i've decided anytime i scribble down one of my particularily interesting brainwaves, it'll go here
perhaps this'll culminate, one day, into a vastly cathartic trip down memory lane where i can examine how far i've come as a writer...
yeah probably not, i'll bet my top dollar this is gonna be a steaming pile of slopfiction
then again, thats probably fitting for the slime pit, right?
Entry 1: I'm a petty con artist and I think I just met Satan (w.i.p)
(written on my phone at 4am on a school night sometime in 2024)
Around 3 years ago I called it quits on my psychology course and became a drop out. I adored the subject for its case studies; Phineas Gage, Stanford prison, ect, but as I found out it had an alarming amount of math and methodology involved too. I've always been English oriented - equations go right over my head but I can churn out a decent story given a decent prompt. I was now just another young broke adult without the cover of being a student saving me from the reality I had to find a real job, and with my passion for stories and eagerness to not let my semester of coasting in psychology go to waste I became the only occupation I could think of that complimented the two, I became a medium. Now before I go on, by no means am I saying all mediums are fakers, however I was most certainly a hack. I never did anything too unethical, never pretended to be someone's dead relative talking through me from the afterlife, but as a borderline compulsive liar with a surface level understanding of how peoples brains worked, I settled into the profession nicely. It was weirdly easy starting up, turns out being essentially a spiritual handyman is a sought after trade. All I had to do was open a web domain and try not to be too sarcastic while listing my credentials and the exorcism requests and seance commissions came flying. I reckon I made a real song and dance of it but the clients always came out happier, I think that's how I justified taking their money. 'told myself 'they're paying for peace of mind, churches get away with it'. Before all this I was a staunch skeptic with a juxtaposing love for conspiracies, cryptozoology, the occult- hell even creepypastas, just anything generally along those lines. That's probably how I managed to keep my business going, fooled my already fooled clientele into thinking I was some ghost busting guru because I'd occasionally mumble something like 'God I hope we're not dealing with a couple Fresno night crawlers' for example. Normally the blank is filled by whatever cryptid I discovered that week but if I felt my client had been down the tinfoil hat rabbit hole much like myself I'd make sure to throw in something niche, still feel bad about making that doomsday prepper think the raccoons ransacking his bunker each night were actually a pack of pissed off Hodag. I get it was scummy but I was convinced I was helping people and had good intentions, what's the harm in pretending to exorcise this sweet old ladies flea market finds 'just in case' if it helps her sleep at night. Being paid for my service is the ethical spanner in the works but I can't reiterate enough I felt there was no issue because even if I was a quack there was no real danger. Unfortunately, there is a real danger - a real danger I don't understand but I've seen and which has caused me to write this because I feel it is my duty to warn anyone who is willing to listen. I understand I spent the majority of this beyond messy introduction trying to justify my occupation basically scamming pensioners and I apologise for meandering but I need to be honest because I need you to trust me and I need you to read on, you have to know my story so you too can hopefully stave off whatever I encountered in that house.
The business was in a rut. I hadn't got one voicemail the whole week and the only consultation I got was this old dude complaining over a constant weight on his shoulders. Through my psychic intuition, and Google, I diagnosed him with polymyalgia rheumatica and recommended him to buy some steroid cream, although he still refused to leave before I'd blessed him and dusted him in purifying salt across his upper body like it were some divine healing dandruff. This business woulda went under years ago if it wasn't for these geriatric crackpots who wont take no for an answer. The lul was undoubtedly caused by a scathing review left by some punk kids must of heard of me and decided they could lure me out to one of their houses and make a fool of me, trying to drum up some YouTube fame. Turns out trying the whole ghost busting guru shtick doesn't work on people below 40, and they lost it mid way through my mock Taoist exorcism (which just for the record I pulled off perfectly, using my dull pocket knife to fake bloodletting by slashing at my suit jacket till the fake blood bags stuffed in my pockets burst). They bullshitted their whole story on how every time they try to sleep there's laughing in the walls, and now they were sat laughing at me knowing they managed to tape the whole process of me buying into their crap and acting like I could sensed the bad energy too. I suppose it was a taste of my own medicine but god I looked like and idiot. Fearing my reputation was in jeopardy even if my target audience hadn't a clue what a you tube was, I decided some good publicity would counteract the bad from the hit piece, I just had to find it.