-Sam- Once upon a time

It’s my sister’s tenth birthday today. It’s also been ten years since the first time I saw him.

(Happy birthday, Alice. Happy anniversary, big guy. Fuck you.)

This is where I could angst about how I never got a normal childhood, but that’s not gonna happen. I don’t even remember most of it. After the first time that blank white face appeared in the window of the maternity ward, everything turned into a horrible blur of nightmares and sickness and seeing things that weren’t there, or maybe they were, I don’t want to think about it. Sis got the worst of it. He was there for her entire short life, and…

god, she was so sick. My parents didn’t even notice and I spent three years trying to take care of a sick baby and myself and those were the best years of my life. Because at least I wasn’t alone.

It was her third birthday when I came home from school and no, no I can’t talk about it I don’t want to talk about it. I came home and they were all gone.

(He always shows up on her birthday. Every time.)

I couldn’t even recognize them as my parents anymore. Just a bloody mess on our bedroom floor. They died trying to protect her but they couldn’t. He always wins in the end. And my sister, my little baby Allie, was just gone.

Nobody ever found her body. The police came, the police left, the police convicted some innocent man of my parents’ murder. The newspaper had an article about a couple killed in their home. There was never any mention of a baby. Nobody believed me.

Did you hear that? Nobody ever believed I had a sister.

of course then they sent me to doctors and stuff. They tried to tell me I’d invented the Man because I couldn’t cope with my parents’ death. I…started to believe them, I think, in the end. He stayed away. There were a couple years where I didn’t see him at all, where I lived with my grandma who was nice enough but not really the mothering type, where I was almost happy. I was starting to get better, just a little bit. That should have been my warning sign right there. Maybe if I’d stayed on my toes, expected the worst, I wouldn’t have woken up at four in the morning last year on Valentine’s Day to the smoke alarms and flames.

It’s been a whole year. How has it been a year? It’s like a movie in my head, jumping out the window with nothing but my coat and shoes and glasses. Leaving everything behind. There was one moment where I turned around, I could have saved my grandma, but I just. I just didn’t. He wanted me to run, so I ran. I couldn’t stop.

I can never stop

-Sam

-Doc- Safety, Sanity

Things have been so odd lately. August and I were just hanging out and playing cards, and I realized that I haven't felt this safe, relaxed, and comfortable in a long while. Even when I'm not feeding my addiction, my waking hours are quite enjoyable. However, they're even better when I am. I do get a bit talkative and...nostalgic, at times, but it could be worse. It could be so, so much worse.

I haven't been allowed to leave on delivery in awhile (or leave the House alone for extended amounts of time period), but my mental prognosis has been looking better. Not writing on any walls, certainly not in my own blood. (Okay, the unicorn fighting a t-rex I drew on my office wall in dry erase pen doesn't count, I was just bored that time.) Not cutting off any limbs, not hearing voices I shouldn't be, not gibbering to the walls like a lunatic. Just having nightmares of wicked things crawling through my head and waking up standing in the middle of the kitchen, or trying to open the back door. I usually go outside to get some air, it helps. Honestly, I think it's just leftover stress from the House going crazy and taking me with it; the dreams and sleepwalking have been tapering off since then. Haven't been seeing Him lately, so I must have snapped back into my old way of things, slipped into that induced complacency that kept me somewhat sane for so long.

I've missed sanity. I've slipped out of it far too many times before, and it's never easy to crawl back in. I like to compare it to falling out of a helicopter and having to grab on to one of its legs, then pull yourself back in before you fall off for good. Of course, if you can't grab on, there may be someone there to catch you, but it may not be who you want it to be. That someone might whisk you away with loving intent, and due to...circumstances, that intent becomes purely cruel and sadistic. Needles carrying an endless supply of drowsy thoughtlessness. Yelling. Abuse. You may call me a biased loon, but I can assure you that it truly was that bad. The Moon-Headed Shadow, as we patients came to call Him, began to...express himself through the hospital personnel. From the doctors and psychiatrists all the way down to the nursing assistants. Not all the hospital staff succumbed to His influence and became worse than the patients they were in charge of, however: one of the younger nurses discovered my love of Kurt Vonnegut. On slow days, she'd read to me for hours while I sat grinning and drooling. My favorite novel used to be Slaughterhouse-Five before she read it to me so much that I'd feel my mind start to frost over the moment she uttered the opening words. Can't really say I can bear to read it anymore, or even look at the cover: in retrospect, perhaps she HAD fallen to His influence, and that was her way of cementing me in my madness.

And all that can end it is being carried away in flames by a pair of compassionate hands, while the rest of it, all the others like you and your torturers, burn to ash. Then it's down to three: you, your savior, and the Moon-Headed Shadow looking on with an eyeless, judging stare. And so you're whisked away again with equally loving intent, but this time, to find a true sanctuary waiting in a dingy, smoke-filled apartment.

...you know, sitting around thinking about all of this probably isn't good for me. I need something to do: I'm think I'll talk to Steele about getting the hell out of here for awhile, I'm sure he'd be down for that. Spence will probably demand I be...more adequately supervised, just as a precaution, but we can find something that'll work. Maybe August's delivery? I don't know yet.