McDonald's Coffee is the Nectar of the Gods

We're on the road again. I think we got out just in time. Something terrible was set to happen, of that I'm sure. It's closer, now. He's closer. Whoever He's got following us - any money it's James, if he still lives - is closer now.

It's kind of hard to explain how my old compatriots do the following thing, because most of it is going to sleep in one place and waking up in another having bought some train ticket or convinced some trucker to give them a lift, but regardless of how it works hanging around brings them closer just like it does Him. One day whoever it is will wake up with a train ticket or an address that'll lead them right to us, and that's when it gets interesting. I've got a lot of contingencies, and to be frank, I really can't wait to try some of them out.

Not that any of them are too violent, mind. I cringe every time I see the words "fucked up another Proxy" thrown out as an afterthought. It never accomplishes anything, killing innocent people who've lost their free will. All it does is stain your soul and make you that little bit more used to killing. Well, that and deny some family somewhere any chance of ever getting their son, or their husband or their daughter back.

Do you want to know what the Touched do when they're not wearing masks? I'll answer the question for you. You don't. But I'll tell you anyway, and we can see if you'll all just learn to deal with what you've done and what you're doing.

Mostly they stare at walls, dead inside - nothing but an empty shell being driven by a poor impression of a human. Sometimes, they convulse in pain or with the intensity of 'His rapture', or speak in tongues about creatures long dead, thoughts long forgotten and the corpses of Gods. But occasionally, when He's busy elsewhere, when He hasn't bothered with the theopany in a while, they sit in the corner and cry. Or write letters to family that they'll never send, because what the hell do you say to people from a life you were torn from by a faceless God? Once in a while, some might even beg me to kill them, if they're feeling particularly hopeless.

These are people you're killing. Violent, dangerous, insane, cunning, demented people, but people nonetheless. Sometimes, they're not even Hallowed - and I have to use that word because Touched doesn't mean the same thing. We're all Touched, the Heretics and Hallowed and Taken alike, and sometime when you're "stomping the shit out of some proxy trash lol" you're just killing somebody indistinguishable from yourself a few months from now. What do you think Damien was like in his last few days? How do you think Maudin's going to end up if a prank ever goes too far? What separates them from us? The world isn't black and white, people. It's grey, endless grey, like a really shitty video game.

This post isn't for all of you, obviously. There are people out there who clearly understand the moral conundrum involved with murdering the shell of a person that's been corrupted by Him. But the more often you delude yourself into thinking you haven't been killing people, and every time you dehumanize the corpse you've just created, you do just that. Dehumanize them. This whole game - this whole fight - is one fought in the head-space of countless unlucky victims. And when a good part of that head-space just accepts the fact anyone He Takes is no longer human, it makes it very difficult for what's left of them to cling to humanity.

I get it. Killing people is hard, and it's easier when you convince yourself they're not people. And to an extent they're not, especially when they're trying to claw your brains out for besmirching His name and daring to resist His light. But somewhere inside that mind, buried deep within that grey matter and hanging from a Tree that doesn't really exist is a person, and they might not feel the pain as their body is destroyed, but they'll learn soon enough that it has been when they realise His Tree is the sum of their existence from now on.

And maybe, just maybe if you'd shot them in the knee, or been content to leave them unconscious on the floor instead of stamping their head in, they might've had another day weeks from then to enjoy a chocolate bar or watch a slightly more sane friend play Fable, or just have a shower and feel the water one more time. Or sit in a corner and cry about how much they want their mother. Like the person they are.