This is art. Poetry that I have made in complete seriousness, yet with words that have been stripped of anything that covered the truth. All you need to do is read between the lines.
Blog name: Life Diaries
Last Activity: October 10, 2020
Post: Scarred
Dated: October 10, 2020
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I was extremely tired in September, to the point I couldn’t remember doing anything by conscious effort. I was half asleep most of the time. My favorite part of the day was around 3 am when my head would finally drop on my pillow and I’d instantly fall asleep.
Finally, on September 30, I emailed out my projects, deliberately just 10 minutes before deadline. At last, I could get at least three hours worth of sleep more than what I usually get. It was already past midnight by the time I crawled into bed, which meant it was my birthday. And I don’t like my birthday. (No, I’m not an edgy teenager; you know me, right? Because you read my blog. I stopped celebrating my birthday ever since my father died. Just 4 days after my birthday comes my father’s birthday, and I cannot... just cannot.)
Well, my head dropped, but where was sleep? I needed it to come as it always does, heavily and promptly. But it didn’t come, and I just laid there, on my bed, on my birthday, staring at the ceiling with tired eyes. How melancholic, how morbid. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, watching the shadows shift from the light casted by the window, but somehow I was pulled back into consciousness only to find myself somewhere else. The place felt familiar. It took me a few minutes to realize I was in my old house, waiting for dinner at our vintage rosewood dining table (that we had to sell after my father died to make ends meet).
I was seated to the right of the main chair, my usual seat. Suddenly, I remember seeing everybody there, although I couldn’t see their faces, just their silhouettes. It almost seemed like a snippet of one of my old memories. My mother was seated at the other end of the table, serving food to my sister. But I couldn’t see them clearly. You know how you try to focus your camera lens when it’s unfocused? It seemed like they were unfocused all of the time. I also heard snarky giggles out of nowhere. I thought they were sounds from the TV, probably the three hyenas from The Lion King. I don’t know why I thought so.
Then I looked to my left and saw my father.
Somehow, I could see him very clearly. And his face was just how it always was... but something about his expression was unsettling. It was almost as if he was sneering... But you don’t get to see your dead loved ones a lot of times, so I went with it, and hugged him. I think I expected it to feel warm but it felt like cold sea water waves over me. I pulled back and tried to look into his eyes and tell him I missed him, but I could see his eyes were hard and icy. I remember thinking to myself if he might not be proud of who I’ve become since he died. At that point, I became desperate for his affection because I was afraid this dream would end. He got up and walked towards the room at the end of the unlit gallery of our old house. I didn’t remember that room being there. But my desperation was so high, I got up and followed him. He turned back, smirked, opened his mouth, and said, “Will you help me?” I heard those hyenas giggle again. The giggles stopped me from actually hearing his voice.
“Of course I will help you...”
I could practically hear him grinning at this point. I attributed all of the weird features of my dream to the crappy quality of my imagination. I followed him down the dark gallery.
STATIC. Not only did I start hearing static noises, I could see glitches. It felt like the house was an image which kept changing into a dark forest and then back to the house. And then I felt a warm tug on my wrist, pulling me back, but I didn’t look back because I wanted to stay with my father. I yanked my hand back and started running to my father, who was grinning and beckoning me to come closer.
Then I started hearing my father’s voice coming from behind me. This was the voice I grew up listening to. This was the voice I recognized, and the voice was powerful, it pulled me back, I let it. At this point, the static grew louder and louder, drowning my father’s voice, but I could feel something warm guiding me, and I walked back. We were no longer in the house now but our backyard.
Suddenly, it was dark again and we were glitching back to the house, I could see how dark it had become and I could feel the wetness. My heart was beating frantically, and I was desperately trying to hold the warmth, but I couldn’t anymore. It was then that I saw it growing visible as a fierce yellow blanket, and then I saw a dark and icy entity coming towards me from the house, and the closer and faster it came, the bigger it grew, but I didn’t care and I just shouted “I love you, papa, I love you and I miss you,” I was sobbing. The water in my eyes felt so real, I actually couldn’t see properly. And then the dark icy entity reached for my hand, probably to consume me, but I saw the blanket of warmth engulf me first.
