June 5th
Rain is hateful. Not the fierce, burning hatred of vengeance but a loathing that suffuses the landscape. Or maybe I'm just tired of being drenched. I'm going to cut three weeks off my trip by going through the forest. Given the number of horrible stories about it this might seem ill advised. If I bite it and you are somebody reading this journal in the future then understand this: the threat of boogums in the woods is less frightening than certainty of another month of walking through this. Well that's the hope, anyway.
June 6th
I dreamed that I'd made it to the lodge last night. It was warm and dry. There was soup and beer rather than expired protein bars and rain water. To add injury to insult it's been thunder storming all day. I thought I could make it through the forest in four or five days but I think If I push I might manage six. I'm going to push. I can't get the dream out of my head and it's driving me nuts.
June 7th
I'm heavier, or the rain is heavier, or gravity has increased. I've been tired, weak, trembling with sickness in the past. This isn't that. I can't account for it except as some sort of hallucination brought on by stress, loneliness, and the constant infernal din of pouring rain. I don't believe it. It's too weird. A life time of hearing evil stories about these woods and I walked into them alone. For what? Because I wanted to get out of the rain sooner. And it just keeps coming down.
June 8th
I think I'll destroy these pages if I get through this but right now I need a record of what happened if only so that I don't think it was a dream. It was probably three when I saw a human figure. It was standing at the edge of a cliff and I thought it was looking outward. I approached it and it appeared all featureless gray. Not like a person wearing gray clothes because clothes have texture. When I got close enough to hail it it started toward me. It had actually been facing me but I couldn't tell because of the rain and the color. I put out my walking stick to stop it but it ducked and grabbed my wrist. Then it just dissolved into mist. I think that's what it was. I was alarmed before it grabbed me; then the moment that it touched me: nothing. I felt nothing. I still feel nothing. I'm not scared, miserable, or shocked. I keep thinking about the dream of the lodge and it feels like nothing too. I don't know what I'm going to do if this is permanent. I'm functioning now but I can't tell if I even want to live. Is this what happened to all of the people who went missing?
June 9th
I'm half way there I think. I keep imagining that I see more mist men in the distance but it always turns out to be something else. I think. I keep combing through my memories for something that makes me feel anything but nothing is working. There is one emotion left to me. I still hate the rain. Every time I consider how awful this situation is because of the rain my feelings come back in full. My day has been constant walking alternately meditating on how bad rain is, how I can't care about anything else, and chasing down imaginary figures. I feel like I'm coming apart. I think I may be losing my mind. Thoughts seem less coherent without emotions behind them. And it just keeps pouring.
June 10th
I have a book of riddles, one of those little things that would have been sold at travel stops way back when. I'm trying to keep my thoughts on the riddles rather than the rain or all of the things that don't make me feel anymore. I can stay sane or at least functional long enough to get out of the woods. None of this is made easier by the intensification of the rain to surreal levels. I'm keeping to the high ground just to avoid waist high “streams.” Everything is soaked. I'm wearing a poncho and I'm soaked, my pack is soaked, I'm literally having trouble remembering what being dry feels like. I have a few items wrapped in trash bags as water proofing which included this journal and the riddle book. Despite my best efforts they get a bit wet each time I bring them out and so my one dry outfit is probably moist by now just from contact with the journal. The pages haven't started sticking together yet but it's only a matter of time before I lose this too. I need some way of tracking the days if I do. I'll be out of the woods before to long.
June 11th
I met my daughter in the rain. It's her birthday. She would have been thirteen today. I didn't even think about how I'd be passing through a haunted wood on her birthday and now here she is. I asked her how she got here and she said she walked. I asked her how she was and she said she was wet and a little cold. I gave her some of my dry outfit and my poncho. We walked together for several hours. She talked like she hadn't been dead for years, like she'd been with me the whole time. I didn't interrogate the contradiction. For all that I know my memories are what is at fault. It doesn't make sense she'd be here with me on this trip but neither does anything else. We talked about her favorite subjects. The animals in the forest and whether we'd see a rainbow at some point. We didn't see a rainbow. It just kept raining. I still only feel bad things about the rain. I keep trying to feel gratitude, joy, shock, or even rage at my lack of emotion. All absent. I went into the forest telling myself that whatever occurred I'd just accept it no matter how strange or scary. I told myself that even if monsters were real and I encountered one that I wouldn't panic. I'd survive with a level head or die with dignity knowing that I'd taken a calculated risk and payed the price. To hell with all of that I suppose. I never understood why people who traveled through here are unwilling to talk about what happened to them until now. Katie wants to go to sleep so I'm going to stop writing now.
June 12th
We reached the edge of the forest. Katie was still there when I woke up. I smelled her mother's perfume. It's gotten steadily weaker as we exited the forest. Now I'm on the edge and I have a choice. Stay or leave. I bet Debby is in there too. We're going to go look for her. I suspect that this is the last thing anybody outside of the woods will know about me and that's assuming that they'll find this journal. I think this might be a test and going back in is failing it. I also think that not going back in may be failure. I still feel nothing but loathing for rain. I think that I want my heart to be somewhere in there. I think that I want to feel happy that my daughter is with me. I think nothing can matter if I can't have that. I think these things because I can't feel them. It has to stop raining sometime. Please stop.
Drenched is a solo journaling game created by Charlie Fleming and published in 2023 on DrivethruRPG. It uses standard playing cards as prompts for journaling a trip through a haunted forest during an endless rain storm. There is a win and a lose condition. I wrote simple entries for each card and while the prompts are pretty thin I was surprised by how well it came out so I decided to post it. Let me know if you want more of these because Fleming has put out a bunch more of the solo journaling games.
IRON NODER XVII: ALL'S FERROUS IN LOVE AND NODING