Diary of a Dead Man

10 - 16 - XXXX

10 - 16 - XXXX

Life's always been something I've been fascinated with. The sun, the sky, the trees... Everything is just so beautiful and serves a purpose..! Just like us, they grow and mature and go through hardships. That's why I surround myself with flora of all kinds; I kind of relate to nature a bit too much..! It doesn't bother me, though.

I've flowers and such that correspond to my friends in my own little playground in my mind since I don't get to see them as often as I would like. It's a bit hard now... everywhere I go it seems like there's no life around, whether it be other kids or fauna. Life around here just kind of stopped. I get it, though, it's about to be winter and everyone's wanting to stay inside so they don't freeze..! It would be nice to get a phone call every now and then, though. I've given everyone in my little circle of friends my telephone number... Maybe they just got busy!! Yeah...

I certainly have been busy.

It's a bit complicated to explain but I think it's not worth mentioning anyway. I'd rather not fill this diary with such things. Wouldn't want to give away any details if someone were to find this and read it!! Especially because these are the first few pages... It's kind of important to keep everything hidden. I'm kind of like that. At least I think so...

I spent most of today walking around the town with my earmuffs on to dim the noises around me. When you're so used to everything being quiet, every noise is just so amplified. I don't know how I did it when I was younger. However, it was a lot simpler living in this quaint little town back then. Things have gotten... bad... over time. I guess that's why I bought this journal... diary thing at HOBBEEZ a few years back. I don't remember ever writing in it, as the cover was caked in dust from lack of use, but when I opened it... some pages were ripped out. Oh well. Let's not worry about that..!

The fog was fairly heavy today, though. It had made today colder than what I'm used to for the fall. It was no biggie, though... I made good use of the atmosphere to think up many scenarios to escape reality for just a second. I've been struggling with that as of late. You know, keeping secrets is the hardest thing I have to push through. Kind of a toxic behavior I picked up over the years of promises being broken.

I have one right now: My friends told me that they would visit me at least twice a week and call me at least three times a week! And, well, as I've written earlier, they haven't called me. I don't entirely blame them, though... My thoughts do tend to run off the deep end nowadays. But that's their loss, if I'm being honest. They don't get to see their hand-picked-by-me flowers grow into beautiful, big flowers. That is if I keep them... All of this has really just gotten to my head and I've been trying to dismiss it and not write about it, but at this point I'm just far too gone, huh? I can't keep friends for shit. They haven't seen me since the summer. I mean, yeah sure school could be holding them back, but even there they haven't made an effort to come up to me and ask me a simple "How are you?"

God, I may just be in over my head at this point and I haven't been paying attention to my surroundings due to being so engrossed in my studies... It's become something that I take advantage of to cope with being alone with my thoughts almost all of the time. I need to snap out of it. It's probably a good thing that I haven't been going to classes this past week. I've run low on many resources so I need to be helping POLLY with getting enough money to help sustain the house and all of our stuff that comes with it. Sure, I only pick up trash around the town, but getting the cans and plastic bottles have helped quite a bit. No one really cares if they leave their trash on the ground around here. Ever since the fauna stopped being present around here, people have used it to their advantage to litter up the whole town.

We used to be so good about cleaning up after ourselves. And even when the town wasn't good about it, me and my friends would team up to get a quick buck by cleaning up the town. I miss those days so much. Why did I have to be such a-... No, that's not important right now. I won't be doing that kind of thing in this journal of mine. I can vent about the day, but I will not be making this out to be my note.

Let's start over, shall we? :) This time, with a recap of my day..!

Today was rather dull and dreary with heavy fog clouding up the area. Though it is the middle of October, it's usually a bit warmer than how it was today, but I guess I can't really help it. The fog does deserve a bit of credit, though. A form screaming of lifelessness is bound to make any day feel a bit colder on one's bones. For some reason it was very calming to me. I couldn't see more than a foot in front of me so my job of picking up the town's trash and recyclables was a lot harder, though.

I got quite a bit of cash from today's haul. Hopefully it'll help POLLY enough so I can go back to classes next week. I took this week off due to issues sustaining the house and the many, many bills that need to be paid in order to keep the house from going under. POLLY would hate to see me on the streets and quite frankly I'd hate to see her out there. FARAWAY TOWN isn't always a nice place - there's always a dark history. The dead of night is no stranger to that history, either.

That's why the city-wide curfew is 7:00 PM. Not too dark, but enough sunlight for stragglers to head on home. It's not strict, though. The thing that the stragglers need to worry about is the 7:45 PM curfew. That's when the city's patrol heads out. Whether they are called because someone's child isn't home yet or not, they make sure to bring people home. I don't really like it all the time because some folks around here are trying to escape abusive situations and I can't really do much to help or anything like that. I care too much...

I wouldn't say that's a bad thing, though. Today there was a stray cat in the streets after so long of a time not seeing any fauna around the area. It was limping and so I went over to it, put on my gloves that I use for gardening, and saw what I could do to help the poor thing. The cat had dislocated its leg and didn't even hesitate or fight back when I laid it down to put the leg back in the socket. When I looked up, though, I saw a person standing in the distance. I couldn't make out a face or anything like that; it was just... they were just an aura of sorts staring at me. For a second I started to spiral into thinking that it was something but... it could've just been a person who was looking after the cat as well. That definitely threw me off and made my stomach churn, but something else happened.

I was going to be sick. The form had taken the shape of someone I used to know. It took a few steps toward me and the cat I had helped. My mouth was agape as it trudged towards us. Its eyes were blacker than the coldest void. Hair greasy and all over the place. Skin was as white as snow but as dull as this dusty sky that met my eyes. It looked so familiar... Why couldn't I put a name to the face? I started hyperventilating and shaking, too scared to get up and make a run for it. My chest started caving in with immense pain, even more so than the hug of my cross-body fanny pack.

The fog started to lift, almost as if this creature wanted me to see it. But that face... Why couldn't I put a damn name to the damn face?! It was getting closer and my gut was telling me to run but... I didn't want to leave the cat behind. So I grabbed the cat and the last bag of scraps and made a run for it. I didn't care where I went from there. After all, I still made it home despite the detour. It gave me that same sick-to-my-stomach feeling as I had with the figure.

A rope was hanging from a tree's branch. Nausea took over me, but I couldn't hurl with this cat with me, so I just kept walking. It could've just been from a person's tire swing falling off. That's what I want to believe, anyway.

After a few long minutes, I was finally back home with the stray and a good portion of cash. When I had presented it to POLLY, though, she had asked me if I had seen a ghost. I brushed it off and said I was tired and started seeing things and not to worry. The last thing I need right now is for her to worry about me when she already has the house to worry about. I did bring home a whopping 550 MONEY. The OLD LADY running it knows about our financial situation so she increased the payout to 5 MONEY per TRASH. It was more than enough to help POLLY, I hope.

She said that I could go back to school next week and just take it easy for the next three days as it would be pointless to go tomorrow. It would only pile up my school work to do over the weekend instead of doing it throughout next week. I like how she knows that I enjoy my free time. It's nice having someone who actually cares. As for the cat, she said that I could keep it as long as I let it do what it wants for food or whatever. I think it's reasonable, especially given that it's probably adapted to the outside world.

I just can't get over the fact that I couldn't put a name to the face out there. It's like I just forgot about everyone that's ever come into contact with me over the past lifetime. I hope it's not connected to whatever happened in the past in any way... I'd hate to have that be a reality, but it's the only thing that makes sense right now.