it says lost. it means alot to me. i did once i stopped interacting with my father. it was just a point of self realization for me. i realized i was all i needed to survive in life. im self dependent and whenever i think im lost or totally fucked i just realize i still have my greatest ally: myself

Psychosis... sorry its a bit long

I’m not sure why I’m writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I’ve just noticed some odd things. It’s not that I don’t trust the computer… I just… need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can’t be deleted or… changed… not that that’s happened. It’s just… everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things…

I’m starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that’s the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven’t been out in a few days because I’ve been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don’t think that’s it.

I’m not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can’t even define what it is. Maybe I just haven’t talked to anyone in awhile. That’s the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they’ve simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last e-mail I got from anybody was a friend saying he’d talk to me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I’d call with my cell phone, but reception’s terrible down here. Yeah, that’s it. I just need to call someone. I’m going to go outside.

—

Well, that didn’t work so well. As the tingle of fear fades, I’m feeling a little ridiculous for being scared at all. I looked in the mirror before I went out, but I didn’t shave the two-day stubble I’ve grown. I figured I was just going out for a quick cell phone call. I did change my shirt, though, because it was lunchtime, and I guessed that I’d run into at least one person I knew. That didn’t end up happening. I wish it did.

When I went out, I opened the door to my small apartment slowly. A small feeling of apprehension had somehow already lodged itself in me, for some indefinable reason. I chalked it up to having not spoken to anyone but myself for a day or two. I peered down the dingy grey hallway, made dingier by the fact that it was a basement hallway. On one end, a large metal door led to the building’s furnace room. It was locked, of course. Two dreary soda machines stood by it; I bought a soda from one the first day I moved in, but it had a two year old expiration date. I’m fairly sure nobody knows those machines are even down here, or my cheap landlady just doesn’t care to get them restocked.

I closed my door softly, and walked the other direction, taking care not to make a sound. I have no idea why I chose to do that, but it was fun giving in to the strange impulse not to break the droning hum of the soda machines, at least for the moment. I got to the stairwell, and took the stairs up to the building’s front door. I looked through the heavy door’s small square window, and received quite the shock: it was definitely not lunchtime. City-gloom hung over the dark street outside, and the traffic lights at the intersection in the distance blinked yellow. Dim clouds, purple and black from the glow of the city, hung overhead. Nothing moved, save the few sidewalk trees that shifted in the wind. I remember shivering, though I wasn’t cold. Maybe it was the wind outside. I could vaguely hear it through the heavy metal door, and I knew it was that unique kind of late-night wind, the kind that was constant, cold, and quiet, save for the rhythmic music it made as it passed through countless unseen tree leaves.

I decided not to go outside.

Instead, I lifted my cell phone to the door’s little window, and checked the signal meter. The bars filled up the meter, and I smiled. Time to hear someone else’s voice, I remember thinking, relieved. It was such a strange thing, to be afraid of nothing. I shook my head, laughing at myself silently. I hit speed-dial for my best friend Amy’s number, and held the phone up to my ear. It rang once… but then it stopped. Nothing happened. I listened to silence for a good twenty seconds, then hung up. I frowned, and looked at the signal meter again – still full. I went to dial her number again, but then my phone rang in my hand, startling me. I put it up to my ear.

“Hello?” I asked, immediately fighting down a small shock at hearing the first spoken voice in days, even if it was my own. I had gotten used to the droning hum of the building’s inner workings, my computer, and the soda machines in the hallway. There was no response to my greeting at first, but then, finally, a voice came.

“Hey,” said a clear male voice, obviously of college age, like me. “Who’s this?”

“John,” I replied, confused.

“Oh, sorry, wrong number,” he replied, then hung up.

I lowered the phone slowly and leaned against the thick brick wall of the stairwell. That was strange. I looked at my received calls list, but the number was unfamiliar. Before I could think on it further, the phone rang loudly, shocking me yet again. This time, I looked at the caller before I answered. It was another unfamiliar number. This time, I held the phone up to my ear, but said nothing. I heard nothing but the general background noise of a phone. Then, a familiar voice broke my tension.

“John?” was the single word, in Amy’s voice.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Hey, it’s you,” I replied.

“Who else would it be?” she responded. “Oh, the number. I’m at a party on Seventh Street, and my phone died just as you called me. This is someone else’s phone, obviously.”

“Oh, ok,” I said.

“Where are you?” she asked.

My eyes glanced over the drab white-washed cylinder block walls and the heavy metal door with its small window.

“At my building,” I sighed. “Just feeling cooped up. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

“You should come here,” she said, laughing.

“Nah, I don’t feel like looking for some strange place by myself in the middle of the night,” I said, looking out the window at the silent windy street that secretly scared me just a tiny bit. “I think I’m just going to keep working or go to bed.”

“Nonsense!” she replied. “I can come get you! Your building is close to Seventh Street, right?”

“How drunk are you?” I asked lightheartedly. “You know where I live.”

“Oh, of course,” she said abruptly. “I guess I can’t get there by walking, huh?”

“You could if you wanted to waste half an hour,” I told her.

