It was two against one, and the other two looked bulkier and more animal-like in the way they were hunched over with hands curled in like apes. But then I saw my protector pull a stick or something from a pocket in his pants and begin hitting them with it. And the two wild ones yelped in pain as blood began to spout from injuries and I realized that it wasn’t a stick he was holding, but a makeshift knife he’d fashioned from wood and stone. And he kept swinging it and poking them with it, stabbing and slicing them open, that guttural roar eclipsing all sound until the two finally turned and scrambled away, staggering back through the woods, defeated.

He turned back toward me, but I was so frightened by what I had just witnessed that I cowered away from the window. And I could see the hurt and confusion in my protector’s eyes as I backed away, but I couldn’t help it. The walls were closing in on this little cabin isolated from all the world and surrounded by things that would do me harm as they’d done already. And I just wanted to be left alone, for the rest of my life if they’d leave me to it. But that’s not how this game is played, yeah? I don’t know what the end game is, but I know there is one. I just want some control over the outcome.

All the rest of that day I spent in hiding, huddled under a blanket that I spread out from the couch to the coffee table like a kiddie-fort. My stomach grumbling from hunger. Thinking, quite earnestly now, about taking the ending into my own hands. My options are quite limited, though, I’m afraid. There are no knives here, which shouldn’t come as much surprise. Wouldn’t do to give me a weapon now, would it? No bath, so drowning’s out. Oh, but the thought of that gives me shivers. So desperate to die that I drown myself. Is that even possible? Hanging’s the only way I can figure. Tie one end to a closet rod and the other to my neck and sag into it until the world fades to black. Dreary, dreary thoughts. But they come as a kind of relief, too. A way to escape this constant pain and suffering. My loveless life that I took for granted until it was too late.

But there’s hope now, yeah? Faint and stranger than a flying turtle, but there all the same. I’ll tell about it once my hand stops cramping. If I’m still here, that is.

* * *

April 24, cont.