Final Diary Entry
21st of December
Hello Journal,
I am afraid this will be the last time I write in you, Journal. I am writing this at the entrance to Brennenburg Castle. This entry will be short, as I am eager to enter.
I will miss you, Journal. For a year, you have been the only constant factor in my life. This is your last page, so I have no choice but to abandon you.
I remember when I first stole you-you were sitting on a shelf with others of your kind, though the price was far too high. So I hid you in my coat and walked past the lazy staff. I wrote my first entry then-I talked about my feelings about my parents, about how I felt about running away.
Most of my entries were more of the same-I spoke about homesickness and how the women hid themselves away, what I'd acquired-or, in reality, stolen-and about how scenery changed. As it did, so did I.
You know my secrets, Journal. You know my deepest thoughts. Do not forget them.
I love you,
Vivian Darden
Vivian smiled, her heart wracked with bitter-sweetness deeper than she had ever felt. Her hands worked to close the cover and wrap it in a dull grey cloth, sliding it into the place of a conveniently missing brick.
Her skirts rustled as she spurred into movement again, going through the heavy oak doors and closing them behind her. The decor was lavish, and as far as she could tell, it was consistently so. An intricate carpet, red as blood with golden and silver swirls on the hem, greeted her warmly. It was thick enough to cushion her footfalls. On the walls hung paintings, anonymous as they were fantastic. Fancy candle-holders dotted the walls at regular intervals, never failing to cast their pools of light. She wondered idly who had lit them, but soon let the enchanting nature of Brennenburg Castle quiet her mind. She thought she heard a click as she walked away from the door, but dismissed it. Vivian felt out of place as she went through the rooms, hardly noticing how the spaces between the candles got longer, slightly longer, each time, and how the carpet wore thin, and looked damp in some places, until the young woman found her shoe wet, and that she had a slight headache.
Staring down into a dark, flooded corridor, she felt what had to be an irrational pang of fear. There was no more carpet-it looked as if it had been bitten off. Vivian felt slightly dizzy, lightheaded. All of a sudden, the enchantment upon Brennenburg Castle did not seem so whimsical. More cold and methodical.
She found a comparably dry part of ground and sat down, finding herself completely and utterly lost. The atmosphere was dank and gloomy, yet anticipating-anticipating what, precisely? The blood pounding in her head seemed to rush slightly as she concentrated on her thoughts, trying to keep them simple so she wouldn't confuse herself, for at the moment, she felt rather simple.
"I am lost, my shoe is wet, I have a headache, I am scared and I am cold." She dare not lie to herself. "Well, three of those may take care of themselves, but I am still lost and scared. If I can find my way out of this place, I figure the other two will, by nature, fix themselves."
Vivian yawned and stood, leaning on the wall for support. Her fear gave her no energy. In fact, she felt rather tired. The girl slowly stumbled her way along, squinting to make out the candles ahead. She shouldn't have had to squint-why was she so tired? Why everything? Why life?
Her heartbeat became erratic and it was all she could do to prop herself up, bleary-eyed, against the cold stone wall. Coldness made her sleepy, warmth made her tired, movement made her exhausted. She sat down under a candle, bathing in its light.
Slightly, ever so slightly, her headache eased and energy seeped back into her limbs. She could have been huddled under there for an hour or just a few seconds, she didn't know. What Vivian did know was that she needed to be somewhere.
What was she thinking before? Yes, she needed to get out of this dreary castle. She was so sleepy.
The girl stood and made her way, following the candles' path. Her head cleared and she was certainly more methodical.
The candles eventually ended at a door. She saw the word 'Library' written in small letters underneath what had to be some other language. She had a sudden urge to sleep, and continued on, for a library was not a bedroom. She would find her way out when she woke.
A bedroom was a bedroom, though.
This bedroom seemed to be a haven-a writing desk housing a quill and few books, a candle on the bedside table, a closet standing proudly next to drawers and there was a charming wooden chair with green cushions beside the door. The bed was large, almost too high for her to climb into, but the covers looked soft, untouched all these years. Everything was in surprisingly good condition, considering that this was a ruin.
Vivian meandered about the room for a while, taking in its splendor, before checking the small drawers. There were nightclothes for a woman and a man in there, both far too large. But they looked soft and light, so she pulled on a gown, and as it seemed so cold everywhere, pants underneath. It gave her an odd thrill-women wearing pants was unheard of.
The girl pulled herself up onto the bed and lay down, and she was asleep within seconds.
Vivian awoke with a mind thick with the warm soup of sleep, but the warmth deserted and with crystal clarity she remembered where she was, what had happened and what she had to do.
She was in Brennenburg Castle.
She got lost, because she was a stupid girl.
She had to get out, and prove that she was not a stupid girl.
She also knew that she was wearing somebody else's nightclothes, but that was irrelevant.
Within an hour, approximately, she was wearing another change of somebody else's nightclothes, because her original attire was so heavy compared. Her mind was cleared, she was well-rested, but she still felt so horribly cold. She found a kitchen with stale food in it. She managed to force down some bread, trying to ignore the maggots.