“Right,” she said. “Ok, have to go, good luck with your work!”

I lowered the phone once more, looking at the numbers flash as the call ended. Then, the droning silence suddenly reasserted itself in my ears. The two strange calls and the eerie street outside just drove home my aloneness in this empty stairwell. Perhaps from having seen too many scary movies, I had the sudden inexplicable idea that something could look in the door’s window and see me, some sort of horrible entity that hovered at the edge of aloneness, just waiting to creep up on unsuspecting people that strayed too far from other human beings. I knew the fear was irrational, but nobody else was around, so… I jumped down the stairs, ran down the hallway into my room, and closed the door as swiftly as I could while still staying silent. Like I said, I feel a little ridiculous for being scared of nothing, and the fear has already faded. Writing this down helps a lot – it makes me realize that nothing is wrong. It filters out half-formed thoughts and fears and leaves only cold, hard facts. It’s late, I got a call from a wrong number, and Amy’s phone died, so she called me back from another number. Nothing strange is happening.

Still, there was something a little off about that conversation. I know it could have just been the alcohol she’d had… or was it even her that seemed off to me? Or was it… yes, that was it! I didn’t realize it until this moment, writing these things down. I knew writing things down would help. She said she was at a party, but I only heard silence in the background! Of course, that doesn’t mean anything in particular, as she could have just gone outside to make the call. No… that couldn’t be it either. I didn’t hear the wind! I need to see if the wind is still blowing!

Monday

I forgot to finish writing last night. I’m not sure what I expected to see when I ran up the stairwell and looked out the heavy metal door’s window. I’m feeling ridiculous. Last night’s fear seems hazy and unreasonable to me now. I can’t wait to go out into the sunlight. I’m going to check my email, shave, shower, and finally get out of here! Wait… I think I heard something.

—

It was thunder. That whole sunlight and fresh air thing didn’t happen. I went out into the stairwell and up the stairs, only to find disappointment. The heavy metal door’s little window showed only flowing water, as torrential rain slammed against it. Only a very dim, gloomy light filtered in through the rain, but at least I knew it was daytime, even if it was a grey, sickly, wet day. I tried looking out the window and waiting for lightning to illuminate the gloom, but the rain was too heavy and I couldn’t make out anything more than vague weird shapes moving at odd angles in the waves washing down the window. Disappointed, I turned around, but I didn’t want to go back to my room. Instead, I wandered further up the stairs, past the first floor, and the second. The stairs ended at the third floor, the highest floor in the building. I looked through the glass that ran up the outer wall of the stairwell, but it was that warped, thick kind that scatters the light, not that there was much to see through the rain to begin with.

I opened the stairwell door and wandered down the hallway. The ten or so thick wooden doors, painted blue a long time ago, were all closed. I listened as I walked, but it was the middle of the day, so I wasn’t surprised that I heard nothing but the rain outside. As I stood there in the dim hallway, listening to the rain, I had the strange fleeting impression that the doors were standing like silent granite monoliths erected by some ancient forgotten civilization for some unfathomable guardian purpose. Lightning flashed, and I could have sworn that, for just a moment, the old grainy blue wood looked just like rough stone. I laughed at myself for letting my imagination get the best of me, but then it occurred to me that the dim gloom and lightning must mean there was a window somewhere in the hallway. A vague memory surfaced, and I suddenly recalled that the third floor had an alcove and an inset window halfway down the floor’s hallway.

Excited to look out into the rain and possibly see another human being, I quickly walked over to the alcove, finding the large thin glass window. Rain washed down it, as with the front door’s window, but I could open this one. I reached a hand out to slide it open, but hesitated. I had the strangest feeling that if I opened that window, I would see something absolutely horrifying on the other side. Everything’s been so odd lately… so I came up with a plan, and I came back here to get what I needed. I don’t seriously think anything will come of it, but I’m bored, it’s raining, and I’m going stir crazy. I came back to get my webcam. The cord isn’t long enough to reach the third floor by any means, so instead I’m going to hide it between the two soda machines in the dark end of my basement hallway, run the wire along the wall and under my door, and put black duct tape over the wire to blend it in with the black plastic strip that runs along the base of the hallway’s walls. I know this is silly, but I don’t have anything better to do…

Well, nothing happened. I propped open the hallway-to-stairwell door, steeled myself, then flung the heavy front door wide open and ran like hell down the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I watched the webcam on my computer intently, seeing the hallway outside my door and most of the stairwell. I’m watching it right now, and I don’t see anything interesting. I just wish the camera’s position was different, so that I could see out the front door. Hey! Somebody’s online!

—

I got out an older, less functional webcam that I had in my closet to video chat with my friend online. I couldn’t really explain to him why I wanted to video chat, but it felt good to see another person’s face. He couldn’t talk very long, and we didn’t talk about anything meaningful, but I feel much better. My strange fear has almost passed. I would feel completely better, but there was something… odd… about our conversation. I know that I’ve said that everything has seemed odd, but… still, he was very vague in his responses. I can’t recall one specific thing that he said… no particular name, or place, or event… but he did ask for my email address to keep in touch. Wait, I just got an email.

