I am not a superstitious man, Leo, but I feel too freaked out to sleep in that apartment again tonight and it is draining my energy even just to think about the place. Nothing in my life has been right since this morning. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are pounding down my dreams. When I do finally find it in me to go back into the world of sleep, I fear I will fall so deep and hard I won’t come back out. It does not help a man rest easy. I am tired and I pace. I feel like death is near me. I open the door to the stairwell and just stand there. I am missing something! I do not know what! It is driving me crazy. I am agitated all the time. I hide so many things. I am so used to doing it that I thought I had that skillset down to a fine precision. I didn’t notice before but there is a basement in our tenement that has a big lock on it. When the air-raid sirens call we don’t use our basement. We have to go down to the blackout bunker in Mary King’s Close. It is like going back in time, Leo. The arches down there are damp and it smells of something I can’t even describe. Tonight Mr Udnam came to me and asked if I still study law and I said no. He said he needed my legal advice so I better look out my law books. What choice do I have? My options are limited in this town right now. I looked at him like a man who had just been found by the head of the highly esteemed Dick Vet College in bed with a bone mermaid… oh, it is so bad, brother! I made the mermaid. She is mine. I won’t let the other men take responsibility. I can’t, I’m not that kind of asshole.

To be honest, it is hard to tell what kind of an asshole I am lately.

I need to grow up.

Something has taken my soul.

No. 10 Luckenbooth Close is the reason I cannot sleep.

Even as I write this, can you see my handwriting is getting so much smaller?