Roxanne Blackwell

Born in Chicago's outskirts in the 'burbs, Roxanne was born into relative privilege in the late 90's, when it still vaguely looked like there was a bright future ahead. From a young age, her parents were set on 'putting her on the right path' to a happy life, since they, in their own way, wanted the best for their little 'boy'.

Growing up, Roxanne was taken to the library a lot - at first it had been to get her interested in reading, but it worked a little too well. Roxanne took to reading about fantasy - particularly the 'dark and spooky' areas of fantasy books, notably ghost stories and occult fiction. As a result, a childish interest in the occult began to bloom.

Roxy came out as transgender in her junior year of High School to little initial fanfare. Her father didn't understand it, but supported her, while her mother was less than thrilled. This disconnect between the two eventually lead to shouting matches in the house, and family dysfunction would become the new normal, encouraging Roxy to get out of the house as much as she could - often taking to the library where she could at least use the computer without having to tune out the  sound of adults screaming at each other. In an attempt to get her out of the house more, her father signed her up for self defense courses, but really it was only ever meant to be a distraction, and she understood that almost immediately. 

When this eventually grew into a love for fighting, Roxy pursued the interest more, taking up learning mixed martial arts at one of the local boxing gyms, using it as an outlet for the burning anger that she held inside.

As years dragged on and her parents became less and less involved in her life due to divorce proceedings, Roxy continued to cling onto a belief that there was more to the world than what could be seen on the surface - and in her late high school years, she organized an unofficial 'paranatural club' of delinquents and stoners. This would ultimately lead to several after school trips spent in a musty old van rocketing across nearly overgrown roads to obscure abandoned buildings across the county and sometimes even beyond, when someone would occasionally chip in some gas money. 

The early trips were mostly just an excuse to blow off schoolwork and go smoke weed away from the prying eye of the public, but occasionally there were times that Roxy swore she felt...watched. Uncomfortably so. Like a pair of eyes were burning into her core from just inches behind her.  At first, she wrote it off as paranoia brought on by the pot smoke, but as time went on, and the feeling persisted from place to place...she came to suspect that it was something more.

While she never quite saw a ghost, the feeling of the few times she felt a lingering gaze on her person stuck with her - though her free time to go on 'investigations' quickly dried up as she went into collage, and her friends moved on.

Attending a lesser known technical college in Baltimore after transferring from a two year stint spent in community college, Roxy pursued the area of Computer Science & Engineering, ending up coming out the other side with a bachelor's degree, and in a stroke of good luck, it didn't take her long to find steady employment through contracted work and other side-gigs.

As work picked up, and as her living situation improved, Roxy's ability to engage in hobbies resurfaced, and she once again took an interest in the occult - using her free time to sift through the internet's surplus on cryptids and 'unexplained disappearances', going so far as to take an interest in urban exploration after getting the thought in her head that ghosts could still be real. What little she could gleam through a smokescreen of media tropes and obscure message boards hinted at some wider understanding of the world that she couldn't fully grasp.  Interest became obsession, and more and more of her time was spent dedicated into investigating rumors of the supernatural.

Eventually, she ended up trying to turn this into a group activity.

It took some doing, but eventually she was able to get a couple of college friends together to go out and film old 'haunted houses' and abandoned structures for the fun of it - posting it up on YouTube after all was said and done. 

 One night in July, Roxy and a small group of friends decided to go film a 'haunted' mental hospital  that'd been sitting abandoned for the last forever. Reddit boards'd said that it was most intact, due to being off the road a fair ways away from most towns in the area. The ride to their destination had been fairly uneventful, discounting smoke in the air, and the nearly overgrown roads. 

After nearly two hours of driving, and having gotten lost a few times in the process, Roxy and the gang had finally arrived at their destination, and in the distance, a darkened, decaying building loomed in the distance while the sun begun to sink low on the horizon. 

After they passed the gates, and the keys pulled from the ignition, it was finally time to go inside.

In the stillness of the night, all that could be heard was the whistling of the wind and the chirping of the crickets - occasionally the sound of a screaming cicada singing its song.

A sense of foreboding grew in Roxy's chest, but she ignored it - dismissing the feeling as simple nerves as she flicked on her Mag-Lite and peered into the darkness. For a second, she'd sworn that she saw eyes peering back at her - but before she could properly make out what she was looking at, it'd disappeared. 

