Azazel:Deadwater:9/18/2025
This is exactly what I came here for. Mysterious black masses floating offshore. I showed up at the beach yesterday in my official capacity as a reporter. Expected the usual PD guff, got slaps on the back. The solidarity that comes with standing together on the precipice of true, unknown horror trumps cop dickery I guess.
“Azure Demone, Az for short.” I stuck out my hand, “Any idea what we got here?”
The woman eyed me over the top of her Ray-Bans. “We don’t get new folks out here often.”
I eyed her over the top of my nameless magicked sunglasses, “Officer Grump,” I eyeballed her name tag, “Can’t stand the big city anymore. Had a bit of a nervous breakdown. Needed a change of pace.”
She pushed her glasses back up her nose, smirking. “Change of pace is certainly what you’re gonna get.”
“So, any ideas? I’m from Chicago, no sea beasts out there.”
“Nah, we’re waiting on Marge.” She indicated her partner, a scrawny guy standing twenty feet up the beach watching the blob through binoculars.
“And Marge is?”
As if summoned a Zodiac came flying through the water and up onto the beach in front of us.
“Get in.” The captain, a middle-aged woman with black hair streaked white and tangled from the wind and sea spray, looked me up and down.
“Reporter,” I showed her my credentials.
“You get sea sick?”
“Nope.”
“Get in.”
We made our way in silence out to the mass. My first thought was that it was a bunch of sharks trapped in a slick black rubber bubble. All trying to tear their way out in different directions. It was the most chaotic black blob of goo I’d ever seen. Black, inky swirls of muck surrounded it like an oily halo. Marge circled it slowly, expertly avoiding contact. The smell was that of death. Rot. Foul and sweet all at once. A personal favorite. The scrawny cop, who turned out to be Officer Royal, puked over the side. Marge’s eye twitched, for a second I thought she’d pitch him overboard. Instead she grabbed a hook on a pole from the side of the vessel.
“Uh, Marge, is that the best idea?” Officer Grump looked around like there might be somewhere to escape to.
“Something’s trapped in there.” Marge flung the hook out at the squirming blob. It caught. She gave it a swift yank, a squelching, splitting sound rippled off the water as the hook gave and came free. Marge caught and re-secured the pole back to the side of the boat in one smooth motion.
I might have fallen in love with her right then. I took the wheel of the Zodiac with a nod. She couldn’t drive and do what she needed to. She nodded back. Both officers had their hands on their weapons as we watched the water. The blob went still, the rip gaping open, water sloshed inside, but for a blob the object had surprising structural integrity. It bobbed on the surface of the water, slowly rolling toward the opening.
“Is it empty?” Officer Royal was crouching in the bottom of the Zodiac, his firearm aimed over the edge. I didn’t have the heart to tell him you can’t use a rubber craft for cover.
The blob shifted hard to the right. A hand thrust out of the opening and gripped the slippery edge. Marge didn’t skip a beat. She lashed another hook to the boat’s tow rope, tossed it, and told me to step on it.
At the beach we cut the rest of the thing open to reveal… you know the verdict is still out on that, but they certainly look merpeople-ish. They, all five of them, are currently in Deadwater General Hospital in quarantine. I’ll write more when I know more.
Miriam:Deadwater:9/18/2025
They pulled merpeople out of the ocean…. Az helped me get a job at the hospital so I can get inside information for him. I’m so stoked! I haven’t seen them yet, but Az says they’re not scaly like fish, but look more smooth like sharks. Shark skin is not smooth at all, but I didn’t correct him. We’ll find out the truth soon enough. The town is already split. Some people think we should throw them right back into the ocean. Other people are cool to help them in any way we can. Az’s Editor already told him she’ll “shitcan” him if he writes a story on this. Which is very Deadwater, people are so anti-outsider here. No one wants sea monster tourists, bad economy or not.
This actually isn’t even the weirdest thing we’ve pulled out of the ocean here. In 1938 a wale washed ashore with a German spy in its belly. Plus there was that weird dog-fish hybrid that swam ashore in 1974. That little guy is now taxidermied in the library, but he lived with Deadwater High’s biology teacher for like a decade. She had a special bag she carried him around in that held water for its back half, which was the fish part while the front part could be out for pets and scratches. The bag is also in the library.
For now I’m just kind of trying not to vibrate out of my skin with the excitement of it all. I went down to the beach and cut a little bit of the blob they arrived in off to bring home. When we got an apartment Az helped me get my stuff from Ted’s, including my microscope. This blob is alive. And get this, the sample I got, it’s growing. Looking forward to doing some experiments tomorrow.
August:Heaven:My Cell
Through our intercessors, Evelyn and I were able to pass some ideas back and forth about not healing our wounds. She taught me a chant in a demonic language and I suggested using a sheet of my journal paper jammed in the wound to prevent proper healing.
Our intercessors don’t think these drastic measures will be necessary. But they are, after all, dead priests. Can they be trusted? We think not.
Time is meaningless here, but we agreed to try and coordinate. We’ve both just had meetings and have now been returned to our cells.
I will try to write as I go through the process, but it may become impossible at some point.
I will start with hitting my head against the wall until it breaks open.
I find that the pain, though it is great, is not the worst part of this exercise, but rather it’s the sound the skull makes when shards grind together.
I’ve stuffed paper in the wound and am chanting now. Although forming words is difficult as my jaw muscles can’t pull properly on my shattered skull.
I’m drawing the pentagram. I can feel the edges of the wound trying to knit back together. It isn’t working. I’m sitting now, listening to blood drip and to the clicking of my own skull. I see the mouth forming on the wall, pustulant tongue rolling out before me like a carpet. The gaping maw awaits.
I am leaving now. I feel my Evelyn’s spirit tugging at me.
