I need the noise here. I can't have a moment of true silence here. It's not hard to remedy if you live in even a poor home. I have the fish tank filter running but it's not enough. I need people. Human voices cure the pain. Law and Order episodes have just the right amount of characters to keep the talking running. It's still not enough. I play it on the TV while I run another show on my computer to have a sickening overlap of gibberish. It's just right, like the smallest bed in the room was right for that furry little piece of shit in the book the man reads me when he wants to hear his own voice.
"Calm down," he says.
I can't calm down. My home has been invaded so I need to keep it together. Don't put anything more than arms' reach away. At first you feel like a pack rat but it's for your own good. Don't step off your bed either, that whole hand coming out from under the bed trick is enough to send you screaming into the night. It only got me once, once was all I got to get a few fingers and keep them on the nightstand in a jar so I know he's real.
Make sure the lights stay on until sunrise when you can sleep, a lot of helpful websites make sure you can count to the very minute that the sun begins to come up. When they do, don't tuck in immediately. If you live in a place like I do, with the mountains in the way of the sunlight, you need to wait until the ambient light fills the room just past the pretty orange that hacks like to photograph. Rainy and cloudy days are days you get to stay up again. If you live in Seattle it was nice knowing you.
He's quiet, he's patient, he wants me to sleep so he can stand over me again. He wants that peace inside my head that opens a door. I can't write his name, his shape, his form or anything that will let it spread. Words are power. The night is like a vacuum that he can go through. Just keep away from the quiet dark, it's not dark, it's him.
"Just take the pills and everything will be fine, David."
I'd trust my doctor more if he wasn't wearing the coat that was covered in the blood of the last one. It's not the pills that make his coat less dirty, I see them when I'm on them too. He wants me to take them because I know one he slipped a tranquilizer into the bottle that matches the others. If I take that again I'll wake up missing another few pieces of skin, my last few patches taken still red as a reminder.
He loves to stand in the corner five feet away from the bed knowing I'll lash out if he gets closer. Marking the spots on the floor in the daytime I can keep an eye on the son of a bitch.
I have to wait until the sunrise to kill him.
He keeps letting IT in through the window every evening after the sun goes down. It crawls like a snake to under the bed before calling "the others" with its slow and deep groan like vomit rising in its throat. Some of them look like the one that loves the underside of my mattress. Some of them stand in a semi circle around the man in the bloody coat and sway back and forth like a tree branch.
They creak in their sway.
I keep the remote handy as the few that circle the bloody piece of shit make noises at each other. I turn up the TV and they shriek at the noises. I need the noises here, it's the only thing that keeps them away.