Neverland [ ✓ ]

Day 3

ENTRY:
5:00 AM

When I was four, nothing was different. 

My mom still disappeared for days at a time and besides small bouts of abuses that arose from my drug indicted mother, that is all I remember of my fourth year. I didn't see the shadow anymore for a while. But it was always around, somewhere. Skirting corners, watching.

I would wake up to small, dry rations of food in my crib. I thought it was my mother- maybe- but I never heard her come or go. It was always quiet in the small cabin, secluded and engulfed by a taiga forest. I could see it outside my window, so beautiful; but I never got to touch it my fourth year.

ENTRY:
4:59 PM

When I turned five my mother bought me a cupcake and a bottle of apple juice. Sweet, really, it's the nicest thing she ever did for me. Never before had she and never again would she ever do something so motherly. 

Hungrily, I ate and drank as she eyed me with that same hellish smile plastered on her face. Once my deprived stomach was filled, she even tried to teach me to walk on my own- well, for more than a few seconds before falling- at last. She would set me up on my feet, balance me, let go. Then she watched me- as expected- fall. I was so used to holding onto bars and walls whenever I used my legs on the rare occasions I did.

I was severely underdeveloped. 

She did it over and over again until I took several consecutive steps by myself. My knees were swollen purple and my chest hurt by the end of it, but she seemed happy with my performance. I never saw my mother happy, so I smiled as well, because of that.

Then, you know.
She left me again.

ENTRY:
11:37 PM

I think it was a little more than a week after she prompted me to truly walk that I finally saw the mist again. I was alone at the time, to no surprise, playing with cans and burbling to myself as source of entertainment. On a stool across the room was an alarm clock, the numbers reading 3:01 in the morning giving off a soft green light. This is something I remember specifically. I captured that image like a photograph. It's inexplicably prominent in my mind. Beside the dimly illuminated lamp alongside my crib, the clock was the only other source of light, so maybe- maybe- that is why. Or maybe it was the thing beside it.

A creature, tall and ominous, stood beside the clock. It seemed to stretch along the wall and tower against the ceiling, flickering every time the old lamp did, manifested as that same familiar mist. For unknown reasons, I reached out from my crib at it, holding out my hand to take. Hesitantly, it mimicked me, reaching back out in my direction with long scissor-like fingers. It should've registered somewhere in my young mind that this creature was the textbook definition of a monster; the kind that hid in your closet, under your bed and in your nightmares. 

Somehow, it simply didn't occur to me.

It's arm covered the distance between us, growing to fit the mold, a limb willed by it's owner to stretch. When my hand met the mist's, it was like being cradled in lukewarm water all over again; it made me feel safe. I don't know how long we stayed like that. Really, it doesn't matter. I fell asleep at some point and when I woke, there was a word written on the wall behind my crib, practically carved into the wall. 

I couldn't read, yet.