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Description
For as long as I have lived in this wretched old house, there has been a presence that would not let me slumber in peace.

The smell of burnt apples as I hang the washing out, the laughter of children on the telephone, a flickering figure on the face of a shilling – I threw all the fruit away, money out the window, and lay waste to the receiver a hundred years ago, all in foolish hopes the villain would leave a poor girl alone. But she never did.

Sometimes, I was glad of it. I became, one might say, accustomed to her presence after a certain time – perhaps she was merely the madness of a lonely puppeteer in the middle of the rubbish bin of the world, but she treated me well. I would awake, occasionally, to boiled eggs and bacon strips in the kitchen, and I would never thank her, because I didn't know who to thank, or what to thank them for, or that I wasn't insane. She would clean my wounds when I was sleeping too, pass the bandages and assist in those dreadful hard to reach places I always seem to hurt myself when I was awake, and send me into a turbulent hour of half-sleep with a kiss, those times I actually tried to close my eyes – and I could smell perfume, and hear the rustle of silk, and the words 'sleep tight' would echo warmly at the back of my aching mind.

Somehow I think her small. I know, it's quite ironic really, when you consider how omnipresent and irritating yet somehow comforting her odd thing of an existence is, was, is, and how, why, almost motherly she is. But I think that she is really just a child, as bad as me – a child, pretending to be strong.

I decided to investigate, once. I wanted to know whether this thing, really, of total indeterminacy had ever existed, in my world (as I am inclined to question that your world and mine really are the same, or that mine is even there at all), in physical form. And I found a box, in among my endless piles of books, and wondered how I didn't know it had been there in a house that I had built, but I didn't open it – couldn't actually – pain just overwhelmed, sleep taking me for another shaky half hour doze, and saving from total exhaustion as always.

It hurt through my sleep, so I awoke. I tried to find out where it hurt – I felt a stinging somewhere, everywhere, replaced bandages, splashed freezing, burning water in my face, but nothing soothed. I didn't know where it hurt, it just kept hurting – so I cursed, and I let it.

Curse her, bless her, I would think, I think, whoever she was, whoever she was, whoever she is. She cannot be myself and yet I have a box of dusty presents to confirm that she was, she is, she was here.

You open your dead eyes to look in the mirror
which they are holding to your mouth.

Description
For as long as I have lived in this wretched old house, there has been a presence that would not let me slumber in peace.

The smell of burnt apples as I hang the washing out, the laughter of children on the telephone, a flickering figure on the face of a shilling – I threw all the fruit away, money out the window, and lay waste to the receiver a hundred years ago, all in foolish hopes the villain would leave a poor girl alone. But she never did.

Sometimes, I was glad of it. I became, one might say, accustomed to her presence after a certain time – perhaps she was merely the madness of a lonely puppeteer in the middle of the rubbish bin of the world, but she treated me well. I would awake, occasionally, to boiled eggs and bacon strips in the kitchen, and I would never thank her, because I didn't know who to thank, or what to thank them for, or that I wasn't insane. She would clean my wounds when I was sleeping too, pass the bandages and assist in those dreadful hard to reach places I always seem to hurt myself when I was awake, and send me into a turbulent hour of half-sleep with a kiss, those times I actually tried to close my eyes – and I could smell perfume, and hear the rustle of silk, and the words 'sleep tight' would echo warmly at the back of my aching mind.

Somehow I think her small. I know, it's quite ironic really, when you consider how omnipresent and irritating yet somehow comforting her odd thing of an existence is, was, is, and how, why, almost motherly she is. But I think that she is really just a child, as bad as me – a child, pretending to be strong.

I decided to investigate, once. I wanted to know whether this thing, really, of total indeterminacy had ever existed, in my world (as I am inclined to question that your world and mine really are the same, or that mine is even there at all), in physical form. And I found a box, in among my endless piles of books, and wondered how I didn't know it had been there in a house that I had built, but I didn't open it – couldn't actually – pain just overwhelmed, sleep taking me for another shaky half hour doze, and saving from total exhaustion as always.

It hurt through my sleep, so I awoke. I tried to find out where it hurt – I felt a stinging somewhere, everywhere, replaced bandages, splashed freezing, burning water in my face, but nothing soothed. I didn't know where it hurt, it just kept hurting – so I cursed, and I let it.

Curse her, bless her, I would think, I think, whoever she was, whoever she was, whoever she is. She cannot be myself and yet I have a box of dusty presents to confirm that she was, she is, she was here.

You open your dead eyes to look in the mirror
which they are holding to your mouth.