January 2, 2009. I am sick, no doubt about it—and I was feeling so healthy last month! I have a fever, a terrible fever, or rather a feverish nervous exhaustion, which makes my soul as sick as my body. I keep having this terrifying feeling of some danger threatening, this apprehension of a misfortune on the way, or of death approaching, this premonition that must be the onset of a sickness, germinating in the blood and the flesh.
January 5, 2009. I’ve just gone to consult my doctor, since I could no longer sleep. He found my pulse was rapid, my nerves vibrating, but without any alarming symptom. I must submit to taking showers and drinking potassium bromide.
January 12, 2009. A full week, and still no change. Sleep has continued to elude me, like a slippery shadow created by the moonlight on a cloudy evening. No heat of the shower, nor the foul taste of the doctor’s cocktail has seen fit to relieve me of my surreal sleepless nights. I have taken to wandering to the ocean, to watch the waves as they roll in, so beautifully adorned in their diamonds of light and scarves of froth. So relaxing they are to watch, but yet there I stand, my nervous twitches grinding my teeth to dust. Anyone else would find what ails them slipping away like waves, draining out of their bodies as they do of sand, but not I. Curse this sickness I have, why can’t I just be rid of it already?
January 19, 2009. I finally got a good night’s sleep, just four days ago. What a marvel it was, too! I awoke feeling refreshed and renewed. I was a flower who had received a long sought after drink; my leaves perked back and shook loose their wilt. But it was not to last, my suffering had merely been borrowed for the night by some other hapless, sorrowful creature. Within too few hours of awakening, I was feeling the too-familiar strain on my nervous system. I found myself sad, for no apparent reason, and my jaw was beginning to ache. What was it that was contributing to my bane? It was a beautiful day, and the wind was warm as it swept from the ocean over the rocks and into my bedroom window. By all accounts it was a day to be joyous, not dower. It seemed the smallest, most inconsequential details of the world irked me in some way. Were the clouds slightly too oblong for my liking? Maybe the ocean had been the wrong shade of blue? Whatever was wrong with the day seemed to be amplified by my very nature, and an intense dread set upon me, as if I was the sole purveyor of knowledge of a terrible misfortune about to occur.
That night, as I slowly, finally, began to fade into sweet slumber, something prodded at the edge of my consciousness. It was unpleasant in the utmost ways, like hot needles being run, point down, against the outside corner of the eye. I tried to wake, but could not, and found myself terrified by my state. The burning, I have no other way to describe it, grew worse, until I felt as if my eyes were boiling in their membranes. I tried to scream harder and harder until finally I broke the surface of consciousness, erupting into my bedroom, gasping for air as if I had just barely escaped drowning.
I didn’t sleep again until yesterday.
January 30, 2009. Three nights in a row now, I have been awaken by the same intense feeling of burning and drowning I have been experiencing on and off for nearly two weeks. Now the burning is accompanied by strange visuals, most psychedelic in nature, and a cacophony of noise. Sometimes, I hear what sounds like voices, men and women alike, screaming in agony and terror. Maybe all I am hearing is my own screams, as I struggle to awake and relieve myself of the torture.
Yesterday, while I was cutting bread for my lunch, my jaw grinding away, and my hands shaking, I accidentally cut my finger rather deep. It didn’t hurt, but the feeling of the serrated knife cutting my flesh and sinew made me cringe, and made my mouth salivate. I watched the blood pool on the counter and seep up into the bread. I traced its route as it disseminated through the porous starch. I was fascinated by its color and found that my jaw had quit grinding and my hands were steady enough for a watchmaker. Placing my finger in my mouth, the blood swam across my tongue, warm and viscous as it was. It was fairly delicious, and this thought made the shake return once again and left me with my nervous twitch.
February 8, 2009. How long can one go without sleep, I wonder. I guess I have been sleeping, but an hour here and an hour there, that doesn’t seem to be enough. I feel as if I have now met each and every grain of sand on the beach. I have seen individual waves more than once. To die would not be such a bad thing; at least I would sleep again.
I went back to the doctor today. He said there was nothing wrong again, but was worried by my loss of twenty pounds, by the marathon my heart runs, and the ocean my sweat glands exude. He told me to eat more, to exercise, keep taking the potassium bromide. He says it helps. I don’t think it does.
February 14, 2009. The walls of my room were the wrong color when I awoke yesterday. Their cheery tangerine had been replaced by dreadful red. Red like the color of blood in bread. Did I paint the walls? Why would I have, I hate the color. I couldn’t remember painting the walls and couldn’t find paint anywhere in the house. Did somebody break in while I slept another sleepless night? Impossible, I would have heard something, seen something. Curious to see if the paint was wet, I approached the wall. It was cold and dry, but when I pulled my hand away, it was still there, a shadow or silhouette still on the wall exactly where my hand had been. I went to the kitchen and got a knife. The paint peeled off the wall easily, strips as long as my arm and a foot wide fell to the floor around me. Under it, I expected to see the cheery tangerine, but no, I was mistaken. Underneath was more bread-blood red, and underneath that was just more of the same. I was overtaken by panic and began frenetically tearing all the paint off, but it was still there. I tore until I could not anymore and collapsed at the base of a wall and slept.
When I awoke, all I could see was cheery tangerine.
February 19, 2009. No more changing of the paint, but the voices, I hear them again, loud and clear, much more so than before. They aroused me out of bed and have been following me around all day ever since. Sometimes the voices die down to mere whispers, pained and anguished they fill my head with terrible thoughts and images. Still, even in their clarity, I do not understand what they are saying, but I feel it, I can feel what they are saying. It is terrible, and it makes my head hurt and my vision fail.
