The Bottom Floor and the Truth

I return from the bottom floor with heavy heart and shaking hands. I do not want to believe what I have seen, and yet I must. I know now of what happened on this goddamned ship, and I know what I must do.

I got the second to last floor without problems. The bodies were still there, although I noticed more smoke rising from the cracks in the ground. This time, it was harder to breath in, however. I made my way to the stairs, kicking the bodies out of the way. I was filled with purpose to kill the thing that made my life hell here. I opened the staircase and almost paused. Almost. The floor was coated in a layer of congealed blood at the top, although further down the blood was much lesser. I stepped over the blood, walking down past the rotting wood and mildew. At the bottom of the stairs was a large metal door. Unsure of what I would find, but uncaring at the same time, I pushed it open and walked into the room.

The room was large, and empty. Smoke filled every corner, and rushed towards my lungs, as if awaiting an escape. It filled me, and for the first time, I began to choke. It wasn't long before I fell to the ground and lost consciousness. And that is when I had a dream. The memories of everything that has happened returned to me.

My name is James Harris. I was born in the US to Italian parents. I joined the navy when I turned 18 to show my allegiance to the country. I'm 20 now. I was assigned to a ship. We were merely to go around the ocean collecting data. It was a scientific mission, nothing more. However, tensions were high. Cabin fever set in fast, and we all wanted a target of some kind. We had been expecting a military mission, not a scientific one, after all.

One night, the smoke poured in through my window. I breathed it in and it filled me. It opened all my tensions, all my desires to take them out on someone. It gave me a want, no, a need, to release this. To kill.

Everybody went down quite easily, really. One quick blow to the head and down everyone went. Nobody ever made a noise. Some tried, but the smoke coming out of my lungs muffled them.

I dragged them down. I put them on the staircase. Then I went downstairs. To the bottom floor. And the smoke was released from my lungs. I realized what I had done and ran upstairs. I ran to my room and locked the door. I couldn't face myself. I waited for 30 days, plagued with visions of a large warship filled with the people I had killed. Waiting for me. After 30 days, the smoke filled the room and erased my head. I can only fathom that was to torture me more.

I am not on the warship from my dreams. This is the same ship I started on. But my dreams were right. It has become a warship by my actions.

The storage floor never rearranged. That was my mind trying to stop me from going to the bottom floor. Deep down, I knew what I would find. But I went anyways.

I awoke from the floor and went upstairs to my room. I waited, hoping it was all some nightmare, but I knew it wasn't. I also know what I must do.

I fired one bullet when I opened the door, before the smoke overtook me. I still have one left.

There can be no smoke without fire after all, and I think the sparks from my gun will serve me nicely.

I already killed many who were undeserving of it.

Now I kill who I find to be most deserving of all.

The Upper Rooms

I explored the upper rooms today. They're mostly nothing much, just rooms and rooms. I took a while looking around each one for anything that can help me. Nothing offered immediate aid, but I've got a few ideas.

I'm going to figure out some kind of thing to protect myself with. I'm going to get some kind of weapon to fight with. And I will make this creature pay.

I noticed there was a gas mask in with the military uniform in my luggage. If this thing is really associated with smoke, that should help. Next is finding something to fight it with. I've got a flamethrower, but I doubt that'll be much help. There's a gun that was locked up in the top floor captain's room. I have that now. It should help.

I honestly don't expect to survive this. But I have to try.

Here I go.

WHAT IS HAPPENING

I don't know what to think. I'm still dripping with water from the ocean, but it's barely a second after I published the last post.

I looked around the ship, and I secured a life-jacket. I made sure I had some water and food taped to my body under my clothing, and I climbed to the highest deck, to overlook the ocean. This was the first time I've been there since I first explored this place. I took a deep breath, and I jumped.

The cold sting of the water overtook me fast. I felt a pulse of pain in my chest, and my limbs turned numb quickly. I didn't care. I swam back to the surface and began off into the distance, watching that God-forsaken ship disappear into the distance. After what felt like 20 minutes of swimming, it was a small speck on the horizon.

However, I was also losing energy fast. I anticipated I might not be able to make it, but I had come to terms with the fact that this may prove to be a fatal mission. Anything's better than staying in that place. I felt my limbs grow heavy; they had already turned an interesting shade from the cold chill of the water. I slowly swam to a stop, and floated in place, waiting for the waters to envelop me.