Off put, but not properly scared off, she pushed onward with Sean and Josh, while Bailey chose to stick with Jerry and the sedan after he'd chickened out. After a moment of gazing at the tall building and searching for whatever it was she might've seen, Roxy flicked open her camera - a loaner from her dad, and took an opening sweeping shot, before pressing in. 

A tired breath left Roxy's chest, as she pushed in through the rusty metal doors and stepped into the filthy lobby. Plant growth trickled up through the tiles, and a musty stench hung in the air, with an undertone of decay - like some roadkill that'd been sitting out in the sun for too long. A look was spared behind her toward Sean, who gave her a shrug; sometimes animals ended up getting trapped - there was nothing for it. 

Roxy felt a chill run down her spine, as the air grew thicker; it came to her slowly that compared to the outside, the inside of the hospital was dead silent. One could hear a pin drop.

 As she pushed forward, Roxy took a wide sweeping shot of the lobby, before letting out a breath; despite the grime and signs of wear, the lobby was almost immaculate - the chairs were still here, mounted to the floor where they'd been left, the tables still held neat stacks of magazines and an occasional book. It was as if she'd stepped into a time capsule right into the nineties.

After a moment spent in wonder, Roxy turned her attention down the halls, walking as if drawn by something down the hall just out of sight. She'd been so focused on filming that she hadn't even realized that she'd gotten separated from her friends until several minutes after the fact. All around her darkness stretched on seemingly forever, with only the glow of her Mag Lite to illuminate the path ahead.

Alone in an unfamiliar structure, without any idea where her friends were, Roxy felt...alone in a way she hadn't before. Like she'd traipsed into something's lair - like she was alone, but for the fact that something else was here.

The hairs on the back of her neck started to rise, as she quieted her steps, feeling at once that if she were too loud, she would wake something. Foreign instinct warred in her mind, screaming at her to turn back - to leave and never return. These feelings were wrong in a way she could not quite place nor escape. Iron willpower bucked at the urge to turn tail - to call out for the others, no matter how desperately her heart beat.

It didn't matter now. Not that she was already here. 

She had heard of places like these. Places with a thick presence. She still wasn't quite sure if that's what this feeling was, or if the feeling of danger simply came from being enshrouded in darkness, in a suspiciously well kept derelict hospital. For one thing, the way dust was absent from the tables, and how meticulously the stacks of magazines were kept in the twenty some odd years since the hospital's closure...it felt off. Off in a way that couldn't be explained by it simply being abandoned.

More and more it began to feel as if she was trespassing.

But that couldn't be right; the boards had said that this place was abandoned - that nobody'd been here in years. 

In fact, the structure itself was missing many hallmarks of abandonment itself; the ceiling was still intact, meaning copper thieves had yet to rip this place open for it's valuable innards. It made her...uneasy. 
 
A certain uncanniness hung in the air in the forlorn liminal space as her boots thudded quietly against worn and cracked linoleum tile under heel, trying her best to ignore the rising sensation gathering in the back of her mind;

The feeling of being watched.

She'd felt it before, but it had never been this...focused.  

And then she heard it - a subtle drip, like someone had left the faucet just ever so slightly on. 

A sinking feeling formed in a rapidly growing pit in her chest.

And still she pressed on, hand tightening around the grip of her flashlight, knuckles whitening as she started to walk toward something she knew she wouldn't like. 

The beam of light came to land on...something. Something was about the best description she could give to the hulking shape, clothed in tattered garments. It almost  looked hauntingly familiar. A chill ran up her spine, freezing her in place as her gaze tried and failed to take in...whatever this mass was, trying desperately to make sense the foreign shapes that littered the grotesque creature as it wheezed, its eyes bulging from their sockets, searching desperately for...something - anything - in the darkness, before its gaze caught on her. Roxy froze, as if rooted in place. 

A singular word escaped it, as blood dribbled through slits in its throat.

"Run."

Caution was thrown to the wind as primal fear pulsed through Roxy's head, choking out anything other than the desperate need to leave this place - to leave it all behind - to try desperately  to forget what she'd just seen.

