Building 35 “The Power of Pain”

“Help me...

Please help me...

I have this sick feeling, sitting in my stomach. I have tried to keep an eye on u. It. My body feels like it is...I don't know what I would really call it. I think that maybe I touched something I wasn't supposed to. It was those things. Once the sun went out, things started coming out of the sewers. I don't know. I DON'T KNOW!

Help me...

Please help me...

I have been feeling sick.

I am feeling a little better. I stayed indoors. I was told to stay indoors. There aren't a lot of people talking anymore, but I heard a few over my dad's two way radio. Don't ask me why he had it. I have no idea and I cannot ask him for you. He went out a few days ago and he never came back, and when I heard those things scratching at the door, I swear one of them had my dad's eyes.

It's not my dad.

It just had his eyes.

In the night...I see the dark things that crawl and seep and beg to come inside. Beg like children, looking for their mother. “Please mother...let me in...”

You can...you get it don't you? Why I had to at least look? One managed to crawl into the house through the laundry shoot. Maybe it got in through the chimney or maybe I opened the door. I cannot remember things very well, ever since it touched me. It just wanted me to hold its hand, as we waited for its mother. Waited in the dark.

I killed it with a knife...I was out of food. I had to eat something.

My stomach is hurting. It didn't look like a child. Maybe it used to be a child. It said “mother, it is so cold...” and I could see it shivering, even though the heat was still on.

Wait...

Did I kill it, or did I let it live...no...

No...

The other one came though. I felt...I feel sick, and my skin feels like I am being eaten alive. But after a while, the strangest thing happened. You wouldn't believe it, but they stopped trying to get in. At first I was relieved, after days sitting awake when I was trying to sleep, hearing them say over and over “...let me in...” The days and the night...

There are no days...

The waking and the sleeping bleed together, as the house looks the same way whether I am awake or I am dreaming. And I dream so very much, and when I dream I only dream of my house. I see it, and the view I get when I look out the window is nothing but a blank, dark empty void. I can hear them, but I cannot see them, and when I wander the house I feel as if something is wrong.

Too much space, for just me.

When I am awake or when I am asleep I see the house the same way, and people on the radio...people aren't saying anything at all. I got a generator...enough power. Station to station I go on and on looking for someone. Anyone. ANYTHING other than these lurking, crawling things trying so very hard to get into the house...

No...they stopped doing that.

I said that they had stopped.

I am sorry.

Help me...

Please help me...

I am feeling better. The pain isn't even here at all. It is all just a thing I feel within a dream, and when I wake up I know that it was all just my imaginings. This is all just a dream, and soon I am going to wake up and my dad is going to come back home and the sun will be shinning in through the windows and the carpet will be warm. Warm for me and my friends.

You are a friend.

You are a friend, and you should come over.

It will be bright again, but we don't want it to be. We just want it to be warm, and I know you are cold too. Things are so cold now, and every day it seems to get colder. And I know, I know that someone is out there listening in. Sometimes I will be flipping through stations, and I will hear something coming through. Sometimes it is a whisper and sometimes it is screaming, but I know, oh I know that there is something out there, and that someone else has to be on the line.

It cannot just be me that is left.

And it is so cold out there.

Please come here.

I want to be warm.

And it is so very hard to be warm, in a house this big.

It is a big house, with plenty of room, for all my new and wonderful friends.

The ones that just want to find their mother.

And so do I.

So should you, because we are all that is left.

Non Fel Virginia.

Help me...

Please help me...

I have this sick feeling, sitting in my stomach.”

I went to the house. I had to know if someone else was alive. It was empty though. The house wasn't abandoned. The space inside never was meant to support life. Now it is unoccupied, though the smell inside lingers without evidence.

Lingers like the night.

The moon isn't gone. I just can't see it anymore. Without the sun....

Without the day.

How much pain does my body have to endure before it stops working? I am not talking about trauma. I know that it takes a certain amount to pierce my heart or destroy my brain, and that enough poison will do the job too. No. What I am wondering, what I really want to know, is just how much pain can I inflict upon myself before my body says it is done.

That's what I want to know. And I know the answer must be subjective right? Like, pain is so variable, and I know for a fact that the same injuries that may kill one person may not be enough to kill me.

I guess what I am wondering, and I suppose why I am wondering is...

Could I have met something that would ensure a shortening of my life and not even know?

I used to be so sure about stuff like that. I was so certain that there were limits, that the pain I encountered was never something that would insist upon hurting me, that I always would have a say in how I reacted, and that I always had a choice, one way or another, on how I was going to spend my time on this planet.

I try not to think about It, but I know what It feels like. It is a need to write things down. At first there is a ringing in my ears, then one of my eyes dilates just a little. It isn't enough for anyone to notice, but it is enough for me to feel it. The way the light hurts just a little bit more, or the growing feeling of fatigue that I rarely encounter otherwise.

I hate to write when I am already spent, but most of the time I don't have a choice.

It is a compulsion, and I have to listen to it.

A compulsion...when did I realize...

That I had lost my will to fight It?

Oh! By the gods I am so tired. So god damn tired at sitting here, feeling messy inside, looking upon the rotten fields and seeing a blank, empty nothing greeting me. I have tried to convince myself that this is a new feeling, but I know that it isn't a new at all. I know this feeling. I have been feeling it all my life. I first felt it when my father died and I was unable to do anything about it, even though I knew it was going to happen.

I knew then that it was all over.

But I lied to myself.

Oh I lied! Again and again over the years I have insisted that there is another way, that I really don't have to do this. I am in control. My life is in my control. There is a way to get away from all of this dread. I don't even hurt most of the time. But the fear that sits upon my heart relentlessly. How long can my heart accept a weight like that?

How long can I stay scared before my heart simply stops?
And I am stuck here, waiting in this empty field of black that smells of mold. Above me there is the dark. There are so few lights. The streetlamps burned out. The world is so very cold, and the few stars that remain are all that exist to remind me of what is up and what is down. I have not seen anything living in weeks, only bodies, and that-that should have already have done the job.

How the hell am I still going?!

How am I still alive?

When does it stop? When do I stop hurting and being scared. Oh gods when will I see you again? Am I...

It...it doesn't matter.

None of this matters.

Or is that just It talking...but no. I keep thinking that this thing, this calling that I feel sitting upon my soul...It feels like a wound, but that is only because I keep saying no when I need to say yes. It is not the thing inside that hurts me, but my unwillingness to let go and let It take control.

What am I after all?

I am only a shell. A vessel.

A wall.

Keeping everything out...keeping everything in. Oh how fucking tired I am of feeling like this. How much pain will it take before my body finally just decides for me? What the hell is It waiting for? It likes having me watch people die and be powerless to do anything about it. It likes having me see the sun bathed in red and still make me decide to leave my family behind.

No.

You are my family too. You are maybe more than family, because you know what this feels like.

And I love you.

How much will it take before I am simply out of endurance, before the dark and the blistering, clawing, stinging flesh finally breaks apart and sets me free?...I want to be free.

Please...

I want to be free.

But how much will it take to finally break me apart?

How long can this go on, before something else demands to take the reins?

What will it take, to finally reveal the fire raging where my lungs should be?

When will I at last be allowed to Glow?