I.

Two days ago, this:

Eyes begin to focus; a binge gone terribly wrong. Here I am—am I?—in my room, on my bed, sheets still on, like I hadn’t even been there, and I see red in the red, in the light of the light: no sun, nothing natural; just reds and browns making rust, obscuring shadows, producing a life of its own. It’s an awful feeling; it’s an awful place: but it’s still my home.

Isn’t it?

What’s with this room? . . . It’s covered in blood and rust. . . . This is my room. . . . But what has happened? . . . This room. . . . Is it really my room? . . . It’s in terrible shape. . . . The air is so heavy . . . my head hurts.

Creepy. . . . It looks like a face.

What the hell am I thinking? . . .

On the desk is a scrapbook, full of pictures of places, familiar, yes, but I don’t recognize them; I can’t recognize them, not in a dream. I think, to myself, sometimes I say it aloud: What happened to my typewriter? It’s gone, my notes too, my files, everything. None of this is mine.

This is not my room.

The bathroom door is locked; the front door is locked; the windows are shut. Did I do all of this? This doesn’t make sense. The dream doesn’t make sense. There’s a bookshelf, but not my books. Static emitting from a radio I’ve never seen. A television in place of my record player. There are scraps of diaries lying round; I can’t read anything in them though. The pages of a fairy tale are on the coffee table. I can’t make out the title; I can’t make out the words.

*EXCURSUS (ON THE SIDE OF THE PAGE): The photos are of me, but not the ‘me’ in the dream. I realized I should’ve explained this better, sooner, but I didn’t. Regardless, you’re reading it now.

A crack in the wall—above photos that aren’t mine, from someone else’s childhood, on a cabinet, full of another’s belongings: don’t know what they are; still too blurry—looks like a face, no matter how I look at it. I reach up to touch it, but I feel nothing: no cracked pours, no cracked face. There’s a photo over the couch: 21 people, corpses, killed in various ways—I know this, somehow—surrounding a . . . bonfire? . . . in the woods. This bothers me—the ‘me’ that isn’t me—to no end: I don’t know what it means, but at the same time. . . .

The wall starts to crack—not crack, but split, it drips some viscous, black substance—opposite the television (wherever it came from), next to the photo of 21 people (whoever they are). I can’t tell what the substance is – do I even want to? My body grows weak, suddenly weak. I can’t move. Something begins to appear.

Something comes . . . out of the wall, out of that . . . goo. It begins to take shape; maybe I just see shape. It’s not something at all: It’s someone.

It comes further along, suffusing itself with the entire room, the entire apartment; the walls are no longer bloody, but are bleeding: I see very little of my surroundings, but I am cognizant, I am aware. This is really happening, I say—or maybe I just think it; maybe I just thought it. This is really happening. This can’t really be happening. Of course it is. Of course it isn’t. The crackling sound persists; the crepitating noise pierces my ears; something like smoke burns my lungs. Weaker, weakening, I collapse, as the entity separates from the stringing substance from which it came; black liquid—it can’t be liquid—black bile dribbles from the walls, dripping, consuming the floor; black bile drips from the . . . creature. It approaches, crawling along the floor, its shrieks enough to shun a man to suicide. I cower next to a chair, incapable of moving under my own volition. Its jaws widen; my neck jerks uncontrollably, a paroxysm of pathos. I scream in hopes of awakening, praying this is only a dream.

And all goes black. And I wake up.

It’s only a dream. I know this now. Two days ago: that. And yesterday: the same. I want to leave. I want to be allowed to leave.

*EXCURSUS (ON A SMALL NOTECARD INSERTED INTO THE JOURNAL): I wrote that yesterday. I didn’t think to write it until then; I didn’t think to write anything. I found an old journal in my closet from a few years ago; thought I’d dust it off, document what happens, how & when it all began. Just in case. I don’t know how it happened, but I wanted to understand it myself. More importantly: how to stop it; how to get out. Well, I know now, I’ll write more when I come back from that place. The journal incidently has “DREAMS” printed on the cover, as the title, as a journal for dreams. I can’t recall where it came from, or why I bought it. It’s not important.

This little bit here I wrote after I’d written what’s back there. Just for whoever reads this later on, if I never make it out. I scribbledBUT NOT MINE next to DREAMS, if you’re wondering.

When I woke up from that dream—that nightmare; recurring; possessing—I awoke in a chill: It was cooler inside, cooler than yesterday. Everything else: normal. Not a thing had changed in three days – why should it? Three days ago is when it all changed though, to something else entirely. Not like the room in my dream, but not unlike it either.

I can’t do anything. I can’t get out. I can’t get anyone to hear me when I yell; I must look like a fool through the windows, pounding on the glass, screaming like a madman—Help!’s and Get me the hell out of here!’s—if only someone could see me. The neighbors walk past the door; they never hear a thing; never even react. I’ve even gone so far as to slip notes under the door, but I don’t know what’s become of them: I never see the neighbors pick any of them up. I can’t even remember what I wrote on any of’em. Something hurried, inane. The first day I spent panicking, struggling to breath; the air was heavy enough—it still is—to suffocate; like a crushed sternum. This feeling: No more inured to it than I was the day before; I can’t imagine it getting better any time soon. It’s like that dream, that nightmare. Waking up is never more relieving, but never any less difficult. I dread the pillow now; I fear sleep.

I need to eat, but I must conserve as well. Who knows how long this will last. Who knows how long.

I’m too tired to write any more.

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