Heavy, rapid footfalls echoed in the empty hallways, as Roxy tried desperately to navigate the labyrinthian structure in the dark in a panic - only managing to get further and further lost. She'd been about to break one of the windows to jump out into the night when she felt something behind her - in the doorway leading to the examination room she was in. Old blood soaked the tile underfoot - she was going to die here. Awfully, if that thing she'd seen was a person. Her mind still struggled to make any sense of it.

Something nearly cracked inside of her, as she realized that this wouldn't end well - but her determination willed her to fight for her life.  She wouldn’t go down without a fight - and that’d have to be good enough.

Horror was all that remained. If she could get a good swing at whatever this thing was...maybe that'd be good enough. Roxy wound up the swing when the figure pushed in through the doorway, and swung.

The last thing she registered before the world went dark was the hands around her throat. 

Having seen the defiance in the mortal's eyes when faced with overwhelming odds and terror in the night, the monster itself had chosen its Childer  - and in so doing, passed its curse onto the next generation...

When Roxanne woke next, she was alone in a cell made of skin. A damp humidity hung in the air alongside the sounds of wheezing breaths as the walls pulsated in a grotesque manner that made her skin crawl.

A dissociative fugue held its grip on her for several minutes, before she realized that she needed to escape. Trapped in a location that very nearly escaped her ability to explain, Roxy was left to contemplate the true breadth of the situation she'd gotten herself into. Nervous thoughts turned toward the wellbeing of her friends - but then she remembered the thing she'd saw - the lumpen mass that used to be a man. It was too horrible to put to words - but somehow she knew that some, if not all of them, were dead - or worse. 

For a while, she'd worried that she'd also end up as some quivering abomination - but as hours began to pass, and her hunger began to grow ravenous, she found herself thinking less and less about the prospect. 

It should have been a tip-off that something was deeply wrong with her, but by the time the thought had registered she'd been far too preoccupied with trying to ignore how thirsty she felt.

When the cage was opened, and the meaty doors slid apart with an uncomfortable 'slurp', something was pushed in - a terrified looking  man that seemed strikingly familiar for a few fleeting seconds, before an unnamable thirst annihilated that train of thought entirely. Her body moved on impulse, and a cavernous maw met flesh. The moment that blood hit her mouth she began to drink hungrily - greedily.

By the time she'd realized what had happened - what she'd done, she was met with another horror - the thing standing in the doorway, grinning with cruel delight. . The more she looked the more her gaze was drawn in - and before long, she couldn't tear her eyes away from it. 

At first, all she could focus on was its maw full of monstrous, needle-like teeth, but quickly she took notice of the fact that the thing was lipless, the flesh that would have covered its maw having been peeled away, where it still hung like a bizarre ornament - the insides of what had once been cheeks, simply lined with bone white needles.  Its eyes were at once animalistic and uncanny - a vibrant yellow filled the creatures' irises, and the way their eyes were slitted like a reptiles only served to add to the effect. Pronounced black colored horns pressed out of its head in such a way that Roxy was reminded of a demon - or some of dragon.

Its form was somehow uncannily human and not. Like something had amalgamated the very concept of a human being and drawn a grotesque caricature of its anatomy - warped and twisted somehow.
 
Terror pulsed through Roxy's chest as she found her gaze moving back to the now motionless body in front of her. 

She was a murderer.  Her eyes widened in understanding as she realized who it was she'd killed.

Josh was laying dead at her feet. 

And that's how the worst month of her life began in earnest. Her sire would often spend time with her - reshaping her body to its whims, unmaking, remaking, reshaping - supposedly to 'help her', but the agonizing pain felt like nothing but torture beyond anything she'd ever felt before. Eventually her body would start restructuring itself on its own, forcing itself back together into her normal shape - just to be deformed again and re-sculpted in whatever image of the night her sire wished of her.

Before long, she was desperate to escape the 'lessons' she was being taught - often enough, she'd slip into a frenzy over it, but thankfully, she found an escape one night in April.

Her escape came in the form of using her disciplines to force the flesh keeping her captive to shrink away and wither - the rest had been a nerve wracking trip topside through narrow, flesh riddled tunnels. By the time she'd found her Mitsubishi outside she'd been eager to bail.

Putting the sight of the hospital behind her, Roxy peeled out of the old hospital's driveway, and didn't look back, taking off for Baltimore to try and put her life back together - what little was left of it.