Instead, I felt a sharp pain filling my foot and drifting up my ankle. The water was turning a blackish color, not of blood, but of ash. The pain drifted up as the lower areas just... lost feeling totally. The sensation lifted to my torso, out of the water, and I saw that I was slowly dissipating into smoke. The sensation sped up and reached my head, and I blacked out.

I just woke up, back on the ship, not a second later from when I published my last post.

It seems that there's no fucking way off of this place. I can't just sit here and do nothing. I need a strategy, to torment whatever is doing this to me worse than I have been tormented.

I cannot let this bastard demon or whateverthefuckitis get away with this.

Leaving

I'm going to take the advice you all gave me. I'm trying to get out of here. I'm going off of the ship, and I'm swimming away. I don't know what'll happen. Wish me luck.

Sigh

I don't know. I don't know how long I can keep doing this. It's just too insane. I could handle being trapped on a ship, but having some other entity on it is too much.

I have a headache now.

The Engine Room

So, based off the comments from my last comments, the ship does indeed have some kind of fucking monster on it. Great. Just fucking great. So I guess exploring the bottom floor is a no-go then. Glorious.

Since I'm avoiding the bottom floor now, I decided to explore the floor above me; the engine room. Comments also told me to look for a way off the ship. Look, don't you think I already did that when I first got here? It's kinda obvious, I'm not so stupid I'd just la-dee-da down the halls without trying to get away first.

That was a little bit harsh. Sorry. I get you're just trying to help, it's just that- GAH.

Anyways, the engine room. Seemed less smoky than the rooms down below. Probably a good thing, I guess. Nothing worth doing in there, though, Just engines. Nothing more.

I'll be updating more tomorrow at the usual time.

Translation

This Voidskipper dude in the comments ran the note through a translator online. I would have tried that myself if I could get to any other sites, but it seems this is it. Thank you, whoever you even are.

Day 27

It's not safe at home anymore. I do not know if this is a ghost of someone who has killed or a demon or something else. I'm not interested. And ' (Probably It's here) dangerous, and it's coming after me. I thought I would be safe when the war ended, but this is all much worse. Would go back if it meant being away from this monstrosity.

I had dreams of a ship. All my victims are on it as passengers. Maybe this is really connected to them then. I do not know. The halls are full of smoke that announces the creature. All I hear is a burning anger and hatred for everything and everyone that made this happen. This war. My innocence robbed. Then I wake up and it's all over.

The room are in is beginning to fill with smoke. (Probably: The Room I am In)

And ' here. (Probably: It's here.)

God saved me. (Probably supposed to be God Save Me)

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. If I wrote this... I guess I was in some kind of war? And I'd had nightmares about this ship beforehand? Or maybe I didn't write this, and I'm one of the victims the writer mentions as passengers? More likely is that I wrote it, though. The "passengers" are probably all the fucking bodies I saw downstairs. And my luggage DID have a military uniform.

But I haven't even touched the main question yet. What the fuck is this "creature"/"demon" thing that keeps getting mentioned? The note speaks of a creature or spirit of some kind that appears with smoke. Well, I've got the smoke. Does this mean that some monstrosity is on this ship? Is that where the smoke was coming from on the bottom floor?

My final question, though: In the comments for the last post, some Dante fellow or so replied to the Voidskipper person's translation. He strongly implied that Voidy knows something about what this being is. If so... can you please tell me what you know? I'm stumbling around in the dark like a blind child in a room full of knives. Any help seeing what is going on will be appreciated greaty.

Thank you for translating.

Still waiting and debating

I'm still waiting for a translation. Look, I'm sorry I insulted you. This can get a little stressful, y'know? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be insulting. If you could still try to translate the thing for me, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm trying to decide if I want to go investigate more of the ship now or if I want to wait for the translation... I dunno.

The Italian from the note

Please forgive me for any transcribing errors.

Here is the Italian from the note in the lockbox.


Giorno 27

Non è al sicuro a casa più. Non so se questo è un fantasma di qualcuno che abbia ucciso o un demone o qualcosa d'altro. Non mi interessa. E 'pericoloso, e sta arrivando dopo di me. Ho pensato di essere al sicuro quando la guerra finì, ma questo è tutto molto peggio. Ci tornerei se significava essere lontani da questa mostruosità.

