Thanksgiving

Sorry for not posting. It's been a bit busy this month. We've had a bit of trouble -- I'm sure Ivory has been posting about the operation done on Sheryl to remove the Red Cap from her blood. I'm still not sure if it really worked or not, as I haven't seen much of Sheryl around lately.

We had Thanksgiving yesterday. It was the traditional Thanksgiving for the Raw Youth Hostel: pizza. If it's just us, we'll get two pizzas; since we had a number of other runners staying, we got a total of six pizzas. And one salad, for anyone who was vegan. Oh, and a shitload of beer.

The dinner was fine, nothing particularly notable happened. I have to say, though, that the hostel seems to be bouncing back from its bad reputation -- we've gotten a lot more runners in here this month than I expected. We're still having trouble, though: Ruby Tuesday still lurks outside and I have heard sightings of the Black Dog.

During Thanksgiving, however, I noticed one runner, a young woman in a hoodie, was being very careful about covering up her arms. I got a few glimpses of scars, indicating that she was Scarlet-marked. I didn't want a repeat of the last time the Scarlet-marked came here, so I decided to talk to her, but she wasn't here this morning. She had left. Which, I guess, is good. We don't want more trouble.

Walkout

We had some of the guests leave today. Not even paying their bills. I guess my secret has been spreading around. I guess they didn't want to stay under the same roof as one of Them.

One of them, however, spit on the floor. That's just unsanitary.

Like Herding Cats.

So yeah if I'm going to be part of this I might as well actually write some stuff. Well record keeping for a group of runners is, as one would probably expect, not easy and in some cases downright frustrating. For instance someone disappeared recently from their room. They were labeled as missing and it was assumed something had taken them or they had wandered through the wrong Door. An hour or two after they were removed from the records they show up again and reveal they had actually just gone out to a local club to make some money. So, then I had to alter the records to show they were in fact still here and then the next day the same person actually did walk through a Door but the record was left unchanged just in case they somehow showed up again down the line. So, yes the records are not exactly one hundred percent accurate.

However I must admit this is actually a good thing in multiple ways. For one it makes what is normally a ridiculously dull and boring job... Not quite exciting but not as dull as usual. Also if someone were to say take The Records it wouldn't be a big loss since the information they get would be mostly inaccurate without proper contextual understanding of the situations occurring within.

So the most recent record related problem. This fight that was mentioned earlier and the large influx of runners lately. Larger numbers means larger amounts of strange occurrences and record abnormalities and the record will remain up in the air regarding those involved in the fight until Sal comes to a decision regarding how he wants to deal with them.

There you go I've contributed.

Trouble

With a capital T, that rhymes with B and that stands for blood. Because, well, we had some blood spilled last night.

Some of the new runners that are still staying here got into a fight. Quite a few of them were those cutters Ivory mentioned. Lots of people ended up with bloody noses.

I'm not quite sure what started the fight however. I have to check with Ivory - she got in the middle of it when it started, she saw more than I did.

I kicked most of those runners out for the evening - one of our main rules is no fighting. But I'm not sure if I should permanently ban them - I don't know why they were fighting, for one thing. But still, it's making me uneasy.

Cutters?

I thought I would add a bit to Sal's last post.


We have indeed been getting a large influx of runners lately.  I'm not sure what they're running from--like I've said, I'm not one to pry.  This is somewhat...odd, though.


Many of this influx are runners with lacerations--some severe, some not so severe, most if not all of which appear to have been self-inflicted.


I guess it would make sense that runners would cut...perhaps they're trying to exert some control over their lives or bodies?  Perhaps they need some way to relieve the pain of being chased?  I don't really know, I'm more of a romantic than I am a psychologist.  It's really not my place to diagnose something like this.


Still, though, it is odd.  Why so many at once?  I've not seen this many before--sure, someone who practices self-harm comes through, every once in a while, but not any more than there should be, statistically.


I am probably reading too much into all of this.  But that won't mean I won't be careful regardless.  In this sort of work, a certain amount of paranoia is the healthiest trait one might possess, after all.

Types of Runners

I've been operating this place for a number of years now and I've seen people come and go. I have a pretty stable group of employees now, but I tend to categorize people. It's a bad habit, I know, but I can't help it. So here are some types of runners I've seen (feel free to ignore):

• The hounded: runners from the Dog. Yes, this is a bad pun, but I don't care. These runners tend to be tight-lipped and quiet, flinching away at the sight of any canine (no matter the size). Occasionally, I would come across one that would simply confess all of their sins to me upon first meeting - apparently, in the belief that if everyone knew their secrets, they could stop running. It never worked, unfortunately.
• The hypochondriacs: runners from the Doctor. Most of the ones I saw were obsessively clean, wiping everything down multiple times. And god help them if they caught a cold - although I can't blame them for that, since I've seen what the Doctor can do with the common cold and it isn't pleasant.
• The herds: groups of runners, generally running from the Boy. Nobody wants to be alone when running from that cold little kid. They tend to go everywhere with someone else - which isn't a bad idea, until you just want to be alone for once. I haven't encountered many herds, they don't generally last that long.
• The hear-no-evils: runners from the Choir. Haven't met many, but the few I have seen tried to drown out all sound with some noise-cancelling headphones. Not sure if they worked, but they just wrote everything down and ignored whatever it was they were hearing.
• The lone wolves: okay, this doesn't start with the letter H. I do have another name for them, but I don't like using it, because it only encourages them: the heroes. What are they running from? They aren't. They are chasing. They are searching. They want to fight, usually for revenge of some sort. And they always travel alone. I let them stay, because they don't cause trouble when they're here, but they always leave quickly.

There's another reason I don't like lone wolves. When a normal runner decides to stop running - when he decides that it's enough, to just stay put, he may put up a fight. He may die or even get enough energy to keep going or perhaps the thing chasing them will ease up just enough to let them live for another day. But that's for a normal runner.

For a lone wolf, it's not like that. They don't fight, they war. And the things after them won't ease up or back down. And if they break? If they become a servant to the thing they hate? They become so much worse than a normal servant. So much worse.

At least, from what I've seen and heard. From the stories runners have told me. Don't know how much is accurate, but this isn't Wikipedia, so I don't really care.

In the past few days, we've been seeing a bit more of an influx from runners. But they aren't any type of runners I've seen before. In any case, though, business is business. I shouldn't complain.