Entry 2

Day 9 - Saturday

It’s been a while since my first entry. Every time I sit down to write I can’t. I feel depressed. And sick, always sick. I can barely keep food down. That shouldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have happened.

Every morning I wake up from what little, feverish sleep I can get, terrified to open my eyes. I don’t know why I’m so afraid, I already know he’s there. Watching me. Always. I can feel him. I can

I can taste him. Taste his presence, his impossible stare, that hatred, that fear that disgust that face that face that face.

I finally open my eyes, and the room is bright because I never turn the lights off. Not anymore. Not that it does anything, because I know he can turn them off any time he wants. And I know he’s dancing just out of sight, skipping around the shadows of the room, watching me squirm.

But I walk to the shower, and let the water try to warm my icy naked vulnerable body. The bathroom is small, and I can see the entirety of it thanks to the mirror on the wall. There’s no way he can hide in here but I know he’s here anyway, in the shadows of the cabinet, under the door, behind the mirror. The soap stings my eyes and I can’t close them. I can’t. I can’t. But I have to, they close on their own, and now I’m left in the darkness with it. It’s there. I start to cough. He’s standing right there, I know he is, in the corner, hunched over beneath the ceiling, with his head cocked to the side, watching me. Reaching out to touch me. To grab me. To take me and steal me and break me and kill me and dissect me and eat me and collect me and

I don’t know how long it was before I noticed the cold water; my shivering. I don’t know how long I stood frozen in the shower with my eyes shut so tight they hurt. I almost opened them before I remembered him, but I had to open them eventually. It took every ounce of my willpower to open my eyelids to see him again, meet his gaze, acknowledge his existence, his power. There was nothing there, but the bathroom door was open.