Grace Alone

Hello there. Grace is asleep right now. Poor thing. She was so tired, she could barely keep her eyes open. To say it was a bad day would be understatement.

But let's start at the beginning.

Grace managed to buy a Smith & Wesson 22A .22 semiautomatic. Personally, I would have gone with a larger .44 caliber, but .22 was fine. She spent a day practicing at a gun range and then spent the rest of her time watching the cabin Derek was in.

Eventually, she received the warning hidden throughout this journal. "Be wary, Grace, for hope is sparse. This whole game is a mummer's farce." How right that was. But I'm getting ahead of myself. She was tired of waiting, so she took on the head-on approach.

She bought a sledgehammer. She brought it to the cabin. She swung it very hard until the lock on the door broke. And then she walked inside. (If this doesn't sound badass, I'm saying it wrong. It was quite impressive.)

She walked through the hallway and came to the living room. And there was Derek.

You know how sometimes in cliched horror movies, someone will go "That was easy. Too easy." Well, that's what Grace thought. This was too easy. Until she looked into Derek's eyes and she knew. The warning said that "hope is sparse," but it should have said that "hope is gone."

Because Derek? Derek was gone, too. His eyes were dull and lifeless. When he stood up, he moved like the Misfits, like a puppet on strings. And worst of all, she knew that he had probably been this way for a while. Since the beginning of the game, perhaps.

He attacked her, his body moving unnaturally swift, feet barely touching the floor. He held her down. He didn't say a word. What would he have said? He was just a doll, a puppet. He was the mummer's farce.

Grace cried out and struggled against him. Part of her wanted to give in, to give up, to let go and be a puppet with Derek. Another part (the part that pushed her to drive, that swung the sledgehammer, that made her so obstinate) made her struggle more, until she was able to reach inside her coat pocket and gripped the gun and pulled the trigger.

In the aftermath of the first gunshot (the sound deafening her), she pulled the trigger twice more. Derek was hit a total of three times, one in the stomach and twice in the chest. The first shot in the chest had killed him, but as his body was still moving (due to the Wooden Girl's strings), she shot him again. Then she slowly stood up, steadied herself against the wall, and shot him three more times.

Then she put the gun back in her coat pocket and walked away, away from the room, from the cabin, from Seven Devils. She got into her car and drove until she found another motel and she fell onto the bed and slept.

I want to thank all of you, the people who posted the answers. She could never have found Derek without you. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. Things happen. Sometimes the outcome is beneficial, sometimes it's not. As the Stranger said, sometimes we eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats us. If you have any questions, you can comment and I'll try to answer as truthfully as possible.

I don't know how long she's going to sleep. Perhaps days, perhaps weeks, perhaps months. I'll take care of her while she does. That's my job.

Thank you,
Kevin B, the Lonesome Artist