KNOCK ON WOOD

PREFACE

W A R N I N G !

Before you proceed, please note that the content presented in this story is highly mature. If you are triggered by depictions or mentions of gore, torture, child abuse, animal abuse, murder, rape, sodomy, attempted molestation, or any other explicit content, please click off now. Although much of the original writing has been censored or omitted due to Wattpad's community guidelines, it is important to me that I at least mention these topics to raise awareness about the reality of human trafficking, cover-up murders, agricultural business scandals, serial killings and rape within rural areas, and more.

As I've stated in the preface for Mokita, this is intended to shed light on the issue of human trafficking within the agricultural industry. Compared to urban cities, victims of such a crime are more likely to be blackmailed into silence or killed (with the murder covered up) in rural areas. The cases typically almost always go unsolved, especially if the crimes have been linked to powerful businesses or places where it is likely to hide the abuse and scandals. Extortion is an even bigger issue for immigrants and migrants, who are often overlooked due to their demographic or citizenship status.

So, yes, this falls under my genre of exposé horror, and yes, it covers some serious shit.

As always, this is my response to criticism (not critiques): If you disapprove of this, you are only contributing to the negativity that surrounds these things. You are allowing people to be silenced, and you are allowing truth to be drowned in the midst of lies. If you don't like the way this came out, you can write your own story. But do not disrespect my work as I have put in a lot of time and effort into getting this as both accurate and intriguing as possible for readers.

If you'd like to get an idea of how part of this will turn out, I would advise you to watch the following films since they served as major inspirations: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Green Room, The Hills Have Eyes (a relatively new inspiration for the final draft version!), and Joy Ride. Furthermore, some cases you might be interested in reading that were fairly inspirational were Junko Faruta, Ed Gein, the Jonestown Massacre, H.H. Holmes, Gary Ridgway, and Charles Manson.

There were also some local murders that happened in my county that inspired this, but out of respect for the victims' and my personal privacy, I will not be sharing where they took place. However, the bottom line is, they occurred regardless, and unfortunately the cases remain unsolved to this day.

Lastly, because I know it will come up as a big personal question later on, I'll provide an answer right now as I usually do: this is a standalone ROUGH CUT VERSION of a novel in a trilogy entitled "Video Diaries". The other two books (in their rough cut version as well) are Descent47 and You're Not Really There, the latter of which coincidentally takes place in the same universe but not the same timeline. Furthermore, because this takes place in a future setting, you won't see references to this or Mokita in YNRT.

Oh, and if you can pick up on any small details or references to real people, places or events, feel free to point them out. I drop some personal, publicly obscure and popular lore from instance to instance. In this particular one, there's plenty.

This particular story was actually based on a true event that I experienced firsthand, though not to the horrifying extent that Charlie and Reese did. From there, I conducted more and more research on the topics mentioned far above, and now this is here, about five to almost six years later. Of all my work, this is by far my biggest passion project, followed by Descent47. While it isn't necessarily my biggest masterpiece, it is certainly has a special place in my heart that hasn't been mimicked by another story since its inception.

With that being said, I hope you come to enjoy it. Be safe out there, take care of yourself, and stay tuned for the first chapter.

- J.