I’m about to go out. I just got an email from Amy that asked me to meet her for dinner at ‘the place we usually go to.’ I do love pizza, and I’ve just been eating random food from my poorly stocked fridge for days, so I can’t wait. Again, I feel ridiculous about the odd couple of days I’ve been having. I should destroy this journal when I get back. Oh, another email.

—

Oh my god. I almost left the email and opened the door. I almost opened the door. I almost opened the door, but I read the email first! It was from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time, and it was sent to a huge number of emails that must have been every person he had saved in his address list. It had no subject, and it said, simply:

"seen with your own eyes don’t trust them they"

What the hell is that supposed to mean? The words shock me, and I keep going over and over them. Is it a desperate email sent just as… something happened? The words are obviously cut off without finishing! On any other day I would have dismissed this as spam from a computer virus or something, but the words… seen with your own eyes! I can’t help but read over this journal and think back on the last few days and realize that I have not seen another person with my own eyes or talked to another person face to face. The webcam conversation with my friend was so strange, so vague, so… eerie, now that I think about it. Was it eerie? Or is the fear clouding my memory? My mind toys with the progression of events I’ve written here, pointing out that I have not been presented with one single fact that I did not specifically give out unsuspectingly. The random ‘wrong number’ that got my name and the subsequent strange return call from Amy, the friend that asked for my email address… I messaged him first when I saw him online! And then I got my first email a few minutes after that conversation! Oh my god! That phone call with Amy! I said over the phone – I said that I was within half an hour’s walk of Seventh Street! They know I’m near there! What if they’re trying to find me?! Where is everyone else? Why haven’t I seen or heard anyone else in days?

No, no, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. I need to calm down. This madness needs to end.

—

I don’t know what to think. I ran about my apartment furiously, holding my cell phone up to every corner to see if it got a signal through the heavy walls. Finally, in the tiny bathroom, near one ceiling corner, I got a single bar. Holding my phone there, I sent a text message to every number in my list. Not wanting to betray anything about my unfounded fears, I simply sent:

You seen anyone face to face lately?

At that point, I just wanted any reply back. I didn’t care what the reply was, or if I embarrassed myself. I tried to call someone a few times, but I couldn’t get my head up high enough, and if I brought my cell phone down even an inch, it lost signal. Then I remembered the computer, and rushed over to it, instant messaging everyone online. Most were idle or away from their computer. Nobody responded. My messages grew more frantic, and I started telling people where I was and to stop by in person for a host of barely passable reasons. I didn’t care about anything by that point. I just needed to see another person!

I also tore apart my apartment looking for something that I might have missed; some way to contact another human being without opening the door. I know it’s crazy, I know it’s unfounded, but what if? WHAT IF? I just need to be sure! I taped the phone to the ceiling in case

Tuesday

THE PHONE RANG! Exhausted from last night’s rampage, I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the phone ringing, and ran into the bathroom, stood on the toilet, and flipped open the phone taped to the ceiling. It was Amy, and I feel so much better. She was really worried about me, and apparently had been trying to contact me since the last time I talked to her. She’s coming over now, and, yes, she knows where I am without me telling her. I feel so embarrassed. I am definitely throwing this journal away before anyone sees it. I don’t even know why I’m writing in it now. Maybe it’s just because it’s the only communication I’ve had at all since… god knows when. I look like hell, too. I looked in the mirror before I came back in here. My eyes are sunken, my stubble is thicker, and I just look generally unhealthy.

My apartment is trashed, but I’m not going to clean it up. I think I need someone else to see what I’ve been through. These past few days have NOT been normal. I am not one to imagine things. I know I have been the victim of extreme probability. I probably missed seeing another person a dozen times. I just happened to go out when it was late at night, or the middle of the day when everyone was gone. Everything’s perfectly fine, I know this now. Plus, I found something in the closet last night that has helped me tremendously: a television! I set it up just before I wrote this, and it’s on in the background. Television has always been an escape for me, and it reminds me that there’s a world beyond these dingy brick walls.

I’m glad Amy’s the only one that responded to me after last night’s frantic pestering of everyone I could contact. She’s been my best friend for years. She doesn’t know it, but I count the day that I met her among one of the few moments of true happiness in my life. I remember that warm summer day fondly. It seems a different reality from this dark, rainy, lonely place. I feel like I spent days sitting in that playground, much too old to play, just talking with her and hanging around doing nothing at all. I still feel like I can go back to that moment sometimes, and it reminds me that this damn place is not all that there is… finally, a knock on the door!

—

I thought it was odd that I couldn’t see her through the camera I hid between the two soda machines. I figured that it was bad positioning, like when I couldn’t see out the front door. I should have known. I should have known! After the knock, I yelled through the door jokingly that I had a camera between the soda machines, because I was embarrassed myself that I had taken this paranoia so far. After I did that, I saw her image walk over to the camera and look down at it. She smiled and waved.

“Hey!” she said to the camera brightly, giving it a wry look.

“It’s weird, I know,” I said into the mic attached to my computer. “I’ve had a weird few days.”