Vivian left the bedroom behind, and promised herself she would mourn the bed after this whole mess.
Corridors, corridors, corridors-was this whole castle just full of corridors? At least most of them had light, but even so, she began to grow claustrophobic. She noted that some corridors-usually the dark ones-had statues of knights, standing, guarding some secret. She didn't trust the places these knights were in.
It was in a generic, candleless corridor that her suspiscions proved right. Vivian heard a groan that didn't sound exactly human, and then the dead air of the corridor made her vision blur. Her headache was back in full force, and she couldn't help a slouch.
Then she saw it. It had yellow, rotting flesh, and seemed to lack a bottom jaw. It sported rows of sharp, hole-riddled teeth, and a long, disfigured tongue, thick and purple. It was bipedal, but it shuffled its way forward on puffy feet with claws for toes, and its swollen hands lacked fingers. In their place were bloodstained things that were almost knife-blades. She saw the monster had a smooth, round stomach, and that one of its eyes-human-was hanging by the membrane.
Vivian's eyelids drooped, eyelashes obscuring her vision further, as the moaning thing came towards her, saliva rolling down onto the floor. She leaned up against a statue of a knight, and with a sudden burst of both nostalgia and inspiration, wrenched the statue's sword from its hand.
She remembered swordfighting with her oldest brother-Stephen-as a child, hitting each other with sticks, not bothering to soften the blows. His smile as he pinned her down with a branch to her throat, her laughter when she toppled him and poked him in the side, just to make sure he'd stay dead. Or, at least, stay playing dead.
Then a clawed hand came flying towards her, cutting into her flesh, and she was shocked back into the current situation. The blade on the sword was sharp, but it didn't matter, because she would most likely end up bludgeoning it to death anyway.
Vivian frowned determinedly and the sword cut into the rotting flesh of the monster's side. It returned the gesture by stumbling towards her, arms outstretched. They wrapped around her and the demonspawn tried to find something to devour, the claws scarring her back. She batted it with the sword, and certainly cut flesh, but even when the head came rolling off and organs coated her with blood and bile, the arms would not come out. Every movement she made drove the claws deeper, and at last she slashed off an arm, watching it fall to the ground, feeling it retracting out of her flesh, leaving pain echoing vividly in its wake. The other arm followed, and silent tears rolled down her cheeks as agony slammed through her. She tried to sit, but it caused her blinding pain. She tried laying on her stomach, and it was the only thing that would work. She laid next to the decapitated corpse of whatever that was.
Vivian tried to comprehend what she had done-what it had done to her in return. What sort of place was this? It was meant to be the ruins of a castle, but so far she hadn't even seen any ruins!
Perhaps the most important question she ever asked herself was whether or not she would make it out alive.
"Felix, come to bed-you've been editing for hours. It's one in the morning." Cooed a sleepy Marzia Bisognin.
"Of course I have been-it's a vlog, Marzia. You know they take longer." Smiled a weary Felix Kjellburg, fighting a yawn.
"Yes, I know, but that does not mean I have to like it." The beautiful woman seemed slightly offended, as if he were patronizing her. "Five more minutes and you have to sleep on the couch." She mumbled, closing her eyes and throwing her legs over Felix's side of the bed. She knew she'd end up sleeping sideways and alone.
At five in the morning, Felix groaned, felt his fingers twitch in anticipation of throwing his laptop across the room and tried to think of something that would reinvigorate him.
A scary game, he thought. I always get really awake when I play a scary game. His mind browsed his options, and after a few minutes, sitting there in silence, he chose. It'll make the bros happy. He didn't spare a thought for Marzia sleeping in the bedroom.
"H-hey, how's it goin' bros? My name's PewDiePie! Welcome to my first Amnesia playthrough in a while, I'll be playing a random custom story and you'd better like it, bitch!" He glowered at the facecam for a few seconds before smiling warmly and turning his eyes to his screen.
"Let's go this one, it sounds pretty epic. It's called 'All a Ruse', by the way." Felix grinned, horribly mispronouncing the word 'ruse', before he read the description. "Okay, so it says 'In this Custom Story, you will encounter strange things. You will watch a girl become a monster.' So the player's a she? Can she bitch slap?" He laughed, realizing what a shallow joke that was, but not particularly caring.
Felix was thrown into a world much unlike what he was used to. Everything seemed more detailed-the paintings weren't the same everywhere, the windows were barred, but there was scenery, the candles flickered and everything seemed more fluid. He saw a sign saying 'Survival Kit'.
"I needed a sign to tell me that. Totally." Opening the survival kit, there was bread, a small dagger, a pair of clothes-which happened to unfold-a lantern, a container of oil and five tinderboxes.
"All right then, I guess we can go now. Wait, can we dress whoever in the name of fuck this is?" Felix held the clothes and shook them around a bit, before he saw his player lift a striped shirt over his head and hopping to put on some pants. A voice eerily similar to his own murmured a thank you, and he raised an eyebrow, shocked. "Who the hell are we playing? I don't care, let's roll."
