Welcome to Winterclear

Things have changed at work since I set my assistants on fire

It didn't take long for school personnel to begin visiting my office to ask if it was true that Carlyle and Fitzroy were "fired." At first, I was very nervous that my bold move might end in disaster since we all know it's not always good to walk into a new leadership position and just shake things up.

However, the response was overwhelmingly positive. According to the grapevine, the lizard people were a bit of a dying breed in the Winterclear hierarchy, and citizens had been disgruntled with them for quite some time. Particularly in the schools. People revealed to me that they felt like the princesses of fairy tales; awakening from evil curses and spells.

I also began to get a lot of responses to my surveys. Those responses were a little more disappointing, simply for the fact that they were all so... Ambiguous. Most people who spoke of their "favorite memories," spoke of mundane things in the very recent past. As though the typical thing in Winterclear is for people to have forgotten things like their home addresses and... What happened three days ago.

Also, my attempt to dig into the origins of others and how they wound up in Winterclear proved mostly fruitless. I couldn't believe how many answers to the "where did you come from" sorts of questions like: A small town in Appalachia. A metropolitan area on the coast. A mountain town in the west. Canned and vague answers to specific questions.

When asked for advice on living in Winterclear, the answers were equally nebulous.

"Face each day with a smile."

"Love your fellow citizens."

"We're all family in Winterclear."

"There's not a better place on earth."

Just message after message of meaningless banality. In a sense, I learned nothing, but in another way, I suppose inferences could be made. Nobody here remembers how they got here. Nobody here knows where they came from. Nobody really knows who is in charge.

And everyone seems fine with it all.

After I made some crucial changes in my workplace, I began to feel that maybe I'm fine with it all too. The weather here is always beautiful. I am provided with a lovely and comfortable home. The people are intelligent and kind. The coffee is outstanding. I'm the boss at my job, and it's looking like I'm going to just keep moving up. More and more each day, I began to feel that despite all the strange quirks of this odd town, I belonged here. I could be happy here.

Forever.

When the update occurred Tuesday afternoon, I walked out onto my front porch and looked into the light with peace in my heart.

It was after the update that things began to get sketchy, once again.

For one thing, as soon as I "snapped out of it," or rather, the wall of light had passed by and I came to... I saw Baz Greer standing across the street, angrily glaring at me.

Just as he had been the night I saw him at the foot of my bed, and all the horrible times he'd appeared to me in The Black, he was transparent and glitching. As though he was a video game character on a console with bad internet connection. I glimpsed him just long enough to nearly stop my heart, and then he was gone.

I began to see him more and more.

Open the pantry in my kitchen, there he was, for one brief second.

Round the corner in a school corridor, there was Baz Greer, for one brief second.

As he began appearing to me more and more, my nerves grew more frazzled, and my anxiety more... Ever present.

On Wednesday, I stopped at Hypathia's after school and brought her some coffee. She invited me into her home warmly and we sat together at her kitchen island.