I Am Not Afraid To Keep On Living

Recently, I had food with Fiona and Soren at a local restaurant called Barry's. Soren ordered a lot of food. After he finished eating, a worryingly brief process, he still had one box of fries left. He wordlessly slid it over to me.

"Okay. So. This might sound weird... either of you guys see anything strange lately? Shadows moving on their own, tentacles coming out of the water, anything like that?"

Fiona and I glanced at one another.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.
Soren sighed. "The Panopticon, those creepy dudes in the suits, they hunt down people who have strange experiences and try to brainwash them into thinking they never happened. Lowe and Marten, the guys who came after you at the apartment, they're known for being less subtle. They'd rather just murder anyone who talks."
"So, what, they're like the world's shittiest Men in Black?" I asked.
"Hmmm." Soren thought on that for a few moments. "Yes. Uh, basically, the Panopticon want to stop people from learning about these things, and I was hunting them down the other day. They led me to you. I wanted to explain what was happening, but I couldn't have found you even if I wanted to." He shrugged. "I guess it doesn't matter at this point. To be perfectly clear, whatever it is that's after you, it's got something to do with something called a Fear. They're embodiments of... I dunno, fear? Mental illness? The classical elements? Nobody is quite sure."
"That's a pretty broad spectrum," I said, raising an eyebrow.
He shook his head. "You tell me, buddy. They've got an entire mythology built up around them. EAT was created by the Blind Man, the Dying Man was killed by the Wooden Girl, the Archangel used to be a crime boss... nobody's got a clue about any of it."
"And those things are what, exactly?"
"Okay, uh, EAT. That one's a monster that replaces water and manifests tentacles. Also, it's a hive mind, and its name is an acronym for Eater of All Tides. Or End of All Things. Or... well, you get the idea. The Blind Man erases people's childhoods, the Dying Man possesses people, the Wooden Girl does that on a much bigger scale, and the Archangel impersonates dead people."
"...The Dying Man, huh?" I asked. "Could that one manifest as female?"
Soren shrugged. "I've heard of one of them doing that before. Not as common, but it happens. Why?"
"Nothing." I ate another fry and mulled things over a bit.

I wasn't entirely sure why I played along.

Well, no. There's a very good reason why. You've read this blog. Looking back at one of my earlier entries, the Unforgivable mentioned living water. Sounds an awful lot like Soren's EAT, right? It's a tenuous connection, to be sure, but it's there.

And then there's the Dying Man. The Unforgivable isn't exactly being subtle if she doesn't want me to know what she is.