Here I am.

Let me tell you a story.

When I was young (perhaps seven or eight years old) I used to have dreams. I'm twenty now, so it's obvious that this was quite a while ago - many years and several months prior to June of 2009, a time of little significance to some and of great significance to others - but how long ago or whether or not it happened before certain events isn't really important at this point, so I'll get back to it.

In those dreams, a tall and unnaturally thin man who appeared to have no eyes, ears or nose - but who did possess a mouth filled entirely with razor sharp needle-like teeth - would force His way out of my closet to watch me sleep until the sun rose, ready to attack and eat me if I showed any signs of being awake during the night. This was an especially terrifying dream to have if I did happen to wake up in the middle of the night, for obvious reasons, but I really didn't feel like it made much of a difference whether it was the middle of the night or the middle of the day, being only eight years old or so. Those dreams horrified me, and I was certain I was going to die. So I told my mother, because that was how you solved every problem that was above your head back then.

The irony is, of course, that telling my mother was exactly what I needed to do to solve the problem. After her funeral I moved to live with my father and I never saw that strange, tall man again. Problem solved.

And I grew up. I went to school, and I wrote terrible, angsty poetry about girls I had no chance with, whilst ignoring girls who had no chance with me who were probably writing terrible, angsty poetry about how much of a jackass I was. I got a job at a games store, which I had vague plans to one day run, and earned slightly more money than I needed to survive, which was nice.

And then He came back. I've seen the blogs - both real and fake - I know how it goes. I stumbled across a reference somewhere, and suddenly I knew that the time my mother had bought me was up. There was no fascination with the 'myth' or slow descent into madness. I just knew He was coming. I knew when I went to bed, and I still knew the next day when I woke up with a nosebleed and a migraine. I ate breakfast, I had a shower, I got dressed and I waited. I thought about running, I really did - but if He could simply walk out of my closet in the middle of the night while I slept, where was I supposed to run to? I thought about fighting, but how do you fight a creature from your dreams? So I waited.

And when He showed up I opened the door and let Him in. He did that thing where He Walks - took me with Him, too - right into my kitchen, just to let me know He didn't need me to open the door and I think that was about when my nosebleed came back and I pissed my pants in fear.

And then as He moved closer and started to unravel Himself that part of my brain that used to be a lizard had an idea, because through all the terror, pain and revulsion all I wanted to do was live and I guess I pretty much would've done anything to survive at that point. So I asked Him for a job. I think I said something like "Give me a job I can do something useful you don't have to kill me you have to need people for something I've seen MarbleHornets I can help please don't kill me oh god its not real please don't kill me I can still help please don't kill me", except there weren't really spaces between the words and I was still peeing my pants for about the first half of it.

And then He laughed. I sweartofuckingBran, He laughed at me. It was this low, quiet chuckle with a hundred thousand echoes of children laughing with him in the background and for a moment my mind snapped and I was just an animal hiding from a predator, just a lizard scrambling backwards as the shadow of a hawk flitted over me, just a mouse scrambling frantically away from the jaws of a cat so much faster and stronger than it. It was horrifying and revolting and wrong.

And then He folded himself back up until He was just a faceless man in a suit and the embodiment of everything wrong with the world, not a lovecraftian horror made out of trees and hate and spiders and claws and the screams of a thousand lonely children that crawls under the world and gnaws at your dreams while you sleep.

And that was it.

Once He was all horrifyingly humanesque again, He just left. Turned around and walked away. I don't know what possessed me to do it beyond a horrible certainty that if I let Him out of my sight He'd start acting like He normally does again, but I scrambled after Him as He walked to my front door, just like any other visitor would when it was time to leave.

He was messing with me, I'm sure, because we all know He doesn't walk around like a normal person or need to open a door to get past it but once He got there, it swung open of its own accord and He just strode through and kept on walking. I was too terrified and too stunned to keep on following Him now He was out of my house, but I could still see Him walking down the street - a lucky fluke of living at the end of a cul-de-sac, I suppose. I could feel His presence retreating as He got further and further away, like He wanted me to know He was really leaving.

So I closed the door, had a shower, got some clean jeans off of my 'floordrobe' in my bedroom, mopped the kitchen floor and ate lunch. Two days later, I returned home from a little shopping trip to find a car parked out the front of my house and a teen-aged girl I'd never met leaning on the bonnet. I didn't have to ask why she was there, but I did. I wasn't surprised when she told me that He had sent her, nor was I surprised at the way she seemed to glow with some sick religious rapture when she talked about Him. She stunk like she hadn't showered in days and had been rolling in mud for good measure, so I let her in and let her use my shower.

And that was how I started taking care of the Taken, His 'children'.