“Must have,” she replied. “Open the door, John.”

I hesitated. How could I be sure?

“Hey, humor me a second here,” I told her through the mic. “Tell me one thing about us. Just prove to me you’re you.”

She gave the camera a weird look.

“Um, alright,” she said slowly, thinking. “We met randomly at a playground when we were both way too old to be there?”

I sighed deeply as reality returned and fear faded. God, I’d been so ridiculous. Of course it was Amy! That day wasn’t anywhere in the world except in my memory. I’d never even mentioned it to anyone, not out of embarrassment, but out of a strange secret nostalgia and a longing for those days to return. If there was some unknown force at work trying to trick me, as I feared, there was no way they could know about that day.

“Haha, alright, I’ll explain everything,” I told her. “Be right there.”

I ran to my small bathroom and fixed my hair as best I could. I looked like hell, but she would understand. Snickering at my own unbelievable behavior and the mess I’d made of the place, I walked to the door. I put my hand on the doorknob and gave the mess one last look. So ridiculous, I thought. My eyes traced over the half-eaten food lying on the ground, the overflowing trash bin, and the bed I’d tipped to the side looking for… God knows what. I almost turned to the door and opened it, but my eyes fell on one last thing: the old webcam, the one I used for that eerily vacant chat with my friend.

Its silent black sphere lay haphazardly tossed to the side, its lens pointed at the table where this journal lay. An overwhelming terror took me as I realized that if something could see through that camera, it would have seen what I just wrote about that day. I asked her for any one thing about us, and she chose the only thing in the world that I thought they or it did not know… but IT DID! IT DID KNOW! IT COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ME THE WHOLE TIME!

I didn’t open the door. I screamed. I screamed in uncontrollable terror. I stomped on the old webcam on the floor. The door shook, and the doorknob tried to turn, but I didn’t hear Amy’s voice through the door. Was the basement door, made to keep out drafts, too thick? Or was Amy not outside? What could have been trying to get in, if not her? What the hell is out there?! I saw her on my computer through the camera outside, I heard her on the speakers through the camera outside, but was it real?! How can I know?! She’s gone now – I screamed, and shouted for help! I piled up everything in my apartment against the front door –

Friday

At least I think that it’s Friday. I broke everything electronic. I smashed my computer to pieces. Every single thing on there could have been accessed by network access, or worse, altered. I’m a programmer, I know. Every little piece of information I gave out since this started – my name, my email, my location – none of it came back from outside until I gave it out. I’ve been going over and over what I wrote. I’ve been pacing back and forth, alternating between stark terror and overpowering disbelief. Sometimes I’m absolutely certain some phantom entity is dead set on the simple goal of getting me to go outside. Back to the beginning, with the phone call from Amy, she was effectively asking me to open the door and go outside.

I keep running through it in my head. One point of view says I’ve acted like a madman, and all of this is the extreme convergence of probability – never going outside at the right times by pure luck, never seeing another person by pure chance, getting a random nonsense email from some computer virus at just the right time. The other point of view says that extreme convergence of probability is the reason that whatever’s out there hasn’t gotten me already. I keep thinking: I never opened the window on the third floor. I never opened the front door, until that incredibly stupid stunt with the hidden camera after which I ran straight to my room and slammed the door. I haven’t opened my own solid door since I flung open the front door of the building. Whatever’s out there – if anything’s out there – never made an ‘appearance’ in the building before I opened the front door. Maybe the reason it wasn’t in the building already was that it was elsewhere getting everyone else… and then it waited, until I betrayed my existence by trying to call Amy… a call which didn’t work, until it called me and asked me my name…

Terror literally overwhelms me every time I try to fit the pieces of this nightmare together. That email – short, cut off – was it from someone trying to get word out? Some friendly voice desperately trying to warn me before it came? Seen with my own eyes, don’t trust them – exactly what I’ve been so suspicious of. It could have masterful control of all things electronic, practicing its insidious deception to trick me into coming outside. Why can’t it get in? It knocked on the door – it must have some solid presence… the door… the image of those doors in the upper hallway as guardian monoliths flashes back in my mind every time I trace this path of thoughts. If there is some phantom entity trying to get me to go outside, maybe it can’t get through doors. I keep thinking back over all the books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen, trying to generate some explanation for this. Doors have always been such intense foci of human imagination, always seen as wards or portals of special importance. Or perhaps the door is just too thick? I know that I couldn’t bash through any of the doors in this building, let alone the heavy basement ones. Aside from that, the real question is, why does it even want me? If it just wanted to kill me, it could do it any number of ways, including just waiting until I starve to death. What if it doesn’t want to kill me? What if it has some far more horrific fate in store for me? God, what can I do to escape this nightmare?!

A knock on the door…

—

I told the people on the other side of the door I need a minute to think and I’ll come out. I’m really just writing this down so I can figure out what to do. At least this time I heard their voices. My paranoia – and yes, I recognize I’m being paranoid – has me thinking of all sorts of ways that their voices could be faked electronically. There could be nothing but speakers outside, simulating human voices. Did it really take them three days to come talk to me? Amy is supposedly out there, along with two policemen and a psychiatrist. Maybe it took them three days to think of what to say to me – the psychiatrist’s claim could be pretty convincing, if I decided to think this has all been a crazy misunderstanding, and not some entity trying to trick me into opening the door.