Ho avuto sogni di una nave. Tutte le mie vittime sono su di esso come passeggeri. Forse questo è davvero collegata ad essi poi. Non lo so. Le sale sono piene di fumo che annuncia la creatura. Tutto quello che sento è una rabbia che brucia e l'odio per tutto e tutti che ha reso questo accada. Questa guerra. La mia innocenza derubato. Poi mi sveglio ed è tutto finito.

La camera sono in sta cominciando a riempirsi di fumo.

E 'qui.

Dio mi ha salvato.

If anyone can translate this (like the two weirdos who showed up in the comments section), please do so and submit it into the comments.

What is going on?

I saw two comments on yesterday's post. One from someone calling themselves "The Voidskipper", saying that they might have a friend who can translate for me. Another from a Malkator saying they can help. I do appreciate this, and will be transcribing the document online later.

Now for my main question in this post, though. This is to the comments people. Do you people know what is going on? Voidskipper here mentioned reading about "Others who are involved". Is this part of something else? Can someone give me more context on what I'm apparently involved in???

Thanks for letting me know someone's out there.

Dear Lord

I opened the box. All that's in it is a piece of paper. A document. Granted, this looks like it could be useful, given the voluminous amounts of writing on it. Unfortunately, it is of no use to me personally. It is all written in Italian. Fucking hell....

If anyone is reading this, if anyone can contact the outside world, please comment. Tell me I'm not alone. If so, I'll upload the text and see if you can find someone to translate it. If not, fuck it, it's a lost cause.

My head hurts.

Storage

I apologize for the lack of updates recently. I had a bit of a shock, and I needed some time to rest before I would be able to talk to anybody about this, even if said anybody was someone I would never see.

I went down into the next storage hold to see if there was anything useful there at all.

When I entered, I first noticed that this is likely close to where the smoke scent has been coming from. The entire hold was full of smoke, and it was hard to see more than two feet in front of me. Due to this, navigating the hold proved to be an annoyance. It seemed worse than the rearranging one earlier, but I suppose that it may have been doing the same. Strangely enough, the smoke was not hard to breathe in, and it felt like clear air, aside from the scent.

I spent a few hours looking around the hold for anything useful, squinting and trying to see ahead of me, which was no easy task. Eventually, after fumbling around for many hours, I found a small scrap of paper with numbers written on it, lying on the floor. Figuring this must be the combination to the lock-box, I picked it up and turned to head back to the room.

I was about halfway to the room when I realized the smoke had died down. Curious about this, I stupidly decided to investigate instead of heading back upstairs. I noticed small tendrils of smoke were leading down a passage I had previously not explored, and so I followed them.

Bodies. Dead, charred, bodies. All over the passage. Some still alight slightly. Piled up all over each other. Forced into any variety of sick poses. Leading to a staircase downstairs to the next floor. I had the intelligence to not go down that staircase, and instead turn and run back into my room, locking the door and curling up against the wall.

I've had time to think about this. I know why nobody else is on the ship now. I'm scared. I'm scared whoever did this is still here. I'm scared this is related to my memory problems.

I'm scared whoever did this is coming for me at some point.

But most of all, I'm scared it might have been me before I lost my memories.

I haven't opened the lock-box yet. I don't know if I want to.

But the worst part is one image that remains in my mind.

The smoke was not coming from the fires that remained there. It arose from cracks in the floor past them.

I dread whatever is down there.

Update

Not much has happened... I'm going to try going back downstairs again tomorrow, maybe to the next deck down. Hopefully things don't rearrange again.

Twists and Turns

Well, the last few days have certainly been interesting.

I went back to the cargo hold on Friday night, hoping to find something else useful, like the combination for the lockbox. When I got to the middle of the room, I noticed with some surprise that the markings that had been there were gone. I turned around with the intention to head back, but after walking for around 10 minutes, I walked right into the center of the room again: This time WITH the markings.

I wandered around there for the last two days, occasionally sleeping. I just now, about five minutes ago, stumbled upon the staircase and made my way back up to my room.

I should probably be more concerned about this, but when you're lost on a ship in the middle of nowhere with no memories it's kinda hard to get concerned about stuff.

Ah well. I'm going to get some food now, I'm starving.

What I did today...

I spent hours today trying to open the smaller lockbox. No luck. This thing is TOUGH. I'm going to keep an eye out for some hint on how to open it, like the combination, when I look around the ship some more tomorrow. Probably going farther down. We'll see.

