#this might be my best sim to date i can’t even lie to y’all

[hdmiports]

found my dude making mojo again

[peachiejamie]

@marilyndraws Come get y’all juice!

In all seriousness, here it is! I hope you like it and I hope it’s as accurate as it could be. I know I took some creative liberties but I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it. There are a few places where I was unhappy with it while writing. The pacing is a bit off and the characterization isn’t great but I hope you like it!

Have a great days otherwise!💖 AjdnsjJANSJS god I hope you enjoy it. Your art is just wonderful and I scream every time!!

Here’s the piece!

Missing Persons

Statement of Amy Bassmaji regarding her time working in missing persons. Original statement given January 5, 2016. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

Okay, listen.

I’m not... I’m not crazy. I promise you I’m not crazy. I haven’t had a history of mental illness, my family doesn’t have a line of any of that type of shit. I am, all things considered, perfectly sane. I’m- I’m sound off mind, I swear. You have to believe me. What I saw is absolutely fucking crazy but you have to believe me.

I’ve tried to tell people but all they do is look at me like I’m losing my mind and... and honestly, I think I might be...

I just... I can’t handle another look like that. I don’t think I can take another. But... you’ll believe me, won’t you? This is what your institute is for?

Lord, what am I doing? I didn’t even believe in your credibility a week ago and now?

Just... I’m not crazy. That’s all you need to know, I am not crazy. I saw what I saw. And what I saw couldn’t have been a lie.

See, I work in missing persons. Or... at least, I worked in missing persons. Some people were easier to locate than others, just as a few are more unsettling than some. Usually, the missing report could be some kid running away or a sloppy kidnapping. It isn’t normally too bad.

I never really dealt with the more heavy missing persons cases. I was still climbing the ladder until recently. I got a promotion, which I was ecstatic about. Finally, some progress, you know? All that hard work finally paying off, finally being able to look at the fruits of my labor. It was... thrilling. I hadn’t looked forward to something in a while.

It was normal at first. Maybe not as riveting as I had dreamed for it to be but it was good. Most of my coworkers were wonderful, though some of them had their moments. All things considered, they were normal. They didn’t stick out for being amazing but they didn’t stick out for being terrible either. They were just... average.

Now, here’s the thing. I said most for a reason. Nearly all of them were just... normal but there was one exception to that.

Her name was Marilyn. Marilyn Hightower. At first glance, she was just like everyone else. She blended in just like I did. Just like you do. Just like... well, most do. She helped find a good few. She was reliable, efficient, and well trusted by the staff. I shouldn’t have been bothered by her.

Yet despite all that... I hated being around her.

I don’t know how to describe it, the feeling she gave me. It was just wrong. It was like there was something crawling up my back, agonizingly slow and dangerous. Like I was an insect trapped in the web of an eight legged monster.

I don’t know if I’m just saying that because of what I know now but looking back, I should have known. The clues were all there I just... I just couldn’t have known what it all meant.

What am I saying? I don’t even know what it all means now. I came here hoping that maybe, just maybe, you could. Maybe you know about this shit with spiders and webs and missing people. Maybe you can make sense of what the hell is going on and what the hell happened to me.

I don’t... I don’t know why I was the only one who seemed unsettled by her. I didn’t say anything about my unease because everyone else loved her. My superiors, my coworkers, hell, even my friends. They all seemed fine with her and I... I didn’t. I wasn’t. And I didn’t want to ruin what I got so I... I just kept my mouth shut.

I thought that maybe it was just me. Probably just me being an asshole, I thought. Just forget about it, just let it go. Maybe she just rubs me the wrong way, maybe it’s just that our personalities don’t mesh. There wasn’t anything about her that warranted my displeasure. And the more I watched her interacting with my other coworkers, the more I grew sure of that.

She was just so... vibrant. She got on with everyone like a damn house on fire and I was sure that it was just me. It had to be just me even when she looked at me like I was... I don’t know, food? Prey? She looked at me as if she knew that I didn’t trust her and she was going to do something about it. Like my confusion was some cruel, amusing joke. Some game for her to control and enjoy.

Thinking about it, it probably was.

The thing that changed all that was when I was visiting work late one night. I forgot my laptop in the meeting room because I was in a bit of a rush. My girlfriend and I were heading out for a date and I didn’t want to be any later than I had to be. I guess I lost my mind a bit in the thick of things.

It was supposed to be an in and out sort of thing. I knew the building and it was just a laptop, for fuck sake. It should have been five minutes, tops.

Some of the lights were still on and there were a few people working late in their offices but those people were sparse and we were acquaintances at best. I was as good as alone but at the time it felt like a comfort, knowing that I wasn’t traipsing through a completely desolate police building.

When I got to the meeting room, I was surprised to find that there was a light still on. Not all the lights, just one. It was the overhead lamp that hung in front of the board, illuminating the red yarn that connected staples photos, letters, news clippings, and locations. You know, the like. The type of stuff you see on TV.

It was dim in the darkness but it spilled out into the room.

It shouldn’t have been unsettling but there was this gut feeling that something was wrong. It twisted and convulsed in my chest and I felt... delirious. I wondered if anyone was still here this late at night. It wouldn’t surprise me, the department we work in tends to keep all of us up.

