11:12 am 4 days before
I am
So
Tired.
Exhaustion has filled me like sand. I wake up and get scared I cant even move, all of my limbs weighted down and my bones too stiff to bend. Somehow, I find it in me to walk to the kitchen. I stand there by the counter and stare into the sparsely filled cupboard shelves.
I'm not even hungry anymore, I'm not moving enough to burn enough energy to be hungry. I'm slow, I'm stationary, I'm useless.
Spaghetti hoops cold taste disgusting, and they slither down my throat like thin worms, curling eventually in my stomach. If I had the energy to sick them back up, then maybe I would. (I don't.)
I deflate, boneless, onto the kitchen floor and let the open can rest on the flag stones.
Once upon a time, I cared about this kind of stuff. My house used to be my home – clean and bright and full of sound and food and I didn't hate Elvis and I could wear my favourite red jumper, but that was a long time ago. (It must have been a long time ago. It must have. It was way back when we used to call Keira and Leo the Twins, and Keira kept her hair short, and Leo could still play the piano. Surely, surely that was decades ago, a whole entire lifetime even. I couldn't tell you – and could you believe me if I did?). It was certainly at a time before the number one goal, above all else, was to get rid of the monsters, the worst ones at least. To stop all of the dreams, no matter what it took, no matter how ridiculous the changes seemed. An entire lifetime later and I have made no progress.
-
3:03 pm
The day withers away in a painfully slow manner. No one calls, no one texts, not even Elvis plays through the floorboards. Everything remains unpleasantly bland and infuriatingly, apathetically silent.
The first ever monster crept in on a silent day. He was innocuous at first, entirely non-invasive, and I had thought (foolishly) that they would all be the same, that this would not be so much of a problem.
-
10:22 pm
Today's last ditch attempt at making a change it to throw away all the remaining food in the cupboards. Perhaps they are like mice – they have been lured in here and remain because I simply keep feeding them.
Every last can and packet and jar goes into a big black bin bag, not unlike all of my red clothes only a few days ago, and I haul it out the door and down the stair with the only strength I have left in me after a day of not moving an inch.
With a bag clinking full of food, I run into June on my way out to the bins. She looks thin and refined this evening – coming home late from an evening out with one of her companions. Her eyes twinkle and she wears a necklace that is so thin it looks like it is nothing but a strand of spider silk looped around her neck. She holds the door open for me and waits until the bag has crashed into the communal dumpster for me to come scuttling back into the building, wiping my hands on my stained pyjama shorts.
"A cleansing?"
"Of sorts."
"You really should stop listening to them." She frowns, and I don't know how to tell her I'm trying. I have blocked their numbers and I have not moved out and what else can I do? Keep the pictures? (I cannot keep the pictures.)
June pats me gently on the arm and I want her to be trying to tap me some morse code instruction on how to get rid of this. How to get rid of them. How to move on.
"It is time to realise that this is something you can't just move on from," she says gravely. "Not when you are like this." (Have I been speaking out loud?)
With that, she shuffles off and I only now realise that she is still wearing her paint flecked slippers underneath her silk dress and thin, thin necklace.
I have not moved out, I have blocked their numbers. Two out of four steps.
I can do this.
-
12:41 am
The wardrobe door creaks open an inch, and a row of white teeth can be seen hidden in the darkness.
"Night."
You would think by now, with an audience of this size, I would get stage fright just getting into bed.
-
3:10 am
The monster I draw is so small, so frail. It bleeds poison; thick, viscous liquid seeping from its skin and pooling beneath it. It looks scared, nothing more than a little hunched figure. I know that if I touched it, I would die screaming and crying in pain.
I am so tired of this.
YOU ARE READING
From Where The Monsters Came
Художественная прозаSometimes there are these nightmares. I only draw what I can remember. Liv, Kiera and Leo are tormented, day in, day out, by the monsters that crawl out of their minds each time they fall asleep. Who can say why they were chosen. Who can say how...
