Diary (standard:Suspense, 2470 words)
Author: Cloud Strife	Added: Aug 05 2003	Views/Reads: 3418/2239	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A lonely man plagued by a recurring dream and gradually losing touch with reality begins a diary to help him cope with his growing paranoia.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

much about them during the day that sleep is my only escape left but 
now I'm sleeping less and less every night and when I do sleep I dream 
of that stupid room.  But what if I stop sleeping altogether?  Then I 
will be awake and worrying about them all the time and I could not bear 
that.  At the moment that is my biggest fear.  I would be in hell if I 
could not sleep.  I'm lonely.  I miss my parents who died a year ago in 
a car crash.  Maybe that's when things started to go wrong.  In fact I 
know it is. 

Entry 7 - Day 9. I don't even feel safe in my own house anymore.  I know
that they have ways of getting to me if they want but what they want to 
do is bide their time.  They want me to suffer.  They are evil.  They 
know that I'm starting to crack but will they finish me off?  No, of 
course not because that would not give them as much satisfaction as 
watching me slowly break down like this.   This is the kind of thing 
I'm up against.  I'm beginning to get very    scared now.  I'm tired of 
fighting them all the time.  It is taking too much out of me and I 
can't think of any way to be free of them apart from killing myself but 
I have not quite reached that stage yet.  Thinking about that victory 
against the birds doesn't even make me happy anymore.  That seems so 
long ago now.  It's hard to believe it was only five days ago.  I 
dreamt of the room again but this time I saw myself in there scribbling 
on some paper with a crayon.  Now I'm more scared than ever but I still 
don't know what it means. 

Entry 8 - Day 11. Maybe they are trying to finish me off.  Today my
sister Jane came to visit me.  I hadn't seen her in a few months.  At 
first she seemed a little alarmed at my appearance.  I don't shave 
anymore and sometimes I forget to change my clothes in the morning or 
have showers so I guess I must have looked a little strange to her.  
She asked me questions like why did you leave your job?  Why are all 
those blinds closed on such a nice day?  Why aren't you eating properly 
any more?  I tried to reassure her about everything because she seemed 
a little worried about me.  After a while I began to get a horrible 
feeling that maybe she was one of them.  I tried to dismiss it at first 
because it seemed crazy.  She took a tour of the house and what she saw 
made her terribly unhappy.  She started to cry.  She wanted to know why 
the place looked like a pig sty.  I told her I don't have time for 
cleaning and it's not really that important anyway.  She said things 
like you never even leave this house anymore so of course there's time 
to clean up the place a bit.  At about that time it hit me like a 
thunderbolt.  They wanted to know what I was up to all the time when 
they couldn't see me so they sent my own sister to spy on me and report 
back to them.  They wanted to see into my safe place where they usually 
can't get access to.  She was definitely one of them so I had to kill 
her.  I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her again and 
again in a furious blinding rage screaming the whole time.  Afterwards 
it took me a while to stop screaming but eventually I was able to think 
rationally again. How could my own sister have done that to me?  What 
did I ever do to deserve this torment that I am forced to live with?  I 
have a lot of thinking to do now but they'll think twice before they 
try something like that again.  I cried a lot because if my own sister 
was one of them then I know that I am truly alone in the world and any 
hope that I had for being able to live a normal life again one day is 
fading fast.  The future is looking very grim for me and I don't know 
what I'm going to do about the body that's still there in my kitchen. 

Day 9 - Day 16. Today I feel better than I have in so long.  I can't
even describe how happy I am writing this.  I finally figured it all 
out.  I've been so stupid all along.  It isn't them at all and it never 
was.  There is no them.  I must have been so fucking paranoid before.  
It's you.  That's right.  You.  The person who is reading this right 
now.  I don't know how you managed to get access to my diary or why you 
are spying on my thoughts but I know you do and I'm going to get you. 

Entry 10 - Day 22. Well it took a couple of days to find you but I did. 
I knew I would.  I found you two days ago and have been watching you 
since.  Yes that's right.  How does it feel to know that?  I think that 
you know why I dream about the small room and so what I am going to do 
is torture the information you have out of you.  The hunter has become 
the hunted.  I've finally got the upper hand even though I never 
thought I'd be able to set foot outside my house again but by golly I 
did because I want to put an end to this torment I've been living 
through once and for all.  I am tingling all over with excitement at 
the moment.  After all the time I was inside that house agonising over 
stupid things like birds and milkmen it almost makes me laugh if it 
weren't so painful to think about.  You will soon know what true, pure 
terror is like and then we will have something in common because I was 
living in terror for a long time and now you will be too.  I can't wait 
until our meeting.  It won't be long now and we will have a nice chat 
together just you, my knife and me.  Be seeing you. 

The man was hunched over his pages of paper in the small, cream painted
room with a worn down blue crayon, as he usually was now for about the 
last three weeks when nurse Lisa entered the small room and approached 
him. “Jack”, she whispered to him while softly putting her hand on his 
shoulder, still startling him despite her care.  You've got a visitor 
Jack.  Your sister Jane is here to see you”.  Jack turned towards the 
soothing voice and stared with vacant eyes at the approaching figure.  
He knew she was familiar to him and on closer inspection he realised 
that both the people he saw were familiar to him. Jane talked to him or 
rather at him for a while about various things and then began to talk 
to the nurse who was still nearby changing the sheets of his bed so 
Jack happily went back to his writing under the light that entered from 
the window. Jane and the nurse then silently watched him for a few 
minutes slowly weaving indecipherable squiggles with the crayon until 
finally the nurse spoke her thoughts. “We still believe that he is not 
merely drawing pictures when we give him the paper and crayon to play 
with but that he is actually attempting to write some kind of message 
down.  To communicate with us.  Look at him now.  Doctor Burke has 
studied all of these pages that Jack has been working on for the last 
three weeks or so and he too believes that Jack is trying to write 
words and is going to have this matter looked at further by a number of 
specialists from around the country.  This is the first sign of 
communication he has made since he came here a year ago after the 
crash.  This is a big development for him”. “I wish I could believe you 
but I don't”, replied Jane.  “Jack has been little more than a baby 
since that car crash that killed our parents.  I gave up on the old 
Jack because I know that he's never coming back to us.  I don't think 
he is even aware of the world around him and I can't let myself believe 
that you can bring him back to me because it will hurt too much when it 
fails”, she finished but the nurse continued on. “We are beginning to 
believe that the real Jack is still there living somewhere inside of 
him trying to get out.  We think he lives there in a world created by 
his own mind and we are going to do the best we can to help him”. “He 
has just found a new hobby in drawing that's all”, protested Jane.  “At 
least it's healthier for him than when he used to spend hours staring 
out of that window everyday or cowering behind the bed.  It broke my 
heart to see him like that” Jack dropped the crayon on the floor and 
began to clap his hands and laugh. 


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