You don’t realize how many people go missing but working in a place like I do...? It tends to give you perspective. You get multiple reports at least every other day of normal, breathing people disappearing off the face of the Earth. You have to see hundreds of pictures of smiling faces that, more often than not, never get found again. It’s soul crushing, in a way. Realizing that so many normal people disappear out of thin air.

Realizing that the people that you walk by on the street or the people that you love could be one of them. Or how many loved ones will never be able to see that missing person ever again, nor will they ever have the closure of knowing what happened to them.

It’s why I got into the field that I did. My brother disappeared when I was fifteen. I guess... I guess knowing the pain personally does that. I always thought that everyone joined for the same purpose, for genuinely trying to find people and bring them back. To make sure no one has to lose another person again.

I was wrong.

God, I was wrong.

Being in that room sent shivers down my spine. I don’t know what it was but the shadows that the yarn cast looked like webs, intricate and wrapping and waiting. Waiting for the perfect opportunity to snag me. Trap me. But trap me for what? Trap me for who? And I could have sworn there was something in my ear, this odd... scratching noise.

I ignored it. It would go away soon enough, I thought . And the sooner I was out the sooner I could escape the prickling in the nape of my neck. I wanted out of that room as soon as I could be.

I should have run then. I should left my stupid laptop and run then.

I crouched to grab it, which was propped in between two chairs right where I left it. I squinted in the dark, reaching forward, but when my hand wrapped around the handle it didn’t wrap around the plastic that it usually did.

No, it wrapped around hundreds of small, moving things.

I screamed. As embarrassing as that is, I screamed. I yanked my hand back and stumbled, tripping and stepping on those things with a terrible, disgusting squelch. my ears rung for god knows how long but I searched for whatever the hell I was surrounded by.

And that’s when I heard it.

And that’s when I realized it.

The scuttling.

The spiders.

The sounds of hundreds of thousands of millions of spiders moving and crawling and writhing where the light does not reach. I could see them now, their shapeless form shifting and climbing in the darkness, crawling up the walls and onto the table with their millions of legs and beady, malicious eyes.

They were hapless, moving as one and covering the room like a thick grime.

I was too terrified to scream, too terrified to move. It felt like there were cobwebs in my throat, clogged in my joints and tightening around my neck like a noose made by that suffocating ocean of spiders that surrounded me. I was drowning in it, drowning in the terror that consumed me.

I felt nauseous, I felt sick. I felt afraid. Would they kill me? Consume me like the insects that they trapped in their web?

Then I looked up.

Then I looked up and there she was. Marilyn. She stood in the light of that damned lamp and smiled at me, sneered at me. Her eyes glowed with the same malicious amusement of the monstrosity that filled my ears and choked my lungs. She held a piece of yarn in her hand, pinched in between her fingers as she smiled.

The spiders seemed to grow erratic with excitement and something else. Something like hunger. Something like desperation. Their scuttling and movement grew louder, grew faster. They pooled at my feet as if they were waiting for some barrier around me to break. And I knew that barrier of brief protection would break the second she let it. And in that moment, I realized that I wasn’t just some victim.

I was the insect in the web.

I was the insect trapped in her web. She was the spider and I was her prey and I was stuck in the trap she had created. And I realized that I wasn’t her only victim and I wouldn’t be her last.

She wasn’t here to bring people back. No, she was here to make sure they stayed missing.

She grinned then. I think she must have seen my dawning horror, the bombshell of that epiphany blooming on my face.

I ran. I left my laptop and I ran. I didn’t give her a chance to tell her damned spiders to trap me.

When I got back home, my girlfriend was there. Bless her heart. She helped me the best she could but the worry on her face as I tried to explain what happened made me shut up. She didn’t believe me. She would never believe me. No one would. Hell, I wouldn’t have believed me.

I quit my job the morning after.

I didn’t speak to Marilyn again but I could see her from the window of that room while I was walking back to my car, smiling with that same smile from that night.

I moved as soon as I could but the spiders follow me. Wherever I go, they follow me. Their scuttling fills my ears whenever I close my eyes and their cruel, amused stare glares back at me like a cruel joke.

I don’t like spiders anymore.

...I think I might get an exterminator.

Statement ends.

Ms. Bassmaji’s account of this encounter sounds like a few we’ve had before. The sea of the spiders, the scuttling. It seems Hightower is still terrorizing the innocent with the help of the Web. Unsurprisingly... we cannot make a follow up with Ms. Bassmaji.

However, Tim did some digging with records and found both Amy Bassmaji and Marilyn Hightower as employed. However, Marilyn still proves to be as slippery as a damn eel and disappeared before we could locate her.

Martin did some digging himself, finding out that Ms. Bassmaji was reported as missing by her girlfriend, Katelyn Palmer, in May of 2017.

Prior to her disappearance, there was a spider infestation in their flat. Oddly, only their flat was exclusively effected. No amount of pest control could have gotten rid of them. Odder yet, Ms. Palmer states that as soon as Ms. Bassmaji went missing, the spiders seemed to disappear with her.

I hope that she didn’t suffer too long, but knowing of the way Hightower kills, I sincerely doubt it. I can only pray that we apprehend her soon.

End recording.