The psychiatrist had an older voice, authoritarian but still caring. I liked it. I’m desperate just to see someone with my own eyes! He said I have something called cyber-psychosis, and I’m just one of a nationwide epidemic of thousands of people having breakdowns triggered by a suggestive email that ‘got through somehow.’ I swear he said ‘got through somehow.’ I think he means spread throughout the country inexplicably, but I’m incredibly suspicious that the entity slipped up and revealed something. He said I am part of a wave of ‘emergent behavior’, that a lot of other people are having the same problem with the same fears, even though we’ve never communicated.

That neatly explains the strange email about eyes that I got. I didn’t get the original triggering email. I got a descendant of it - my friend could have broken down too, and tried to warn everyone he knew against his paranoid fears. That’s how the problem spreads, the psychiatrist claims. I could have spread it, too, with my texts and instant messages online to everybody I know. One of those people might be melting down right now, after being triggered by something I sent them, something they might interpret any way that they want, something like a text saying seen anyone face to face lately? The psychiatrist told me that he didn’t want to ‘lose another one’, that people like me are intelligent, and that’s our downfall. We draw connections so well that we draw them even when they shouldn’t be there. He said it’s easy to get caught up in paranoia in our fast paced world, a constantly changing place where more and more of our interaction is simulated…

I have to give him one thing. It’s a great explanation. It neatly explains everything. It perfectly explains everything, in fact. I have every reason to shake off this nightmarish fear that some thing or consciousness or being out there wants me to open the door so it can capture me for some horrible fate worse than death. It would be foolish, after hearing that explanation, to stay in here until I starve to death just to spite the entity that might have got everyone else. It would be foolish to think that, after hearing that explanation, I might be one of the last people left alive on an empty world, hiding in my secure basement room, spiting some unthinkable deceptive entity just by refusing to be captured. It’s a perfect explanation for every single strange thing I’ve seen or heard, and I have every reason in the world to let all of my fears go, and open the door.

That’s exactly why I’m not going to.

How can I be sure?! How can I know what’s real and what’s deception? All of these damn things with their wires and their signals that originate from some unseen origin! They’re not real, I can’t be sure! Signals through a camera, faked video, deceptive phone calls, emails! Even the television, lying broken on the floor – how can I possibly know it’s real? It’s just signals, waves, light… the door! It’s bashing on the door! It’s trying to get in! What insane mechanical contrivance could it be using to simulate the sound of men attacking the heavy wood so well?! At least I’ll finally see it with my own eyes… there’s nothing left in here for it to deceive me with, I’ve ripped apart everything else! It can’t deceive my eyes, can it? Seen with your own eyes don’t trust them they… wait… was that desperate message telling me to trust my eyes, or warning me about my eyes too?! Oh my god, what’s the difference between a camera and my eyes? They both turn light into electrical signals – they’re the same! I can’t be deceived! I have to be sure! I have to be sure!

Date Unknown

I calmly asked for paper and a pen, day in and day out, until it finally gave them to me. Not that it matters. What am I going to do? Poke my eyes out? The bandages feel like part of me now. The pain is gone. I figure this will be one of my last chances to write legibly, as, without my sight to correct mistakes, my hands will slowly forget the motions involved. This is a sort of self-indulgence, this writing… it’s a relic of another time, because I’m certain everyone left in the world is dead… or something far worse.

I sit against the padded wall day in and day out. The entity brings me food and water. It masks itself as a kind nurse, as an unsympathetic doctor. I think it knows that my hearing has sharpened considerably now that I live in darkness. It fakes conversations in the hallways, on the off chance that I might overhear. One of the nurses talks about having a baby soon. One of the doctors lost his wife in a car accident. None of it matters, none of it is real. None of it gets to me, not like she does.

That’s the worst part, the part I almost can’t handle. The thing comes to me, masquerading as Amy. Its recreation is perfect. It sounds exactly like Amy, feels exactly like her. It even produces a reasonable facsimile of tears that it makes me feel on its lifelike cheeks. When it first dragged me here, it told me all the things I wanted to hear. It told me that she loved me, that she had always loved me, that it didn’t understand why I did this, that we could still have a life together, if only I would stop insisting that I was being deceived. It wanted me to believe… no, it needed me to believe that she was real.

I almost fell for it. I really did. I doubted myself for the longest time. In the end, though, it was all too perfect, too flawless, and too real. The false Amy used to come every day, and then every week, and finally stopped coming altogether… but I don’t think the entity will give up. I think the waiting game is just another one of its gambits. I will resist it for the rest of my life, if I have to. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the world, but I do know that this thing needs me to fall for its deceptions. If it needs that, then maybe, just maybe, I am a thorn in its agenda. Maybe Amy is still alive out there somewhere, kept alive only by my will to resist the deceiver. I hold on to that hope, rocking back and forth in my cell to pass the time. I will never give in. I will never break. I am… a hero!

