A letter from me to you (by Clunkbot)

If I told you I had saved your life last night, would you believe me?

No, and that’s okay. But I did, and I just want you to know. You are so beautiful when you sleep. When you’re awake though, you’re a right-royal bitch. A psychotic fucker with eyes like glittering coal and a heart not much brighter. You really should keep taking your medicine. I can’t keep wasting my nights at your bedside keeping you from wrapping your bony little fingers around your own throat. I’ve gotta sleep too you know.

Anyway, when you get this note, come look me up, and for the love of god Sarah, take your fucking pills. I’m tired of this.

Now, we got the nasty bits out of the way right? Good! I can explain what’s going on.

You are actively trying to kill yourself as you sleep. You’re not sleepwalking onto the interstate if that’s what you’re wondering. Not trying to neck yourself. Actually you’re usually snug and all cozied up when you start hurling yourself against the bedroom door. It doesn’t start out that way though. You are a creature of habit. It starts out with you trying to get in quietly and float around the house like a teenager out past curfew. Ever wonder why you always wake up with the bedroom door locked? That was me. And you’re welcome.

Your morning routine begins at 1 in the afternoon by raising your body from its own shadow. You swirl a glass of water in your left hand and weigh the medicine in your right, before throwing it back and downing it with a squeeze of your eyes. And then you unlock the door and ask yourself “How the fuck does this keep happening?” You step out into the Hall with half the day already behind you and the the sun on its way down. The kitchen is clean save for the pots and pans that keep ending up all over your floor. You grumble and set about putting them away. This is your waking life, this is how your day begins. And it is spent cleaning up after yourself from the night before. It ends much differently though.

Right now I can hear your feet padding around the kitchen and flirting quietly with all the pots and pans I left lying around. You’re running into little landmines of disquiet, just incase I fall asleep. Clever ain’t it? And you fall for it almost every night. Given the frequency of your impeccable awkwardness, I’m not even sure it’s the same ‘you’ each night either.

Eventually you end up waiting outside the bedroom. I’ll sit up and watch as your shadow grows towards me. You stop and breath in with your lungs pressing outwards like they’ve been shot through. The way it sounds, you’ve been a smoker for a couple years, but I know you don’t smoke. There’s some kind of eerie desperation behind it though, like someone is just using your skin and figuring out how air gets in and out of your body.

Then the silvery knob starts to jiggle a little bit. I look down at you sleeping and then back to the door where you test my obsessive planning and give the baseball bat in my hand a reassuring squeeze.

Sometimes I try talking with you, but you never have much to say at first, which is frankly preferred. To me, there’s a ghost anxiously twisting the handles and clicking the tumbler pins against one another in some vain attempt to be quiet.

If I’m real quiet, you’ll just keep trying all night to get back into your room. You won't know I’m in here with you, which is a plus. But let’s say it was last Wednesday night and I started talking with you, asking you how was your day. “Morning sugar, where’ve you been all night?”
And it’s almost funny. The whole operation just stops. The head of the snake seems held by delicate and fleshy tendons, don’t you think?

I ask again. “Sarah, what are you doing out there? Don’t you know how late it is?”

There’s a pause between your breathing and then you finally speak. “Who’s in my room?”

“Just me is all. You remember me, right?”

“No, I-” You twist the knob again. “Can you let me in please?”

Which at this point when you think about it, the whole scenario seems a little insane. If I really believed you were outside, you would have called the cops and this would be over and done But it’s not you outside trying to get back in. It’s some kind of inflection of you. Something wearing your skin and calling itself Sarah. It's ‘Sarah’ if Sarah had black eyes and a horrible mean streak. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I do know it really wants to get into your room.

I tell you this, and that’s when things start to get weird. “Please, can you let me in? I don’t want to have to call the police…” The police line that hasn’t worked EVER on me fails to work again.

“Go ahead, call ‘em.”

“Fine.” You announce. But I don’t hear you walk away. I don’t even see your shadow twisting around with anxiety. It’s just rooted. Harnessed. Summoned to an unnatural halt.

Your fist breaks upon the door with a loud thump and the you in bed stirs quietly. “I need to get inside! I’m scared!” You beg me.

God you’re not scared. You’re so far from scared, that in-of-itself is actually scary. Whoever’s trying to get in is a poor imitation of a human. It can’t even seem to raise a frantic octave when it says “I think there’s something in the house!”, It just gets louder. And the banging against the door gets a little angrier. Wanna know how I know? Because your body in bed may be thin but that thing outside has some very inhuman weight behind it when it starts to hurl itself against the lock. This thing has no idea how fear works, it only knows how to talk about it.

What’s most chilling about these episodes is the way you talk. See, people have a certain cadence to the way they speak. Something that gives them personality and life. This is really, really difficult to replicate as it requires paying attention to little verbal nuances and personal touches given to every breath and vocalization of thought. The thing outside may sound like you, but it's not you. It was an accident that your vocal cords paired so perfectly, but it's like trying to sail a boat with no actual sails. The machinery instruments are all there, it's just missing something go give it motion.

It doesn’t know how to be human, in short. It has some abstraction of it though. I’ve seen you exactly one time, which was plenty for me to lock the doors.

I was in the kitchen when I saw you emerge from the dark in silence. Your familiar body was all dressed up in rags that had been slashed wide. I asked with a glass of water still tipping past my lips “You alright?” And when you stepped closer and I could see the abyss behind your eyes, I knew that this wasn’t Sarah. You tried to smile at me I think, but your charms were inanimate and mechanical, and halfway through the door I saw your ‘smile’ swap places with an inhuman stillness on your lips.

The door shut, the lock snapped. Me cut off from you. Here I would be for the rest of the night, for the next few months.

I’ve never been able to stir a conversation up from all of this. You know a few words and phrases, some communication is possible, but it’s crippled at best. You explained to me one night that you have to “Kill the faker”, which I’m sure means you (who should be reading this note and taking her pills right now).

You’re not a smart creature, of that much I’m sure. But you’re a violent one. You start to scream at me, not out of terror but otherworldly frustration. It’s like nothing on earth I’ve ever heard before. Something that bubbles up from the cauldron of madness deep inside of you and spills forth in blackened pulses of anger. You pound loudly with both fists, shrieking and tearing up your house before returning to the door to stand silently with your arms pressed against your sides. I watch your shadow lay still and eventually fade as the sky turns a rusted orange and the sun thunders upward against the retreating darkness.

When you read this, know that I’ll be back tonight. Try to get some rest. You’ve been staying up too late, and skipping sleep isn’t healthy nor will it keep you from yourself. If you can quash what you really are, you’d already have this episode behind us. But you’re not strong enough yet, so that’s why I’m here. Let’s just pray we’re stronger than you are.

Goodnight.