207: The Man Out of Time

This post contains 1 colored artwork for FREE and 2 colored artworks for DISCIPLE members only. For more details on membership tiers, ways to support the site and how to purchase comics/collections, click here. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. 

A brief revisitation with the members of the Doe Patrol

The elusive Green Man again, you think?

The physical description is different but my gut tells me, it's him! I know that the witness descriptions are wildly different, but if there's anything consistent, is that the description of the man is different while the intangibles are eerily similar. Like how you describe a character in a dream who changes, but in your mind you know him to be the same individual.

So this new missing person, she's somewhat well-known isn't she?

Well, borderline. What is celebrity these days in a world of social media. Tik Tokkers, Instagrammers, Youtube personalities, they're taking over the Superstars of the Silver Screen and Radio City Music Hall. And you could say she's one of them. Part time model & actress, feminist figurehead, fitness guru and lifestyle influencer...

News about this mysterious boyfriend of hers, from the description, she didn't strike me as the type who'd go for a man of this sort, a little too old school, James Bond, classical masculine type.

She certainly surprised her social group too. The way she kept their relationship out of the limelight save for a few trusted friends, and even then, those friends knew surprisingly little of the man. As if she was almost a little too embarrassed to show him around because...

Because it would break her narrative?

I think so. But what I'm getting from her friends was that she was uncharacteristically smitten by him. Even told her best friend in hushed tones, that he was the one. She packed her bags, cleaned out her apartment, everyone else thinks she's moved on but I don't buy it. And some of her closest friends who truly knew her agrees with me.

You know, there's a part of me that thinks, maybe this is all too crazy. Do you ever wonder what if we're wrong? Maybe some of these missing women truly did get lost in the forest. Or that they truly eloped and left this life for a nice secluded tropical island somewhere halfway across the world. Maybe this girl is sipping her martini with a magazine and sunshine and not end up in a fate worse than Grimm's fairy tales instead.

...

Okay, don't look at me like that. I just get tired sometimes. And afraid. Yeah. Afraid. The things these people do. I sometimes don't want to believe it. The things that we think happened to these girls. I want to believe that they got away from it all, from the shit of the world to live their happily ever after... It's like staring straight at the face of Lucifer incarnate. But I know. I know it's not true. You know... but do you ever wonder to yourself? 'To hell with it'. Not in a way that we quit the Lantern Bearer. I know [redacted]'s dead and [redacted]'s gone. But maybe he saw something just before they got him. Maybe he saw what really happened to her before they killed him, and you wonder yourself, after all these years we're on the trail, that to hell with it, let yourself be taken. Let yourself be silenced forever. But just before you go, you finally know the truth. Do you ever think that?

No. Not really. But I get it. I really do. But I need you to stop thinking this. You're the only one I trust. The others? They're flake-outs. Not you. You're with me on this journey since the beginning and I really need you, man.

I know. I know. Sorry. Okay. So yeah, let's get back to work. So what's her name again?