==

The doctor read the paper the patient had scribbled on. It was barely readable, written in the shaky script of one who could not see. He wanted to smile at the man’s steadfast resolve, a reminder of the human will to survive, but he knew that the patient was completely delusional.

After all, a sane man would have fallen for the deception long ago.

The doctor wanted to smile. He wanted to whisper words of encouragement to the delusional man. He wanted to scream, but the nerve filaments wrapped around his head and into his eyes made him do otherwise. His body walked into the cell like a puppet, and told the patient, once more, that he was wrong, and that there was nobody trying to deceive him.

I reach out. Nothing. The air whistles over my fingers, like icy cold feathers. I stretch my arms up high, I feel every inch of the water pressing down on me. I look around as the water laps against my neck; I search for the shoreline I swam from. Not that I am planning to swim back; I will keep floating and breathing until the sun goes down. The sea is flat but I can’t see the horizon anymore; and even if I tried to swim back I wouldn’t know which direction to go.
It is silent. Cold and silent.

I take a deep breath as the water drags me down, my hair tangling around my face like seaweed; my clothes floating around me as if I were floating in the sky. I feel like I am floating. My eyes are open as I fall beneath the surface, and I imagine I can see everything; fish, coral seaweed, reefs, colour, light and wonder. But my eyes are blurry and all there is below is a few hundred metres of water.
The sea pushes me up again and I try to clear my eyes to look at the sky. The crimson sunset reflects off the water, mirrored all around me like a sea of colour. I am floating in the sky; free; happy.

I think this is what I was looking for. If only I could freeze this moment and stay here forever, in this half-word somewhere between darkness and light; in the grey space between life and death.

The waves begin to roll. I watch them sweep gently across the flat plane of the ocean, and imagine them crashing onto the empty shores.
I am tired. My legs hurt. My arms hurt. My lungs hurt and I hurt. I can’t keep swimming forever.
The sun dips lower, kissing the sea as it slowly disappears below the horizon, leaving a thousand brilliant colours in its wake.

I am tired. I reach up to the sky and try to grip the darkness as it descends; something to hold on to. My hands close around nothing as I’m pulled under the blanket of waves, and my lungs fill with water.

Silence filled the room. A lingering glance at the corner echoed the fear of the darkness that was beginning to descend, a blanket of thick fear that trapped the light. Shadows flickered over the lampshade in the corner, washing the walls with the faint touch of the streetlights. The yellow tinge of light illuminated the stains on the wall, the dark red crusting over the cream hotel walls.

The rustling of mice across the floor as they skittered across the room, crawling over and around the body, the glittering stones that sat in her eye sockets empty reminders of the past.

I guess, in the end, that’s all there is to life. Empty shells, empty promises, and empty eyes; and a body lying in an empty hotel room like leftover trash.

Broken bones, broken windows and broken hearts; a record skipping over the same painful track again and again.

It is 2am and you lie awake staring at the ceiling. You feel empty, and at the same time as if you were filled with concrete. The weight forces you down and pulls you under, you’re drowning in a sea that you’ve created. And as wretched as you feel, you can’t bring tears to your eyes; you don’t have the energy, and you can’t see the point of feeling sad anyway. ‘I don’t really feel sad,’, you think to yourself, ‘I don’t really feel…anything.’

And so you cut and you starve and you try time and time again to die, you’re running out of options and you’re running out of time, you don’t want to be alive but you don’t think that you want to die.

A thousand thoughts run through your head as you lie there. You’re weighted down by your mistakes; by everyone you’ve let down, by everything you haven’t done right.

Your arms are heavy; they lie by your side. Your legs feel as if they were made of both cotton wool and stones, a strange feeling of the skin separating from the bone. Your pulse pounds through your chest, slowing each breathe. You count the seconds as they pass; as they turn into minutes; hours.

Outside the moon turns the darkness into something more familiar, something like what you are used to in the light. You try to direct your eyes down to the window but all of your energy seems to have disappeared, as if you haven’t slept in years. Your eyelids feel heavy, the ceiling dances above your head.

Everything descends, the walls come in closer, pulling you to them. You feel sick, and you know that you would vomit if you could, but it’s all you can do to physically keep your heart beating. You struggle to breathe through the bile rising in your throat; your stomach burns and you try to shut it out as you close your eyes.

The morning comes. The sun rises and lights up the house through the fog, the sun streaming in through the crack in the blinds. Your face is cold against the light; your shadow doesn’t move.

The dog walks into the room and nudges at your arm, hanging out of the bed; he whimpers. An empty bottle of pills falls to the floor and the sun flitters over the paper beside you on the pillow.

Blood and vomit stain your bed, your mouth spilling over with both.

The sun sets and rises, and sets again.

The dog walks around, lost. The dog drinks the water left in his bowl. The dog eats all the food he can find. The dog drinks the last of the water in the toilet.

The dog lies down with you, and the sun sets again.

Eric Hunter

Born in London in 1879, Eric Hunter began his reign of terror at only 14 years old; making him the youngest serial killer to be executed via the death sentence.
He grew up in a small townhouse with his alcoholic mother Margaret, his abusive father Henry, and three younger brothers.

