Entry Twenty-One
It Stole My Secrets (Fourth Episode)

Damn, my jaw hurts.
    Talked to Marcus again. He says he believes me, though that isn't saying a whole lot. What he thinks and what he says are two completely different things, and I know him well enough to know this.
    I keep getting strange looks. People say they don't suspect but they suspect. I can feel their eyes looking in on me, watching me, surveying me, judging me, and I don't blame them at all for it, either, because it's human nature to judge. I've been wandering alone now.
    Found another crack in my room. I'm going to ask Sarah about getting rid of it sometime, because I'm starting to hear sounds from other rooms louder and it gets annoying after some time.
    Especially with this new guy here, he says his name is Jake, and Babul, and Tochtli, and many other names, most of them I can't even pronounce. Either way, I call him Jake, because he looks most like a Jake. He's sitting near by my room, talking to himself while fidgeting. One of the staff is trying to get him to the cafeteria because it doesn't seem like he's been eating at all since he got here. Soon they'll start having to pump the foods in him. They had to do that to me once when I first got here. I had been so malnourished that even if I did eat I would've thrown it all up and got myself sick. Probably took a shitload of cash from Marcus' wallet to fix all that up. Oh, who am I kidding?
    Marcus doesn't believe me. Wendel doesn't seem to think any different, though he's...more kind than most of the other doctors. Most of the time he actually listens. Haven't seen much of Sarah lately. Things keep up the way they are I'm gonna have to go to the isolation ward again. I hate it there now. It smells bad than it used to. Now it reeks of a lot of things I hate--medicine, piss, vomit, blood. It's supposed to be an isolated facility but I can hear things through the walls. Someone in the next room from me was puking on their bed. I knew this because later a nurse came in and complained about having to change the sheets.
    During lunch, shortly after Jake's arrival, Zayn came and asked me what I thought of the whole situation. I wondered if it was him who should be asking such things, then I realized he acted completely oblivious about the whole thing with Maxwell. The bastard really wanted to try to get me to trust him, didn't he?
    "Y'know, all this and I don't think I ever even caught your name entirely. What was it?"
    I told him.
    "Wolfgang? Wait.... You wouldn't happen to be related to the director, would you?"
    Of course. I have the displeasure of being his brother.
    I also really didn't want to go into this all over again. Even if I wanted to leave, he would only follow me. It was strange, because he was so much bigger than me and could easily crush me if he wanted to. What was even more bizarre was what a sane person like Zayn was doing at Delial Park.
    Zayn answered his own question when I didn't answer it first. "You are. Well, isn't there anything you can do about getting out of here? I'm sure you could--"
    I'm never getting out of here. I'm stuck.
    He followed me. I wandered around a little, and he didn't seem to be getting bored with me at all. Fucker. He even trailed after me to the terminally ill ward. I don't even know why. It isn't like there was anything there to interest him. He took interest anyway, especially in the sleeping man I came to visit less and less frequent like I used to. It just hurt, okay? Each time I saw the poor idiot, he looked more dead and dismal than the last time I saw him. He just...laid there, empty, but peaceful in a way. Hell, if he didn't move or breathe at all you could mistake him for being a corpse. His one eye would flicker and his one hand would twitch and lift every now and again. Wendel had told me once that his brain patterns were still active, as if the sleeper was only dreaming. Maybe he is only dreaming, and he just doesn't want to wake up. Who would?
    Surely none of this would've interested Zayn any. I was wrong. What surprised me even more was that the large man didn't even bother asking me a goddamned thing. He didn't seem to care at all. I'm still not sure whether if I think it's a good or a bad thing. I'll be thankful either way....
    Maybe there's just something wrong with me. They were right. I think I'm starting to figure this out now. At that moment, while I was staring down at the sleeper, something happened. I wasn't thinking right. My head went fuzzy, my mind went blank, and the next thing I know the sleeper's skin is burning off of muscle tissue. Flesh melt from his face and suddenly I can see his teeth his smiling teeth bearing up at me. His eye o god his eye it opened and he was staring at me that same gray bird-mad eye watching me. And as the stitched burned and he opened his other a black abyss gazed into me prying me apart from the inside and reading every last secret within. I have no secrets anymore. The sleeper took them all ate them all away in that endless black void in his socket.
    I grab hold of the gurney, trying to sustain myself. I'm holding my hands over my face, crying aloud and screaming for it to stop crying for him to get out of my head. There's a monster on the other side of the bed. A shadowed creature and the skin around his jaw is melting so I can see all of his tiny little razor sharp fangs gnashing lashing free to sink into me and tear me apart. He's coming for me. O my god he's coming for me and he's going to kill me! I have nothing left to hide the abyss ate it ate my secrets to share and now I have nothing!
    Screaming crying clawing at my own face, I'm withdrawing, stumbling away from the shadowed demon. I can hear it trying to speak but even now I can't remember what it was trying to say. All I can remember is me trying to claw at my own face. There's a scar on my left cheek...I can't remember how I got it for the life of me...maybe I got it between the gap of memory and the months I can't remember.
    Secrets.... It stole my secrets and my memories!
    All rational thought had fled me. I'm trembling in fear and hatred and anger and the last thing I can remember is the monstrous shadow slamming his fist across my face. Behind him, the sleeper is a pile of flesh and blood and bone and muscle freely flowing from the bed. Is he dead of course he's dead he can't be alive no one can live through that!
    Another hit across my face. The scar in my cheek is torn open and I'm bleeding. My face is bleeding. There's blood all over the white walls. I'm hit again, but this time it's myself. I'm hitting myself, punching myself, clawing myself while screaming bloody terror. If the monster doesn't get me then I'll get me. I'll kill me. I'll destroy me and tear me apart until there's nothing but pieces of me left. It won't have me!
    It ends before I could even begin. Everything is normal again. The sleeper didn't melt. He's resting soundlessly on the bed, dead and alive as he ever had been. The sleeper is fine. The sleeper is adrift in a sea of oblivion in a place where he's abandoned me. I don't know why but I'm afraid that he's abandoned me just like she has abandoned me.
    She? Who's she?

The

Carved

Porcelain

Doll... .

My face is a bloodied, bruised mess and I can barely hold onto my consciousness. Soon the place will be swarming with people and they'll inject me they'll put stuff inside of my veins and from my veins into my body and spreading like a disease slowly lulling me to sleep in a soundless song of a delirious high. Nonono, not the drugs no more drugs I can't stand it anymore it's making me sick IT'S KILLING ME!
    Someone is screaming for help. Is it me? No it's not. It's Zayn. The monster is Zayn.
    No. The real monster is lying on the floor. The monster is a bloody mess. The monster is the one who tried to tear their own self apart while crying out in horror of a beast that was not there.

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