THE FOLLOWING IS THE NEXT IN EMMA'S JOURNAL ENTRIES, AND THE BEGINNING OF AN UNRAVELING.
--File 028: J0u9n4l--
10/19/XXXX - 4:03pm
Dear Journal,
Today has been exhausting. We are worn out in the extreme. I offered to drive, but neither Blaine nor Anders will let me, and to be honest, I can kind of understand why. For whatever reason, even though Blaine's supposed to be in this with me, it's definitely targeting me. The game doesn't follow him around, but it follows me everywhere.
Is it because I solved the puzzle? This creepy haunted game has beef with me because I'm the one who figured out the first mystery?
Blaine is currently driving. He has more trouble getting to sleep than Anders, who can pass out pretty much instantly, so Blaine's taking the first "watch", basically. Anders, true to form, is out cold in the passenger seat, out the second he closed his eyes.
Something about this all feels so... strange. I feel like... like... like I'm a toy train stuck to a set of plastic train tracks. Someone hit the on button, and I'm racing along the tracks toward an end point predetermined for me, something I can't change or reroute to without struggling.
There's also this really odd feeling of... splitting? Like a part of me is desperately trying to split into a different direction. I guess with my train analogy, it's like if the train was stuck to the tracks, but cognitively trying to pull itself OFF the tracks, even though it has no chance of ever being able to.
That's scarier getting written out.
We have so very little time left until the timer runs out, and the next task begins in the game. So little time. The sun will be setting in just a couple hours, and when it gets dark, Anders is taking over again, so Blaine can get some shut eye. At some point, I need to sleep, too, because I'm the one who's probably going to be handling the game. We all talked, and we don't want to risk the game responding to someone else touching it, which... makes sense, of course, but sometimes... sometimes I wonder how this has become my new sense of normal.
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Do we really adapt so easily to terrifying/bad situations that we just... take it for the new normal and keep moving forward? It's so strange to me. I keep trying to think about Keith, too, but my brain shuts it down, almost like some kind of... defense mechanism. It doesn't help that when I try to picture him, I just keep remembering how he looked... how he looked. All those flies, all over him...
I'm going to need SO much therapy, and I just realized I won't be able to get it, because how do you walk into a therapist's office like "Hi, yeah, I just duked it out with the famous Jake Grantham, who 15 years ago was both a horrific and prolific serial killer of mass proportions, and who also, by the way, was executed like two weeks ago"? I'd be sent to an insane asylum.
Literally, I will never be able to talk to anyone about this. I will never be able to get help for this.
Talk about a sacrifice.
I can't get it out of my head that something feels very famil
[At this stage in Emma's journal, there's an odd moment where Emma's handwriting suddenly falls off, trailing in a very loose scribble down toward the bottom of the page. The next segment begins on the next page, and fills is completely.]
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EMMA DON'T DIE
[The diary entry ends here.]