Eric Hunter kept a journal from the age of 11; which continued up until his death in 1904. Its’ chilling contents spoke of his hatred for the world and then his hatred for mankind and society. Later he wrote about all of his murders in graphic detail.

 Shortly after his 14^th birthday ,(1893), he fought with his younger brother over something as trivial as vegetables; below is a journal entry from that day:
“He is emotionally and physically stupid, what wretch of a brother he is. I could kill him, you know. I’ve been thinking and I think that this is the way. He wants the fucking carrots he can have them.”

Later that night he strangled his brother to death and buried his body under the vegetable patch in their neighbours’ garden. His body wasn’t discovered for a year.
His mother, distraught at the loss of her son, drank herself into a stupor and Eric pushed her down the stairs, where she broke her neck. “This is a start. I have rid the world of some evil. If only I could kill the human race as a whole. Then I would be making a difference; my only fear is being caught before I can finish the job.” The death of his mother was treated as an accident.
Within the year he had made serious plans to burn down his house, and on Christmas night he carried out those plans.

“What a great way to fill out Christmas,” He wrote, “The best gift of all is the silence, there is no more problems and my fucker of a father will not make me live in fear. He is gone and they are gone, everyone is gone. So I will continue my journey.”
He continued speaking of this ‘journey’ throughout the rest of his journals; ultimately it was a plan to rid the world of mankind and by doing so, ‘free the world of the filth that inhabited it’.

It was 1896, and Eric was wandering the streets of London carrying out his ‘plan’. In less than six years, he had written of killing over 30 people, 14 women and 16 men.
He was only ever charged for killing 13.
Whilst convicted and charged of murder, he continued writing in his journals in prison; never speaking of prison life but continuing to write of his ‘plans’ and the ‘journey that had been cut short’. The final entry in his journal reads:
“It is July 7^th, 1904. Today I will die. I do not fear death, and I am glad to rid the world of another human body; a shell of existence. I have no regrets – really, my only regret is that I could not continue my journey. I hope that somebody will take my plan, continue in my footsteps; and free the world.
Lastly, everything I have ever written is nothing but the truth. I am assuming that someone will read this, and if that is you, I applaud you for getting so far into my journey. I pass down to you my gift to society; the ability to rid the world of evil. You can make a difference. Every drop of water in the sea is a difference. Every penny in my pocket makes a difference. Every empty body makes a difference.

You have the power.
Sincerely,
Eric Hunter
July 7 1904.”

He was executed at 25 years of age.

#3

Her life didn’t flash infront of her. There was no clash of thunder and downpour or rain, no great dramatic music. There were no crowds of crying people, mourning the loss. There was nothing. Just her and the gun; and in that moment she knew she was all alone in life.

Nobody burst into the room at the last moment, breaking down the door to save her from herself. There was no perfectly timed phone call from someone who only wanted to listen. Because nobody knew, nobody wanted to know, and nobody cared.

She didn’t cry. She didnt proclaim her hate for the world or the injustice of life.

She just put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

Short Story 2

Six years. Ellen shuddered. Six years she had lived below the blood and gore; beneath the pain and the horror that came from the sick and twisted mind of Thomas Brandy.

The same Thomas Brandy she had greeted every few days when they left the apartment block at the same time. The same Thomas Brandy who had, a few times, sat out on her porch with her for a smoke. The same Thomas Brandy that she had left alone in her apartment for less than a ten minutes, to watch her baby, while she ran garbage to the garbage chute down the hall.

Another shiver ran down her spine and she felt sick.

It could have been her. Any of those mutilated bodies found up in his apartment could have been her.

Breathing deeply, she tried to calm herself as she reached for another roll of packing tape, to seal the last couple of boxes.  Her apartment was almost completely bare now, minus the bed and table.

The truck would be here in the morning. She glanced over to Teal, sleeping in an open suitcase. Teal was just short of twenty-four months old; the only lasting reminder Ellen had of her late husband.

She stood up slowly, her hand brushing the newspaper that still lay on the table from a couple of days ago. She flicked her eyes over the front page and the headline still made her jumpy and nervous. "Twenty Nine Mutilated Corpses Found In Mans Apartment”.

She glanced at the ceiling. She had been assured by police that the room above her was in the process of being sterilised; but somehow, she still expected blood to drip from her ceiling like a bad horror movie.

Teal whimpered in her sleep, then began the crying of an infant that had no other way of communication.

“mummy, mummy,” she began to cry. Ellen dragged her eyes away from the ceiling and walked over to her.

“There, there,” She comforted her, holding her on her shoulder as she paced the room.

The night wore on.

The sun streamed through the window, throwing beams of light around the room. Ellen rolled over and rubbed her eyes. She had slept in her clothes last night, forgetting to leave out pyjamas before sealing all the packing boxes. Teal was still sleeping soundly in the small suitcase that Ellen had set on the floor for her.

She dragged herself out of bed and walked over to the window, taking one last look at the city below.