February 23, 2009. Still they taunt me, like a bully on the playground, unrelenting and unforgiving. I took steps today to rid myself of their chatter, but it did not work. Was the pen not long enough, or sharp enough? Should I have pressed harder? I don’t think so, as I can no longer hear the sounds of my own footsteps falling on the wood, but much more disturbing, I cannot hear the sound of my own voice anymore. I can feel it, resonating inside of my head like bees, but the actual sound is lost to me.
This pen, the one I am writing with, seems heavy and bulbous in my hands, and it presses against my fingers like it wants to escape, as if it is tired of its job. It is far too wide to have served as my instrument of failed relief. Writing now seems to be the one tangible left in my existence, the only thing that seems real. But as I sit here scribbling, the din in my head threatens to overcome my ability to think and write. Something is bound to break.
February 28, 2009. The voices have left my head finally, but now I hear them emanating from everywhere. They seem to be seeping out of my walls and floors, out of the cabinets in the kitchen and out of my dresser in my room. They speak volumes of what I do not know.
I need to eat, but everything in my house is rotting. Rotting food, rotting flesh, and rotting mind. The maggots spill out of my refrigerator on to the floor where they disappear into the cracks of the wood. I can hear them too, grinding away under the floor, their conversations focus on me, devouring me, ending this once and for all. I applaud them, in their conviction, the dedication to their goal. They will win, they will get me, maybe tonight. I say I want them to succeed, but still this evening, I will maintain a constant vigil with the shovel, and I will defend myself as necessary from their disgusting writhing white bodies, their infectious thirst for my blood and meat.
March 4, 2009. Four days, and four nights. The voices are louder now and I hear things in the house, but I don’t actually hear them. I can sense them, moving about and opening my drawers, inspecting my bookshelves. What they look for is something I cannot comprehend. The anguished screams have given away to maniacal laughter, and I find myself locked in my bedroom, awaiting their arrival, awaiting my fate. My stash of water ran out last night and most certainly I will perish unless I replenish my supplies, but that means an expedition must be launched, an expedition out of my sanctuary into the depths of the house. This is not something I look forward to.
March 5, 2009. This morning, when everything was at a relative calm, I mounted an expedition into the heart of the house for supplies. I brought my shovel with me, just in case, but hoping I wouldn’t need it. Everything in the house seemed in order and I made it to the kitchen safely. The sunlight was very bright filtering through the clerestory windows in the kitchen and it burned my eyes. Struggling to see I filled my jug with water from the faucet. It was so heavy when I lifted it out I nearly dropped it. The grinding in my jaw has stopped but now it is replaced with a near constant chatter and I feared that the sound would give my position away.
As I made my way back upstairs to my sanctuary I was again filled with an immense sense of dread. The voices intensified and came from just down the stairs behind. I panicked and spun on the stairs and slipped. I fell nearly to the bottom and hit my head hard on the last step. That’s when I saw her. Standing in the kitchen holding a knife, she was starring at me; I knew it even though she appeared to have no eyes. She ran towards me and I screamed and leapt up as fast as I could. Having dropped the shovel during my fall I had no way to defend to myself against her slashes. She caught me on the arm, the knife slicing my flesh so easily. I fell again and kicked blindly, and my foot landed amidst her midsection. Again, I stood and ran up the stairs as fast as I could and slammed the door to my bedroom. I think I passed out shortly after assuredly a result of such strenuous action in my time of weakness.
Just now, as I sit here and recall the day, blood dribbles down my arm and blots the page. As I reach for a towel to wrap my arm I can see the knife sitting a mere ten feet away, my blood still on it. How did it get in here, into my sanctuary? I am deeply troubled by today’s events.
March 10, 2009. Terrible, it is all so terrible. All I can hear is the constant roar of the voices of the inhabitants of this house, and my own sobbing. Am I even really sobbing, there are no tears. Somehow, over the past few days I was able to re-attain a supply of water. I don’t remember making the trek, and I doubt I would have tried, but I must have for hear sits my jug, now two-thirds empty. I swear it taunts me, reminding me over and over that again I will have to venture out to get more, and to get bread, what little I have that isn’t covered in mold, if I am to survive much longer.
I must find a way to escape, a way to trick my captors, or I will surely starve. My clothes don’t fit anymore and I can feel my bones grinding against atrophied muscles. My time is short, I fear soon I will no longer have the strength to even write.
March 15, 2009. I can hear them now, clear as day, right outside my door. They run their hands over the wood and they talk amongst themselves, occasionally, they make a push to get through the door and I can see it straining against its hinges and locks. They have kept me up constantly, and my water is gone. I have been unable to leave my room to acquire more, and now for four days I have been without a drop. I see the knife in the floor, where it has lain since my encounter with the woman. I think it moves closer and closer to me everyday, and I am powerless to avoid it. I no longer have the strength to drag myself away from it. Even this pen seems mighty heavy.
March 17, 2009. With the utmost certitude, this entry will be my last. My desecration is complete and the door to my room stands open. When it was opened I do not know, nor do I know what they are waiting for. The knife lies in my open hand as I write this, but I have not the strength to lift it even a mere inch off the floor.
Now I can hear them coming for me their laughter echoes up the stairs to me, it gives me assurance that the end is in fact near. I welcome it.
I have no longer any tears to shed, for am I nothing more than skin and bone.
No comments:
Post a Comment