm going off makes a little bit more sense to me, especially since a fire alarm system is contained within one building. But was there even any fire? That’s the question—did the alarm just get tripped somehow, with a power surge or by something else…by someone else. 

Power in general! It doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason why sometimes it’s on and sometimes it’s not. A jukebox playing music, but no power on the electric stovetop. Like someone bothered to fix the wiring just to play music but not eat. 

Maybe I’m putting personification where there is none but it’s…weird. It’s all weird. 

Then there’s all the lack of evidence—the lack of damage, the fact that stores are still well stocked instead of picked over…all the cars just left abandoned even though they’re all full of gas and perfectly fine as far as I can tell, beyond the wear and tear that happens when a car is left to the elements for years on end. 

Harry trying to contact me. That’s maybe not evidence of anything important but, um, it still feels…noteworthy. 

And finally, the big one—the Stanley Hotel. There were so many weird things. No power but my radio turned on. That feeling of dread. Seeing that…vision. 

A man. An ordinary man. Who could he have been? What could he have been? Was he really seeing me?

I’ve been thinking about nuclear shadows. Apparently, when you drop a nuclear bomb, the blast bleaches everything, that’s how strong the light from the explosion is. So when something—or someone—is in the way of that light, their shadow doesn’t get lightened. The shape of them is left behind, so they say. 

Sometimes I feel like that. Like I’m a blast shadow of my former self. Maybe that’s what he was too. Some kind of…remnant. Echo. Of some time before the blast. 

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I don’t know, none of it makes sense. I can write it all down in ink and still can’t read what any of the words mean put together. 

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