Listen- before I tell you this, I think it’s important that I tell you- that I tell you what? What could I say? I mean- I don’t think it’s supernatural, but I could be wrong? I hope not, or maybe I hope it is, I don’t know which is worse. But look, you’ve got to help me- I don’t know if you can help me, but I sure can’t, so this is the best I could do.
I don’t keep healthy habits. Haven’t for years, now, so the least I can tell you is that nothing like this has ever happened before- no hallucinations, no derangement of any kind, no memory loss, nothing serious anyway. It’s always been clear in my head what’s going on. No, it’s nothing too unhealthy, it’s just that my sleep schedule is all out of whack. Started a few years ago, just kept going to bed later and later and waking up later and later until I was only awake at night and the early morning. I like it that way, though- it’s quiet at night, and in the morning everybody is too busy to really bother me. I get my shopping done then, heading out just in time to go to the store and back before rush hour starts. I hardly ever see anyone, but that’s okay- I never liked being around people anyway. Now I go to stores when they’re nearly empty, and when I rarely walk the streets I do so alone.
I don’t have much cash- don’t care that much, anyway. If I did, I’d have a regular human’s sleep schedule, and a regular person's job. No, I code, freelancing, just random things I can find to do (I’ll show you my site if you want), enough cash to pay rent and buy food and squirrel some away for a rainy day, a little nest egg. I’m rambling- sorry. It’s just that I want you to know that I’m not some freakish loner whose only way to get money is through crime. Not the crime part, anyway. Hah.
Sorry, I’m nervous, shouldn’t joke like that around people. Heh- another reason not to be around them. Guess I should spend more time around people in the future. Anyway, I’m rambling again.
So, how do I put this- I’ve been finding notes in my house. Hidden in little nooks and crannies, underneath things in the fridge, random spots in my bathroom, tucked into cabinets and into the pockets of clothes I don’t wear that often. Random things, random observations scrawled on them, hidden in places where I don’t usually look, places I don’t usually go. Random things, written in my own handwriting.
Yeah, yeah, I know- probably just wrote them and forgot about them, or it was sleepwalking or something- that’s what I thought too, at first. But I had no reason to leave them in such hard-to-reach places; but yeah, at first I ignored them. But after a while of finding them, I realized that there were a lot more than I thought. That’s when I started searching for them in earnest.
I dedicated one day to looking for them, searched the house up and down, left not one stone or piece of furniture unturned.
I found about five hundred and twenty-four notes. I counted, and as I counted I realized that they were a lot stranger than I thought. Said things like “psychologist”, “new house?”, “SERPENT”, “crisis”, “bathtub”, “lighter”, “estimated money”, “purchases?”, “sleep”. I don’t remember them all, couldn’t tell you many more. They went missing the next day, anyway.
I checked in the trash as soon as I noticed.
It was hard to tell, but beneath a bunch of other garbage was what seemed like a pile of ash.
I didn’t find any more notes after that, not for a long while. I chalked it up to some kind of- well, I don’t know, but I was just glad it was over. I tried not to think about it.
One day, I realized that one of the floorboards was squeaky. Not slightly squeaky- no, this was a real loud squeal, a high-pitched wooden groan of pain, not the kind of thing that can develop overnight. I bent down to check it.
It was sticking up quite a bit, but that wasn’t what caught my eye.
There were a bunch of scratch marks on one end of the board.
As I bent down for a closer look, I saw something under my bed that I hadn’t noticed before, at least when I had checked under there last.
It was a crowbar.
Mystified, I reached under the bed and pulled it out. It was cold and heavy in my hand, even for a rather small crowbar. It clearly wasn’t made for heavy work.
But, I thought as I looked down, it might work for a floorboard.
I pried it away, after placing the end of the crowbar on the same end of the board where all the scratches were.
Underneath the floorboard were hundreds and hundreds of notes.
I only looked at a few, didn’t count them though there must have been three hundred at least, probably a lot more, can’t say for sure.
One of them, a longer one, near the top, really stood out to me.
It was a grocery list- and here’s the thing. I know I was sleepwalking at the time, but, well, it still seems really wrong to me, even knowing- well, guessing- why it happened. At first I couldn’t tell why it seemed wrong, couldn’t understand why it unnerved me so much. All of them were things I normally bought. Bread, cheese, meat, milk, lettuce, that kind of thing.
Look- whenever I go shopping, I make a grocery list. And I might be neurotic, but I always make sure to cross out something on the list whenever I get it. So I leave home with a list with nothing crossed out, and return home with everything crossed off, unless I was unable to get something, in which case I circle it.
There were no circles on this list. But there were plenty of uncrossed items, and plenty of crossed ones.
I know it’s silly- but, you don’t understand, the confusion I felt, the dread- I, well, I didn’t know what to think, at first.
I realized, after a little bit of puzzling over it, that most of the things there were still in my fridge. The list was dated to two days ago, and I hadn’t gone shopping since.
