a personal page. please wipe your feet. it won't help — you're already tracking it inside.
I don't remember moving in. I remember the boxes, and the boxes had handwriting on them that wasn't mine, in a hand that gets steadier every time I look at it. The walls breathe out around 3 a.m. — slow, even, asleep. I've started breathing along with them so they don't notice I'm awake too.
unedited, mostly because I'm afraid to reread them
Six boxes in the attic, addressed to a name I almost remember being mine, written in handwriting that matches my own a little more every time I check.
I counted my reflection's fingers twice tonight. Both times: eleven. The second time, it counted mine back to me, out loud, in my mother's voice.
The armchair faces the window every morning, dragged there sometime in the dark, close enough to breathe on the glass. The cushion is always still warm when I find it.
I measured it in footsteps, twice. The second count came back wrong, and so did a second set of footprints, walking backward, toward my room.
A smell like a butcher's apron that no amount of bleach will lift, and a handprint in the grout, rust-colored, too small to be mine, pressed flat as if something pushed itself up from underneath to leave it.
147 signatures. none of them mine.
"the door was open when I arrived. it closes itself behind every visitor now. ask the ones who left early."
— a visitor"I left something under your floorboards. it's still warm. you're welcome."
— M."this page found me in my sleep. I'm typing this with my eyes closed. I don't remember waking up to do it."
— 000"your hit counter is wrong. it's always one higher than it should be. that one's me, and I never left."
— unsigned"lovely house. terrible echo. it sounds like someone screaming backwards if you stand in the hallway long enough."
— someone who was already here"I read your diary while you were out. entry 23 isn't finished. don't worry — I finished it for you."
— a friend of the familyfriends of the house, and places it leads