... an unsettling calm

... an unsettling calm descended across the floor this afternoon, as the usurpers disappeared one by one. There is a faint hope around the office that they may never return. I'm afraid that I don't subscribe to this point of view.

Oh how I wish I did.

... but there was something in their demeanor when they left; a smile that flickered across their eyes, if not their lips, that tells me that they are not done with us yet.

Other parasites troubled us today, though. A couple of soul-destroying monsters who clearly took great pleasure in draining any hope or optimism from those unfortunate enough to fall under their gaze. I hope that we have no further contact with their kind in this awful process, although they are doubtless just a part of this accursed blight.

Also, we're starting to receive messages from 'down there', which appear to comprise of little or no logic, but rather are simply outpourings of bile & stupidity. The further into this process we wade, the more of these irritations we seem to have to endure. It's as if we're slowly getting closer and closer to a vast seething mass of bitterness and inadequacy.

I beseech all that is good and holy in this world that we're spared ever having to suffer the nauseating presence of this behemoth.

C will not see Monday morning, but there are no more departures imminent thankfully.

V : 1 / F : 2

... they seem uneasy

... they seem uneasy, these interlopers amongst us. As if there is something in their future that frightens them, something that they must do that they are not quite prepared for.

I feel pity for these poor creatures, they seem to be as caught up in this just as we are - with little or no control over their ultimate destiny.

I feel pity because this disease is sure to be done with us before it is with them; they are in someway linked to this insanity - whereas we are simply caught up in the flow of effluence.

Vanquished : 1
Fallen : 2

... a small victory

... a small victory seems to have taken place. One of the non-people appears to have gone away. Maybe this is a taste of things to come.

Maybe these things don't have the stamina that we'd first thought.

Maybe there is still hope for us ?

Vanquished : 1
Fallen : 2

... the most alarming thing

... the most alarming thing must be that they don't seem to have any clear purpose; any idea of what they're actually doing here. It is my feeling that beyond causing my colleagues and I upset and unease these pariahs will achieve nothing in the time they spend here.

Maybe that's enough for them; maybe that's what they're actually here for.

I can only assume that this is just one of the unnecessarily cruel games that the Sllennoc plague was chosen to play with us.

A game that leaves all but the strongest of us feeling exhausted and violated.

... and we're losing another one.

I bade farewell to D for the last time today; and now someone else in her Dept. is showing clear signs of the malaise - she maybe has two days.

Fallen : 2

... something is in here with us

... something is in here with us! We're trying to keep calm about this, doing our best to keep a handle on things, but there's something in here with us. They seem to hover at your desk, like apparitions, and disrupt any useful endeavours that you're undertaking.

They're obviously just some other effect of this foul road down which we're travelling, maybe some vampiric spirits drawn by our slowly ebbing lifeforce, hoping to benefit from the death throws of this once proud office; to feed on the carrion whilst it's thrashing body exhausts itself in a futile attempt to cling to life.

However, I can't shake the uneasy feeling that, like so many of their kind - those from 'down there' - their initially benign appearance belies a much more sinister purpose.

I believe that they are here to steal our very essence. I believe that they are here to replace us, in some hideous and unnatural mimicry of our daily lives.

... and there are two at my desk as I type.

Wait.

One of them is about to speak...

Fallen : 1

... they're here

... they're here

... we're losing someone already

... we're losing someone already. I've been over to see her myself, and she's definitely on her way out: at best I'd give her a couple of days.

The signs are so clearly there; the inability to focus clearly on what she's doing, the short-term attitude in everything she does - her sighs of "it doesn't matter, I won't be here next week" bring a swallow of grief to my throat that cannot ever be expressed; and then the strange play of emotions - some form of pathetic glee is the only way that I can describe it - when she stares off, misty-eyed, into the distance. Trying to focus on the uncharted journey ahead.

I fear for the morale of the office. For those with no such early respite from our pains. Especially when one so young is taken. What hope for the older ones amongst us ?

The office was cold this morning, a prophetic chill resting atop the shelving units causing the faintest brush of dew to rest on the edges of the journal files. It's as if the office itself is preparing for something. Something unnatural.

And that something will be here tomorrow...

Fallen : 1