Everything in the fridge was on the list, and almost everything on the list was in the fridge. The list mentioned some things like a caesar salad I had bought three days ago and eaten yesterday- gone from the fridge, now- and a few other things I remembered getting.
But here’s the thing. All the uncrossed things I, quite clearly, remember purchasing. I remember jotting them down on my list, being angry about the price on the milk, being thankful I got the last salted butter.
All of the crossed out things, however, I had no memory of buying. They were in the fridge still, most of them, and I remembered eating some of them- but I didn’t remember ever going to the store to get them. That happened a lot to me, still does, but I didn’t remark much over it- just thought, “Oh, would you look at that- I don’t remember getting that, what a stroke of luck.” I probably would never have noticed it, if it wasn’t for the list.
I put the floorboard back, hit it a little to get it down and make it stick out less and creak more quietly, and put the crowbar back where I found it.
One morning I woke up to find that I had a bandage wrapped around my leg. From what I could tell, there was a very thin but deep cut, the kind that glass can make, thankfully missing an artery. There was one other thing, too, either that day or the day after- I can’t really remember.
Outside of my apartment was a delivery for me.
It was a security camera.
I turned it over, looking over it. The package was for me- apparently I had bought it.
I put it back down where I had found it.
The next day it was installed, looking right at my bed. I didn’t notice it at first- I only thought to look for it once I realized the package was gone. It took a while to search the room, but I found it after a while, wedged half-behind a cabinet.
Holding my breath, I took it down and, after a little bit of fiddling, accessed the recordings.
I don’t know what I expected to see- I mean, I guessed that I would only see myself, but it was still a little bit surprising when I realized I was the only one who had been in here, had been the one to set up the camera. It was a confirmation that the stranger who had been living in my house was me.
That night, before drifting asleep, I got up on impulse, worried and wondering, flicked on the switch, blinked my eyes, took a minute to adjust to the light and castigate myself for waking myself up when I was just about to fall asleep. I stood up, waited a moment to remember what it was that I was going to do. That’s right, I was going to leave a message for him.
I took a piece of paper lying on the desk, looked at it for a second, threw it away, grabbed a pen, tossed that to the side, grabbed a marker and a stool. Jumped up, barely managed to stay on, steadied myself and reached towards the ceiling-
I wrote “Who are you?”
-and jumped back down, looked up, appreciated my handiwork and then regretted that I had written it in a color that looked regrettably like blood- oh well.
The next day it was gone, had been wiped away, though there was a bit of pink stain on the ceiling- guess I should have expected that- and another message. I only noticed it after I had made my coffee, had been in the process of making breakfast when I glanced up on the ceiling and wondered why there was writing on it- wondered until I remembered last night- then I walked over, excited- it was written in green marker.
Scrawled on the ceiling was a simple message.
It took me a second to process it.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
What’s my mother’s name. Huh.
What’s my mother’s name? Well,- well, what is it? I don’t know! That’s the thing, I don’t know! I don’t know that! All I know is that I’m me, and that I live in my apartment, and that I code, and, well, I must have been born, right? Right? Yeah, and- how did I never think about that? How often would you think about something so glaringly missing- how? How did I- no, not how, what? Because what am I? I mean- heh. As far as I can remember, I’ve existed forever in my small apartment, and there never was a before then, never was a me before then, and- I’m going crazy? I hope I am, I hope I am, because- well, what am I? You’re defined by your past, and I don’t have one, and- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just need to continue. Yeah. Anyway. The next day a package arrived.
It was a length of rope.
This time I decided to check my search history- I hadn’t thought of that before, hadn’t thought it would tell me anything, hadn’t really believed that it was me and that it knew my password- or maybe I knew it’s- or maybe whatever? I just didn’t think to look, had just checked my amazon orders and seen, yeah, check, the security camera was ordered by me, yeah- didn’t give it any thought- didn’t want to give it any thought, didn’t want to think about it at all- but now I took the plunge, dived in, held my breath and closed my eyes before thinking, idiot, you need to have your eyes open to check your search history, check the train of thought of this other you- need to look at it, I need to keep up with myself, can’t trust anyone else- I mean, I can’t trust myself either- but I checked it. Normal stuff, and google searches that stuck out, from the oldest from a few months ago to the newest from yesterday- yeah, YESTERDAY yesterday, this was last night when I found this- and it was
“How do I tell if I’m losing my memory?”
“How do I tell if someone else is living in my house?”
“How do I tell if I’m sleepwalking?”
And on, and on, and on, the frenzied searches of someone as confused as I was, and then, from yesterday-
I need you to help me, I need you to do something to save me. When I go to sleep, and then wake up again, I guess, don’t let me leave, don’t let me out of your sight, make sure I don’t do anything.
Because that’s not going to be me.
That’s going to be whoever I took over.
And I don’t want him to wake up.
Because, oh is he scared, I’ve been looking at the notes again and now I see that he’s terrified.
I don’t want him to wake up, because I think he’s going to kill himself.