Travel Diary- Undertow

[skinstealer]

??-??-316, Backwash, Consumption

Hitchhiking is not fun. I don’t enjoy it, at the very least not here in this horrible fucking hell zone, especially not when the location is some sort of horrible fucking hell swamp. I am sick to death of this place already, and I’ve only just now started to see the proper woods. I rode in on a truck through the Munch wilds, and while the driver was quiet enough after I made it clear that I was too tired after my drug-induced adventure for conversation, we ran into issues a few hours in. Our truck was attacked by a wild animal, presumably attracted to the noise of our vehicle rumbling along on the dirt road. It was hard to make out exactly what it was, but good god, the sheer amount of legs it had...and not like an insect’s legs, like a person’s...
 

 I am going to have nightmares about that fucking thing. 
 Thankfully, I was able to covertly blast it with a gust of wind, and I don’t think the driver caught on that it was me that drove the horrible creature away. We managed to get away and I arrived at my location in one piece, though I hope the same could be said of the driver on his trip to wherever he was headed. He was kind, and I wish the best for him.
 Backwash, the town I ended up in, is...not much to look at. It isn’t made of concrete slabs, which is points for it, but it’s ramshackle and uncared for, and it’s clear that the money made by people slaving away in their jobs for hours upon hours is not present here. The whole place is built next to a swamp, and it’s said that the unflattering name was given to the place by Spit herself. Blegh.
 

 The whole reason I came here was I heard you could sell scraps here, and while I don’t really like the idea of selling some of these, I’ve been able to produce a few along the way (some from my unfortunate drug trip, regretfully), and I figure that with the use of this travel diary, I don’t need to latch onto them as tightly.  Unfortunately, the people running the places are sticklers for authenticity- apparently they’ve been sold “fake scraps” somehow- that’s not even a thing, as far as I know! They want me to prove my worth as a sensitive by clearing out some troublesome scrap ghosts in the swamp...I was tempted to drop my disguise right then and there to prove it, but I agreed instead...whatever.
 Aside from that, I was welcomed fairly warmly, and people here seem to be friendly towards newcomers. How they can keep their heads held high in this dire situation, I have no idea, but I respect the fact that they’re keeping on going. One even asked me if I was planning on moving in, to which I protested perhaps a bit too much- their face definitely fell, and I get the feeling that they don’t get a lot of people willingly coming here.
 The inn I’m staying in is just as rickety as the rest of the place, and I’m writing this while hearing animals killing each other outside. There is no end to the horrors of Consumption, though I fear the longer I stay, the more likely it is that that statement will become literal.