EXCERPTS FROM JOURNAL OF PATIENT 1336-B (FROM POLICE RECORDS)


1/24/20--

It rained again today. Seems like it always rains in Seattle, even when it's sunny. Maybe it only rains for me. I think that could be it. I saw couples laughing together, smiling and happy, and I wanted to cry. The pain of their happiness and love descended over me like a cold wet blanket, dampening my spirits, making it so that I could hardly move. I hated them. One couple in particular. I sat there trying to ignore them, but they kept talking and laughing loudly, right next to me, kissing, holding hands, looking meaningfully into each others' eyes. I wished, for the millionth time, that I carried a hat pin with me. Usually I have this desire to poke people with a hat pin when I'm in a crowd of people. If I have to fight my way down the street or through the mall or whatever, and people just blocking my way or acting like cattle, I want to poke them, hard. I want to draw blood. This time I was close enough to the woman to just casually reach over and poke her. She probably wouldn't have even known it was me. She was wearing open-toed sandals. Who in their right mind would wear open-toed sandals on a rainy day? She talked like a baby, like she didn't have sense in her head, and those open-toed sandals only confirmed the impression that her babyish voice and stupid patter suggested. I could have serumptiously leaned over with my trusty hat pin and jabbed one of her toes with it. Who would know it was me? No one. And since I'm invisible, no one would have seen me.

No one is my only friend and the only person I fear. I hate the thought that I will become him. When I'm sad, no one is there to comfort me, no one is there to tell me that things are going to be ok. No one lies to me. No one is truthful with me. No one loves me. No one hates me. I can feel myself slowly becoming no one. Some day I will slip into his skin, let go of all emotions and conscious thought, and become an empty vessel. I will be No one. I already feel like I'm no one to everyone. But some day I will be no one to me.

Some one could save me though. Some one could come along and notice me and talk to me and care about me. Some one could stop my slow slide into oblivion. Where is my some one? I fear I will never find my some one. Seems as though the couples were paired up long before I got here, that everyone has someone, that I'm the only one alone. Maybe I am. Or maybe we are all wrapped up in our aloneness, so much so that we never see that aloneness in others.

All I know is that it's still raining. I'm sitting in my room listening to it drum into my skull. There is a light inside me that I can feel extinguishing. I'm cold, but not from any external reason. The coldness is inside of me, filling my body slowly, creeping through my limbs. I think it might be No one, invading me. What will he want to use my body to do. I am afraid. But he is stealing my fear, eating it, turning it into hatred.

I might go for a walk now.