And the boredom had become excruciating. Alternating between boredom and paralyzing fear. Enough to make me want to play with that Ouija board stashed in the trunk just for the diversion, but I think that’s better left alone. My mind hasn’t felt right since that bit of voodoo they put on me. Thoughts rise that don’t feel like my own. Seeing things, like those words in the mirror that make my mind go blank. Like clearing a flat for someone new to move in is how it feels. The confusion is terrible. All of it is, really. A waking nightmare.

Why me, is the question, isn’t it? I’m nobody, really. Live alone. Keep to myself. Don’t bother anybody. And I’m content with that, yeah? I mean, not always. But who is content all the time, anyways? Regrets, sure. We all have those, yeah? I would like to have loved more. Barry was the one great love, and it wasn’t much at that. Hot at first, but lukewarm before we could ring the wedding bells. Cool by the time I broke it off, downright frigid afterwards. They said I was family, that they’d love me forever and always. Then I’m a tramp and a tease and all the other things they said about me all because of feelings outside my control. Like they wanted Barry to live his whole life with someone who no longer loved him. Or couldn’t abide with someone not loving him as much as they felt he deserved. Prats.

There are billions of people in this world, you’d think there’d be just one for me. If so, we never met. Place I work, everyone keeps to their cubicles like ostriches with their heads buried in sand. Life seems so exciting on the telly, but it’s dreadfully boring in reality. That boring life seems pretty good now, yeah?

I saw him again that next day. The one with the groomed hair and intelligent eyes who had come up and touched the window. Scared off whatever had been advancing from the woods. He was standing at the edge of the clearing, staring in through the kitchen window, watching me ruffle through the cupboards as though hoping to find something I know is not there. With that shaggy beard it’s hard to guess his age, but he’s a young man for sure. Early twenties, I’d guess, but maybe even more like nineteen. His body is like what you see in a textbook on anatomy. Honed muscles all perfectly proportional and aligned. He wears cloth pants with a drawstring and that’s all. He’s handsome, I’ll admit, in a savage, primal sort of way. Like a cave man, yeah? But there’s a tenderness there that I thought I might have been projecting but now know I’m not.