Excerpt: 

“Two young women appeared, stepping forward with that strange, animal light of hunger in their eyes. I could barely breath. Where was she?

The first tried. She forced the slipper, twisting and pressing it against her foot, while her mother whispered meaningless prayers. The glass would not yield. I felt my chest tighten.

The second moved silently. She tried. And when the slipper refused to contain her, there was a sound- quick and wet. When she looked up again, lips trembling in triumph, the shoe fit.

For a single suspended heartbeat, I almost believed it was her. Almost.

Then I saw the crimson blooming beneath the glass, spreading slowly like a rose opening. I should have recoiled.  But terrible wonder ignited within me instead. She would mutilate herself to claim a place in my story. And such determination… is that not the highest form of devotion?

Then the birds began to scream.”

Excerpt: 

“I tried to forget the knocking, yet at last I could no longer bear it. It called to me with the cruelest urgency; it implored me to investigate with the deepest fever. I lifted myself up- with much reluctance and protest from my limbs- from my position in the great armchair and moved toward the door. 

My worries tailed me as a heavy, stifling, unshakable skin would. I glanced once more at the approaching door. It beckoned me- it waved me forward with its impatience. But no! It was the predatory satisfaction with the knowledge that success is inevitable. Finally, I came into its embrace and removed the bolts that kept it shut. The chilling midnight wind bit into my face as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness that lay beyond it.

Nothing- nothing I could see and nothing I could sense!”

Excerpt: 

“Hearing the laughter carrying on at the table, and tasting the loneliness and fear of the night, I felt a heavier pain in both my stomach and heart. As the shadow of the curtains shifted wildly in the moaning wind, I made this wish, a serious one indeed, to never be found.

Suddenly, the wind started to laugh like crazy. All its whistles and howls and roars and moans mixed in a silvery tornado with flying dust, and the tornado had a force so strong it pulled the curtains off the window violently, making them a part of the shifting circle.

I was scared and amazed at the same time. Something inside of me began to growl.

I stood up from the swing bench. Somehow the pain had gone in a flash. It was such a relief that I nearly floated into the air like a feather; but instead, I approached the tornado, almost padding, as if I was afraid of disturbing it. I felt so excited by this fear, my heart hammered in my chest as I was about to touch the tornado.

And it swallowed me immediately.”

Excerpt: 

“Directive 4 Compliance Report:

Mandated presence in East Gallery, 15:15-15:20

During this interval, the acoustic  anomaly  developed a  rhythmic structure. 

Atonal. Repetitive. Subjectively unsettling. It clung to the inside of my skull long after I left. 

Ancestral portraits in gallery displayed  anomalous focal properties (subjective). I am certain the figure in the third portrait tracked my movement. 

Post-compliance, noted a transient sense of  deprivation . Absurd. I must be starved for entertainment.  Or going mad.

Addendum:

My handwriting appears altered, more fluid, less my own. Fatigue is a likely factor. Must rest.”

Excerpt: 

“I found an empty room at the end of the corridor, with no one else around, and opened the diaries of the previous victims. The air smelled of damp paper and dust.

As I was reading, my eyelids couldn’t help but close. The lines began to blur together, words twisting and shifting as if alive. Maybe it is because I was so tired, before completely falling to sleep, I could see pages begin to turn on their own.

And somewhere between waking and dreaming, I thought I heard the faint sound of a woman calling my name.”