Day 7
Every day is a routine that I follow. I get up, I eat breakfast, I go to the bathroom, I go to work. When I get home, I take a shower, eat dinner, watch TV for 30 minutes, and go to bed. It’s a seemingly endless cycle.
Day 8
But… Recently, I met someone. She’s kind, beautiful, funny… Everything I could ever want. But she’s married. I can live with that.
At least, that’s what I thought. But seeing her with him… it hurts. I never let it show, though. I’m her best friend now, I can’t tell her… God, am I jealous though.
Day 10-12
…Her husband disappeared. Faith’s husband disappeared. That’s what gave me hope, that’s why… That’s why when those stairs appeared in my backyard, leading down to a basement I didn’t know about with Faith’s husband in it covered in his own piss and vomit, I just locked the door and left. I don’t know what made me do it… The smell was awful, and he looked like he hadn’t eaten since he disappeared two days before.
Day 13
After that, when I checked my bank account there was a lot more than there should be. I wasn’t complaining, I was just… confused. I always thought that when you did things that were… Wrong, immoral, selfish… You got punished. But my life only got better since I condemned that poor man to die.
Day 16
Faith got over him surprisingly quick, and we started dating. It all happened in one day, me and Faith were talking and suddenly all my fears not exactly melted away, but were pushed back.
Day 17-18
She told me she loved me. She said it. I obviously said it back, and we had a beautiful night. I proposed that night. She said yes.
We got married the next day at the park. It was a small ceremony, but I treasured every moment. After that, however… I’ll never forget what happened after.
Day 20-23
Faith, she… she disappeared. But no matter what happened, no matter how much my mind screamed, I couldn’t go back down those stairs. Not… Not until I knew it was too late. Three days later, I stepped slowly down, my heart sinking as I got closer. I could smell the death, the fear, the urine… All as I was walking down those dark stairs. I opened the door and was greeted with a stench ten times worse than the one on the stairs, and I had to blink back tears. But then my eyes settled on two urns in the middle of the room. Aligned so that I could read them even all the way back here. I ran up to them, ignoring the fact that my lungs screamed for clean air that wasn’t tainted by death. I started crying, my tears falling to the ground then disappearing like they always did.
Day 24
It was my birthday. I didn’t bother throwing a party, or having a cake. I can’t… I can’t get Faith out of my mind, and I couldn’t ever forget her long enough to have a party…
Day 25
I can’t take this anymore.
I can’t do it.
I’ve lost everything important to me. My house burned down, somehow. The stairs disappeared, so I can’t even go see Faith’s remains anymore. But something makes me keep following this stupid routine. Some cruel God that likes messing with my life, seeing me suffer. Everything hurts. I can’t…
Day 30
I noticed something. If I look up at the sky at just the right moment, I can see something. I can’t quite make it out yet, but I think there’s someone there.
Day 33
I saw it. Them? There’s definitely someone there. And I’ve been feeling so much different lately, like someone’s always watching, listening… Nobody cares, they all just say I’m being paranoid. But I know I saw someone.
Day 35
I just moved to a new town. StrangerVille. It sounds so… Well, it might be good. Besides, I would rather not be living above two people whose deaths I’m responsible for. God, why couldn’t I go to her? Why couldn’t I save her? Was it because I left when I found him? Or did you plan all this from the very beginning? Give me something precious, just to rip it away from me?!
Day 40
I can see them a lot clearer now. Something about the air in this place, makes my head buzz but I can see the person now. They look like a girl.
Day 41
I’ve discovered a bit more about this town. It’s odd, but any time I go near the secret lab my head starts buzzing louder. That’s when I hear voices… Or, more specifically a single voice. It sounds like a girl’s voice, too. It matches with the picture in the sky, too, but it doesn’t look like the rest of my world. Her features are too… detailed, I can see all these tiny movements that I’ve never seen, or been able to make. I don’t understand, really. The words are different, not like what I speak but sometimes, I hear a word and I know it’s like what I write so how do these things change like this? I’ve always just lived, I don’t usually look for these irregularities in my life.
Day 49
I found something.
It’s…
Different. Something told me it was the Mother but I’m not sure if it was the… Mother. But it’s making my head buzz too loud to focus, it makes me move in ways I truly cannot control. Maybe I never could control my actions before… This just feels so unnatural.
Day 50
I ate a fruit today, from one of the plants native to StrangerVille. Not sure why, it was purple and pulsing… It made my head buzz, like with the Mother. I think I heard laughter. When my head cleared, I was pulled to find more plants. It happened over and over again, the laughter dwindling slowly until finally, I was allowed peace. My mind ached from all the buzzing, though I was glad to be rid of most of it for now.
Day 54
It happens randomly in the day now, the… possession. God, it hurts even writing that. I keep losing control of my body, but even when it fades… I still feel like my movements aren’t my own. I hate it, but the girl seems to enjoy it. Maybe they like my suffering.
Day 57
The girl was accompanied by another girl, seemingly around the same age. I was again forced to be possessed for their amusement, until I was finally freed from the torturous hold the plants had on my mind. But the other girl seemed to have… pity in her eyes. I don’t need pity…
Day 60
…A staircase appeared in my backyard today. I wonder who is going to die this time. I almost hope it’s me.
Day 61-64
I was forced to go down the staircase, though I walked as slowly as I could. When I got to the bottom, I saw an unassuming door. Upon opening the door, I saw a large cold, dark, unpainted room. I was forced to walk inside, but when the door shut behind me I was allowed my own limited movement. I was left there, unable to leave as I slowly became more hungry, tired, and the need to use the bathroom intensified. I died in three days, the reaper the only witness to this twisted game. Unless, of course, it is the reaper itself that is controlling everything.
Day 65
I can move still. The girl can’t always see me, but I control my own movement. I try to stay away from her ‘sight’ as I like to call it. Outside of the area she is in, people seem to be… asleep. They still progress through life, they don’t starve because they can’t eat in that state, they just… hibernate until they’re needed. I’m not sure why only I can move on my own, but I’m making full use of this.
Day 66
Somehow, the next time I saw the girl she was much older. Maybe this is really a game, and my life is paused until she’s ready to play again. I’ve started to see odd details the farther I get away from her sight. Like… glitches. Little skips in the world, black blocks on the ground instead of the street. Or a child suddenly appearing ten feet above the roof of their house. They… They’re all frozen in that state until they’re called upon. It makes me angry, and I don’t know why.
Day 67
I found something. It seemed like a door, but when I entered I felt like my skin was being evaporated and I was turning into some sort of… energy. I’m not sure what happened next. I blacked out.
Day 69
I made it farther this time. I changed something. It seemed to make her nervous. It wasn’t much, I just made Faith’s urn appear in her new family’s home.
Day 73
I found out what’s outside of my world. It looks like a mass of code… I went back. But I’ve found out how to shut off the game. It hurts, but it usually makes her upset and quite a bit of time to be reset.
Day 78
I made her leave once. She forgot to turn off the game, so I changed things while she was gone. I rearranged her furniture a bit, gave her a few new additions and left her a personally written message.
Day 80
The next time I saw her, she was with someone else. The same girl as before? She looked older too, of course. Similar features… They saw what I had done, and I saw how horrified my torturer became… and how wide the other girl’s eyes got. They exchanged a few words, and the game was exited. I only managed to see the word Trash before everything went dark.