Chapter 2, Entry 3

I can’t place these objects!

I sense layers of space underneath the floorboard. I don’t want to go there yet.

I walk back in. The crows make a terrible chorus of sound.

I curl into myself. I find myself in the bathroom again. I see flowering plants covering the imprint of my body.

I don't want to see this. I curl into myself until I become intersecting lines. I become dense scribbles. I become the hole I punch into the page.

I miss Alana. I don’t know what I'd say. I think I'd start by saying hello, or joining her by the fire while she writes letters. These thoughts make me convulse-- I can't go back. I can't go back. I can't go back. I grab my hair. It falls out.

I want to. I miss the familiarity of my room, my clothes, my bed, the kitchen, Alana, the people I greet every day. I long for the world that was so lonely and difficult.

I want to become sick of myself eventually. The world outside is the only other place I can go to. Still I sense layers of space underneath my feet, above too.

That's too much for right now, so I'll walk along the intersecting planes of my own memory-- When I get up, anyway.

 

…

 

I could be alive. I could be having visions right now. I want to believe it, but I know that's not how this works.

My memory is linear and clear. I became nauseous, I choked, I died. I hate the words, they're grating against my ears, direct, forceful, lacking grace, all of them.

Me, me, me. What about the house? The cat? The chickens? Alana's family? The coworkers? The coworkers? The coworkers? I convulse, but piecewise, I begin to consider them. The cat will find me first, maybe. Alana's family next, because the coworkers will contact them. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

What good did it do me to think accidents couldn't happen? To think I was above all of this? Psychedelics can't kill me. Fear can be quarantined and rationalized away. This, however, was collateral damage in action.

I knew about this. I knew about nausea, in theory. I was alone, though. Who was alone in the entries I read? Very few people. The people who were– they wrote about their sadness, and fear, and paranoia. Sorry, I don’t know how to bridge this part together well.

Poisoned, they said. They panicked and reached out. Were reprimanded, usually. I'm a scientist, though. Was a scientist, anyway. You know, I was going to be a chemical engineer. Lost my arm in an ATV accident, though. Drunk driving. The body transforms itself. Stoichiometry. My studies got cut short. I became a hotel attendant and tutor and then an exquisite corpse, as if I hadn't always been that. Point is, I thought I’d be better than them: I'll know I wasn't poisoned. I'll know I can't die.

If I wasn't capable of egocentric thought as I died, I definitely am now.

Well, I'm adequately sick of myself. I hate being alive in death. My mortal engine keeps running. Whatever, whatever, whatever. What's the difference?

 

…

 

We had meant to head to Alana's house. I can no longer find her page in the world. I need someone else to rebuild the structure of our story.