Then I woke up on my bed, it was already 6 am. The sun was rising and beautiful rays seeped in from the window. But I was feeling cold. I was shivering.
There was a black cut on my wrist.
I think I first noticed it when I knew for sure I forgot to clasp the padlock together, but found it perfectly locked next morning.
I work part time at a lifestyle store. It’s a small store in the corner of a narrow street in K——— Town. It’s just a 25-minute walk from my house.
Since the beginning of February, I had started feeling detached from myself. I was zoned out most of the time and remembered nothing. I did everything based on habit of movement. It was in the second week of February that I arrived at the store to find the padlock unlocked. It was wound around the shutter clasps, but it was not locked. I realized I must have forgotten clasping it together. I opened the shutter gingerly, my eyes only a millimeter open, fearing the store might look ransacked. But it was normal. Lucky escape.
The next couple of days I was extra cautious in locking the shutter properly. But then I fell back into my detached phase, and worked absentmindedly.
On February 11, I remember reaching home and waking up, realizing with exponentially increasing dread that I didn’t clasp the lock again. I didn’t know whether to run back or wait for the following morning. I chose the latter. Mind you, I was only 60% convinced I left the door unlocked. But next morning, it was perfect. Again. I think it was then that I starting suspecting something, but I didn’t know what... until I deliberately left it unlocked on February 14.
I took the bus to work in the morning of February 15, because I knew it would be my last ride there, after which neither will I be welcomed there, nor will I be able to pay for the fare, knowing full well I’d have to suffer the monetary consequences of the robbery that will have taken place.
But the shutter was properly locked, AGAIN. This confirmed my suspicions. Before jumping to any conclusions, I carefully asked the other weekly part time workers if they were in the area, but they weren’t. They were on duty in another branch.
What was happening? I was shocked, but not scared. My mental health was already in tatters for me to focus my attention or energy on something else.
I was going to close the store again, when I realized I left my phone inside. I raised the shutter and walked in. It was dark but because of habitual memory, I walked right into the counter space and found my phone. Somebody was calling me. But before I could raise the phone from the table, something happened. And I will never, ever, forget how I felt in that moment.
It got unbelievably hot inside. My first thought was, “Darn it! The heat will ruin the hummus.” Before I could act on that, I felt cool air on my neck. The hair on my neck started pricking up slowly, all the way to my legs. My entire body was covered in goosebumps. I turned around and saw nothing, except... it was pitch black. Even though the lights were turned off, it shouldn’t have been so dark. So I did what any sane person would do. I spoke into the void. “What’s happening here?”
Something lightly touched my elbow. It felt like a claw but more bony. I think ‘it’ felt my body relax against its touch, and taking it as consent, I felt it coming closer from behind. I could tell so, because the air behind me got cooler, until the room temperature was back to its usual again.
Everything was normal, except I couldn’t see a thing, and I could feel its multiple hands around me, under my arm, over it, around my waist, around my neck, and I could feel my hair being stroked.
To be honest, I didn’t know what on Earth was going on. I even chuckled to myself, “Hey am I even on Earth still?”
Finally stepping out of my spiral of thoughts, I tried to twist and look at the perpetrator. Instead, I saw myself. The “me” I saw was looking at me, but I could tell her eyes were focused elsewhere, and that she was in her thoughts. So naturally, I looked down to see if my body was free of those tentacles or not, and saw that I was the one with the tentacles.
And then the adrenaline hit me. I shut my eyes and prayed to be put back into my body and left alone. I opened my eyes after what seemed like an eternity and knew before checking that I was back inside my own body. I had another strange thought as well. I let the thought grow in the back of my mind while walking home.
See, this was yesterday. I don’t remember locking the shutter after grabbing my phone because I now know exactly what is happening. The power of the mind, aye.
Somehow, my detachment from myself was literal. My mind was divided into two, and there was so much power in how I felt that another entity was formed. That is why I never remember locking the door, or feeling “out of my body”; it is all literal. I am forming another self.
I don’t know where it stays, how it emerges, or what it can do, but I know it is not bad, because I am weighing vegetables at the store right now, and I am also writing this story at the library.