"Should I take the dagger?" His player spoke to himself. Brilliant.
"Yeah, I guess you should take the dagger." Felix shrugged. "Now can we roll?"
"I suppose we should leave now."
"Exactly. I'm a fucking genius."
He saw a hand-apparently he had hands now-push open a door to reveal a corridor.
"I don't wanna!" Felix wailed.
"Shut up, Felix!" Marzia yelled from the bedroom.
"In a second, honey!" He called back. There was no response.
Grumbling horrible things about barrels, he walked his character slowly down the corridor, glancing to his side and behind him, paranoid. The sound for a pounding headache came on, and it was then that the Swedish man realized he didn't have a lantern-and, looking back, the candles had stopped a while ago.
"Oh fuck."
He heard a splash when he turned around, and saw that he was facing water. Backing up carelessly, Felix squealed, face contorted in terror, as he heard the low moan of the Bro. His mind raced for a Plan B while he whimpered.
There was no other way-he sure as hell wasn't going to run towards a Bro.
Felix ran into the water, "Okay, let's go, let's go, don't stop moving." He let out a high squeak as something splashed ahead of him. It came towards him rapidly, and his character went under.
The words 'FREE YOURSELF' came onto the screen, then faded off again. A complex sequence of arrows came up all over the place, and as the man pressed them with startling precision-all the while screaming quietly-his character wrestled the water monster off him, revealing something that had to be half teeth. It glistened as his character threw it backwards, out of the water, hurlting into a Bro-which, apparently, could not swim-and rapidly moved towards where the water thinned out.
"What the fuck was that? I can fight the monsters now?"
Hours later, Felix snored with his face mashed onto the keyboard of his laptop, which had run out of battery seconds after uploading the playthrough. Emotions etched their way over his unconscious face-it was not an empty sleep. In fact, the man was dreaming something rather confusing.
It registered at once that he had no computer screen to protect him. He was the player. He was in a corridor. It was dark, and there was water in front of him. There was a small box, with a sign above it reading 'Survival Kit', with a rotten pig lying over it. Felix shoved the pig off and opened the box. In there was a rock and a golden statue of a man kneeling with a sword. Suddenly, he was sitting on a chair, with the box in his hands. There was a skull under his foot. He felt comforted by these objects.
"Shut up, Felix! Get out of my life, Felix!" A petite woman screamed at him as she stumbled down the corridor. She had a swollen stomach and her skin was sickly. Her nails were so long, so grey.
Suddenly, her face morphed. She let out a bloodcurdling scream as her jaw was stretched, then her clawed hand ripped it out-with it came disgusting insects, riding a wave of blood. She held the white bone in her hands one moment, then Felix was trying to fit it into his mouth. Why was he trying to fit somebody else's jaw into his mouth? That's disgusting.
Her figure swelled and a Bro lunged towards him. But the Bro still had Marzia's eyes-Marzia's beautiful, deep eyes. It was a mockery of her, though. These eyes were cruel and twisted. Hers were innocent, smiling.
Felix sure as hell wasn't going that way.
He threw the jaw at the Bro and grabbed the golden statue, hugging it to his chest and swimming weakly. The water was cold, and things squirmed around his feet, nipping his ankles. It seemed like hours before the water thinned out-he could barely drag himself out of the water. The Bro had morphed again-now it was Maya as a puppy, his darling Puppa. She still missed her left eye, and was wailing pitifully. He felt a pull to go take her with him, and as something snakelike slithered out of the water to eat her, he threw himself into the water. Everything looked distorted-the ceiling was too high and the water was blood, thick and warm. Marzia's head bobbed on the surface.
Felix sobbed and threw his head into the blood-water. He wanted to die. He was going to die-he was about to kill himself. He clung to that stupid golden statue as he sunk to the bottom, and he knew no more.
When Felix came to, he was on a bed, soft as what he presumed a cloud was. His head throbbed and his lungs ached, and he could have sworn he tasted something coppery in his mouth.
He tried to sit up, though his body protested loudly, he propped himself up against the headboard. Observing his surroundings, he saw nothing out of the ordinary-cobblestone walls, candles, a desk, a closet and drawers, a wooden door. There was a fixture in the room, however, that he did not notice. She had creamy skin, and a silky grey sheet of hair hid her expression. She was short and had the makings of a woman. She sat in a wooden chair with a green cushion backing and seat.
Without turning around, she muttered something in a syrupy, silvery voice. "I see you're awake. How do you feel?"
Felix was, understandably, startled, but he began to reply, before he woke up by falling asleep.
"Hey Pewds, wake up." Cooed his girlfriend.
Felix murmured an insult in Swedish, his mind chasing away the fogs of his dream.
"C'mon, I just want to say sorry."
"I'm tired. Go away." His voice croaked and his accent was heavy, but the words was understandable.
Lips came down on his, tentatively, probing, seeking forgiveness. Small bronze hands felt their way over his clothed body as she straddled him. He didn't spare a moment before leaning into the kiss, holding Marzia to him.
"Actually, don't."
Things quickly escalated, but I won't go into detail.