She used to think it was so fantastic to live in the big city. But now, as she looked below, sure, she still saw the clean, glinting windows of the thousands of high-rises that led into the horizon, and the fluorescent signs that decorated the sides of buildings and the streets below, which, even though it was still quite early in the morning, were bustling with life and excitement.

But now Ellen could also see the underdog of murder and crime which lay below.

Her phone rang. She flipped it open and put it to her ear.

“Ellen…”  The voice purred into her ear like molten lead.

“Ellen…. How are you?” She didn’t reply, trying to place the voice.  “As you may have noticed,” the voice continued, “I have been away for most of this last week for business matters. Needless to say, I will, of course, be returning. Would you be interested in joining me for some tea upon my arrival home?”

Ellen sat down on the edge of the bed, “I’m sorry sir,” she began, “but I cant recognise your voice. The phone line here’s awful bad. Who are you?”

She heard the man on the other end chuckle.

“Why, Ellen. It’s me. Thomas.”

Her heart hammered in her chest and her palms began to sweat, her fingers shook as she held the phone to her ear.

“Thomas. I’m sorry but I don’t know a Thomas. You must have the wrong number; if you-” She was cut short by his voice. His tone had changed to a more serious one, “Ellen. How rude of you to forget our friendship. I’ll have to help you to remember. I should be returning home shortly, I’ll drop by when I get in, shall I? Wonderfull. Thankyou for your time, Ellen.”

He hung up. Ellen held the phone up to her ear for some moments after that, wondering how and why he was calling her. The papers had reported that he had been sent to jail.

She took a deep breath and got to work.

She picked up Teal, still sleeping, and placed her in the only open box left, a box of clothes. Picking up the roll of packing tape, she bend down and kissed Teal on the cheek.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she whispered to her, as she drew the flaps of the box closed and taped the top lightly shut. She crossed her fingers, “please don’t cry,” she prayed to Teal.

Ellen heard a knock at the door, less than ten minutes later. She began to shake.

Thomas knocked again. “Anyone home?” he called out, his voice echoing down the hall. “Hello, Ellen? I-”

Ellen swung the door open and plastered a fake smile on her face. “Thomas Brandy. What brings you here?”

He smiled in return and walked into the apartment. His eyes swept over the stack of boxes in the corner. “I see you are moving out.” He stated. “Something not to your liking?”

Ellen turned to him, “Thomas, why are you here? He grinned at her. This was not quite like the smile he had shown at the door. This was cunning and evil and glinting with anger.

“You know me well, Ellen.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Too well. You see, I killed twenty-eight people in the apartment above yours. You know that now. But you also know my name, where I work, and what I look like.” She blinked.

He leaned in closer to her and she could feel his breath washing over her in rancid waves. “You’re a threat, Ellen. And I cant have that, now, can I?”

As she realised what he meant, he took her by the arm and threw her against the wall. The slam took the breath out of her, and she doubled over as his fist went straight into her face. Again. And again. She fell to the floor in agony, blood gushing from her lacerated face.

Suddenly Teal screamed. Thomas let go of her arm for half of a second as he turned toward the noise; but that was all she needed. Ellen dragged herself up and ran out of the room, praying he would follow her and not search for Teal.

He ran after her. Hiding behind the corner, she waited until he ran past her, down the hall, before swinging round the corner back into her room, slamming and locking the door.

His screams punctuated the silence. “ELLEN! I WILL KILL YOU ELLEN, DON’T THINK I WONT.” She was sobbing behind the door, “No,” she cried, “no you wont. Leave us alone,”

“I WILL BE BACK HERE IN TEN MINUTES WITH AN AXE AND I WILL CHOP THIS DOOR DOWN. DO YOU UNDERSTAND, ELLEN? I WILL GET YOU! I WILL GET YOU ELLEN! I WILL GET YOU!”

His voice faded out as he descended the stairs and Ellen knew she didn’t have much time. She couldn’t take Teal and leave the apartment, he may just as well be waiting below for them.

She grabbed her phone and called the police.

Ellen and Teal had hidden in the bathroom, terrified. Ellen had her handgun beside her. A shiny little colt she had been given for when she went hunting with her father, many years ago. She looked away from it.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. The knocking became more frantic until there was an almighty crash. Ellen was confused for a minute until she heard footsteps over the tile in the front room. Thomas had broken the door down.

“Ellen!” He yelled, and Ellen heard footsteps walk quickly towards the bathroom. Teal opened her mouth to cry.

She would not let Teal get destroyed by Thomas Brandy. She could not. The idea of him skinning her alive, like he did with one of his victims, or cutting off her fingers and toes one by one, then bits of her limbs, bit by bit, until she finally died of blood loss like another one of his victims, the idea of that horrified her. Her little baby could not suffer like that.

The bathroom doorhandle began to turn. In tears, Ellen picked up the colt and held it to Teals’ head for a second before she pulled the trigger.

The wall in front of her was suddenly painted in a deep crimson, the small hole in the forehead of her child turned blue then began pouring blood onto the floor.

She raised the gun to her head, screwed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger as the door opened.

The man that entered the room in was a police officer.