January 25, 2018
Dear Diary
Isabelle Garrison
“No one is out to get you, darling. You’re safe here,” said the form that looked like my mother. But I knew it wasn’t her.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered in an attempt to let the shape think I wasn’t on to its plot to steal my life.
The form wearing my mother’s face pointed towards the dresser where my diary was. I had stupidly written everything about my bizarre situation into it. It was only a matter of time before someone or something found it and discovered that I knew the truth.
“Honey,” it began, “I think you need some real help. This idea of yours, it isn’t at all healthy. Your father and I booked you an appointment with this psychiatrist. He thinks he can help you, okay?”
“I’m not going to some shrink. I’m fine! It’s just some silly idea. Don’t read my diary mother!”
With that, I left the house. I had to get out of there and away from that thing. The thing with the different faces. I ran for ages before I finally felt safe enough to sit down. The grass was slightly wet from the previous rainfall, but I didn’t care. A seat is a seat, and after a run, I just had to sit down.
I didn’t go home that night. I couldn’t. That thing was my mother. I can’t say where my real mother was, or even the whereabouts of my father. So I did what any rational person would do, and I got a hotel room.
The room was pretty unremarkable. The walls were this disgusting shade of beige, the bed was lumpy and you heard the springs creak when you moved. The bathroom was tiny and everything in it was white. It was really terrible, but it was cheap. You really do get what you pay for.
I pulled out my phone and went on my social medias to see if anyone was saying anything. The first thing I noticed was a post from my mother. She had reported me missing. The claim was I had run away after being told about the psychiatrist. And to any outsider, that is what happened. But there is no psychiatrist and that is not my mother. I knew it then, and I know it now.
I needed a plan on how to defeat that thing. This thing isn’t your ordinary thing, oh no. This thing is straight out of hell. It is some creature who can look like anyone at any time. It lurks and it watches and it waits for you to be alone or with someone you trust, only to thrust itself upon you in some conversation. The longer the conversation is, the more threatening it becomes. It will destroy you. Well, I wasn’t just going to stand by and let that happen to me.
Whatever this thing is, it was following me for some reason. I figured the only way to defeat it was to figure out why it wanted me in the first place. But how do you talk to something that wants you dead? It was too late at night to think about it so I just went to bed.
The following morning, I got up and out of that hotel. I went to the library in an attempt to try and figure this whole thing out. Libraries have free internet access and tons of books, so I was certain I’d be able to find something out. I had no idea where to start.
I sat at a computer and typed various searches like “Monster pretends to be other people” and “creature takes shape of others” but nothing useful ever came up. The search “demons that shapeshift” got some results, but none of them had anything to do with what I was looking for. That just got werewolves and stuff like that to come up, and this thing is not a werewolf.
With the internet being useless, surprisingly, I went to the books. Most of the mythology and demon books were all pretty useless. They had nothing that was even close to what I was experiencing, as if there wasn’t any known thing that did this.
A librarian came up to me and asked if I was looking for something specific. I didn’t answer her and kept walking, but she grabbed my arm to keep me from getting too far.
“Hey,” she said, “you’re the missing girl that was on the news,” and she smiled an unsettling smile.
I tried to get away from her, but her grip was much stronger than I had expected. Suddenly she wasn’t a librarian at all but the thing.
“LET GO OF ME!” I screamed while pushing it away from me and breaking free from its tight grip. I ran out of that library so fast, but the police were there. Those library people must have known it was me long before the librarian was sent to me; they called the cops so I’d go home.
The ride home was long. Longer than it usually took. It was like time ceased to exist in the way I always knew it to be. Minutes felt like hours. The sand just couldn’t fall fast enough. My mother still wasn’t my mother. But it thanked the cops like it cared for me anyways.
When we got inside, there was this man sitting on my couch. The thing that wasn’t my mother told me that it was the psychiatrist she had mentioned last night. It made me sit down in the chair across from the couch. It then left to fix some tea.
“Hello Eliza. I’m Dr.Rosales and I’m going to help you. Your mother let me read your diary. Would you like to tell me what’s been going on?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t about to tell this guy anything. That thing was still in the kitchen and I wasn’t going to play mentally ill to please it. Dr. Rosales didn’t seem fazed by my lack of cooperation though. He just kept on talking.
“Okay. I can’t help you if you don’t try to work with me here. But why don’t I just read from your diary, okay? ‘Something is following me. I don’t know how but everyone is it and it is everyone. Like one person in a disguise. All out to get me.’ Do you remember writing that, Eliza?”
I ignored him. I wrote that entry months ago. It was a bit of an exaggeration. The thing wasn’t really everyone. Just certain people. But I wasn’t going to tell him that entry was hyperbolic by nature. I still look crazy.
“Have you ever heard of fregoli delusion?”
The events are a bit blurry after that. I wish I could tell you what happened, but I don’t even know. I know some glass broke, but I don’t know how or why. I know I ended up outside for a little while. Again, it’s blurry and incomprehensible.
But that brings us to today. I’ve been admitted to a psychiatric hospital under the belief that I’m suffering from some paranoid delusion that a group of people are just one person in disguise.
A doctor is walking up to me now. Only I can tell it’s not a doctor. It’s that thing. It is holding a syringe now. Am I finally going to be killed by it? I scream as it injects me.