Plotting Her Next Move

In H.P Lovecraft's stories characters often go mad from their interactions with eldritch truths, many adaptations incorrectly attribute this madness to seeing horrible monsters and losing your sanity.

While this is something that can happen, the real truth is that when a person is exposed to the greater machinations of the universe, greater truths, is granted the ability to understand them, but is then returned to their normal lives and normal ability to understand they lack the ability to not see those truths.

They can remember, but they can't fully comprehend. That is where the madness comes from.

I was feeling a similar way.

I'd been given a taste. I still exploited the private evenings my parents had given me, spending the majority of those evenings downstairs fully nude. But that was just routine. I knew what it felt like to go streaking, I knew what it felt like to be naked in public, I knew these things.

Yet for the next couple of weeks I fell into routine again, though I'd been keeping up with Emma more, we'd become quite close friends actually, chatting about basically everything.

But every time the topic of me getting up to no good came up there was never the right feeling or vibe, we'd talk hypotheticals, we'd trade scenarios and ideas. But in those couple of weeks I think the most risky nudity I did was making it to the end of the garden and back again, which after my streak from the park didn't feel especially intimidating.

I didn't know if I was falling into a rut, or if this was just a typical part of being an exhibitionist. Either way, I felt restless.

Worse still, college was steadily coming up, so my complete freedom in that regard was starting to close in on itself. I knew that college wouldn't stop me, but I wanted to do something, at least.

Eventually I started poking around, planning, plotting, scheming. I went out for more walks, more bike rides. At face value this just looked like me wanting to be a bit healthy, and I mean it wasn't like I was just rotting in my room, I went out jogging on the regular. But that was routine. Exercise.

No, I was scoping locations out, I was scouting out neighbourhoods at different times to get a feel for the ebb and flow of the people there, I was seeing what kind of places that were on offer now that I was looking at them with this new mindset. Buildings I never really cared to pay attention to beyond their specific use, multi floor parking garages, libraries, laundrettes, services that one would go to for something normal took on a new life in my head.

They were opportunities.

In a couple of days I'd gone from being stuck in a stunted routine to being full of inspiration.

All I needed to do was act on it...