Smoke smell has not gone away at all. I'm still not sure how I haven't suffocated yet from this, but I'm not going to complain.

The Suitcase

I finally broke the suitcase open. I found a knife in the kitchen that did the job remarkably well. Now for the contents...

1. A smaller lockbox. That I cannot break into. Not sure how I feel about that, but I'm gonna keep trying to get into it.

2. An army uniform of some kind. I can't really figure out what country or era it's from, though.

3. Another piece of paper with the word REMEMBER scrawled onto it. Sigh...

4. A leather journal. All of the pages are blank.

So the suitcase seems to have been a dead end. I'm going to keep trying to get into the box, and I'll keep looking around the ship to see what else I can find.

Can anyone even see this? Are people actually reading what I have to say, or is this just getting nowhere?

Signs of Life (?)

After my last update, I slept for a while longer, and then went downstairs this morning to the cargo hold to look around and see what I could find.

First off, there are burn marks EVERYWHERE. No wonder the place smells like smoke, there must have been some kind of fire here. The cargo hold smelled even stronger of smoke, too. I must be getting closer to the source.

Second of all, I found a section of cargo with my name on it. "JAMES HARRIS". There was a suitcase and a drawstring bag. The suitcase has a lock on it that I cannot remember the combination to. I will have to break into that eventually. The bag contained only a small, stained scrap of paper with the word "REMEMBER" written on it. I'm incredibly curious as to who wrote it, as the handwriting does not match my own, which I discovered after rewriting the word below. Nevertheless, I have been trying to remember for the whole time I've been here, and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. Hopefully, whoever wrote that is still on here, and I can find them. Maybe they'll have some answers.

Nothing else much of note was in the cargo hold, except for the area near the stern. There were several dents in the floor and walls, and what looked like little specks of blood were in some of the dents. Very faint though.

What happened here?

Smoke

I slept for a long time last night. Perhaps 11 hours. There's not really much to do here. My rest was dreamless, and I woke up multiple times. Occasionally as I was falling asleep I thought I heard indiscernible whispering, but I can't be too sure.

I explored the ship some more today, performing a more in-detailed search of the cabin area. I found some food in some of the cabins, which I ate. It might not have been smart, since I can't be sure nothing's been done to it, but there's not really much to eat here. Perhaps the banquet upstairs shall be my source of food for a while.

I also noticed several singe marks on the ground in various locations. Some on the walls, some the floors, and I discovered one on the ceiling when I looked up in one room. I saw the ashes falling in front of me, which compelled me to look.

I've also discovered what the smell in here is. Smoke. It's the scent of smoke. I have had no difficulties breathing or seeing during my time here, so I'm not sure what could be causing this.

Ah well. Time to look around some more, I guess.

Update

I spent some time looking around the ship.

The first thing I have to note is that the place is much bigger than I expected. It wouldn't be too surprising if someone else was here after all and we've just been missing each other. There's a deck for cabins, 3 decks for storage under that, one deck for engines and stuff like that above it, then one deck above that for relaxation: dining area, ballrooms, etc, and one more above that for steering, although that's really just one small room above the main ballroom. And then there's an outer deck for traversing outside of the main rooms. I would say the whole ship is around a mile and a half across.

It's a very odd layout, to say the least.

Another thing to note is that I did not encounter another soul aboard this place. In the entire area I traversed I could not even find a hint of another's presence in this place. All of the cabins that I saw were empty, and no personal possessions were in any of the large public rooms. It is possible there was another unfortunate like myself roaming the halls, given the size of the place, but it doesn't appear that the ship is very well boarded at all.

Last observation I noted is that the place stinks. I can't put my finger on what the smell is, but I hope it goes away at some point. Unless I leave soon, in which case I don't really care.

I still don't know why I'm here, who I am, or why this blog was loaded in my room. Hopefully I can find something here to fill me on in this information, and hopefully I can find some way back to where I should be. Unless this is where I should be.

The whole situation hurts my head.

Is anyone out there?

Hello. My name is James Harris. That's all I can remember about myself. I just woke up in the cabin of a ship next to an open computer with this blog up. I've called out into the ship for someone but I've got no answer from anybody. I don't know why this blog was up, but if anyone out there reading this can help me at all, please let me know. I'm going to go look around throughout the ship and see if I can find anything.