June

He's back.

disgusting.

My father.

The man who got my mother pregnant.

The stupid bitch is, of course, overflowing with joy.
She doesn't even see a reason to acknowledge me anymore. Not that she ever did in the first place.

I was just a link. A broken one, yet the only one left.

He's just lazing around, drinking beer and smoking pot, leering at the neighbors daughter.

He won't even look at me.
Well, yeah.
Let's just ignore things that are a nuisance for you, shall we?
After all, that's how you've lived your whole life so far, why stop now?

From what I've heard here and there, he's only here because he ran out of funds for his "home business". I bet they ran out on cigs and prostitutes.

Hah.

This is stupid.

That retarded cat hasn't even shown up.

What the hell is it doing?

Slacking on the job? 

I've waited this long for something to happen. I can't stand it anymore.

I'm sick of her sitting in my room, staring at the empty goldfish bowl every time he happens to go out.
I guess even she knows what he's doing.

I mean, yeah, it's all normal.

It's just, I mean...

Weren't you supposed to save me? 

Anthony

When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a superhero.

In my seven year old brain, it was the only thing worth being. For hours, I would sneak-read the marvel comics my older brother had collected over the years.

Older brother? Oh...right.

It's not as though I especially love life, but...

"It's time you woke up..." a sobbing voice told me, gripping my hand.

Who? Who?

I'm sure he was like that too. At least at one point. Wanting to be a superhero. To be right.

So, why? No matter how hard I tried to understand, it didn't matter.

Wanting to be a superhero...that desire hasn't changed after all these years; if anything, it's grown stronger.

But perhaps, the motivation has changed.

I just never want to feel that helpless ever again.


bzzt. bzzt.

My eyes snapped open. Snatching the phone that was about to fall off the edge of the bed, I hastily turned off the alarm.

I stared at the cellular device in my hand before shaking myself out my reverie. My head was pounding with an oncoming headache.

What a sickening dream I had just had.

June

I've been having nightmares.

They're nothing big, really. I'm up somewhere really high, looking out some sort-of arch at the night sky. An airplane flies by, the sound echoing in my ears unnaturally loud as though I had never really listened to an airplane before. And then the city lights down below suddenly blend together like a dissatisfied artist wiped his hand across his landscape in anger. I always wake up in a cold sweat. It's extremely real.

...I think they started when the cat disappeared. That was a few weeks ago; he just suddenly stopped coming over. The few days before then I noticed that when that blasted clock tower woke me up at 3 am, he would shimmer really brightly; practically lit up the whole room, and then disappear. When I say "disappear", I don't mean that he just went back to his typical "invisible" state, I mean that the meager shining reflection of the moon he let off would disappear, that the weight at the foot of my bed would be gone, and nothing would be left there except for the darkness of the room. It always creeped me out, and I was relieved when he returned the next night, except when the same thing happened. Eventually, he just stopped coming back at all.

I'm not worried, I mean, I am, but...Maybe it's gone for good? You hear about them going to the after life in movies and stuff, after all. It's already been a year, hasn't it, since I wrote in here? I guess I've gotten pretty used to having him around, probably too much, really. There's hardly any stability in life, but there's even less in death. When you're alive, you could be gone at any time, but you plan for the future and you are there in the present. But when you're dead, you don't even have a future. You're already gone, but no one can tell where you go after your already gone. At least you can tell the living.

Rectangles in the ground, 6 inches deep.

Anthony

There's a smallish clock-tower next to where I live. It's pasty white, landing straight in the middle of a field that has the pitiable excuse of a park to keep it there. I go on walks there every once in a while to avoid the stress of my daily life, not that I have much of an excuse of one. Of course, I go there at night to avoid the people, and the curious looks they give me. Maybe if I had a dog, or something, I would have more of an "excuse" to go on a walk by myself. But I already have enough on my plate with Giovanni, and my apartment doesn't allow dogs anyways. It allows cats, strangely enough, however. I have a hunch it's because the land-lady is a lover of them. Her name's Loraine, and she's fond of orange juice, which is the first thing you find out about her, as she lugs a can of it with her everywhere. She's a nice land-lady to have, loose but strict at the same time on the rules. She does have a judgemental side, however, that makes me avoid her.

But about the clock tower.
It rings every night at exactly midnight. To be exact, it rings every three hours before midnight, where it stops for the night. It used to ring all through the night too, until the neighborhood complained of losing sleep, for which I am grateful. The other night, Campanella was on my desk (as I could tell from the mewling and the things moving from his irritated swinging tail) demanding to be let out. I'm pretty sure the thing can walk through walls, but he still demands me to let him out by opening the door. Who knows why. Maybe because he wants to annoy me. Well, he's succeeded. Anyways, I was doing my best to ignore him when midnight struck, and the clock-tower started ringing from far away, and he lit up, like a Christmas tree; the cat I mean. I was able to really see him for the first time after he had died; all white and shining like the reflection of light off of tinsel. It took me aback. After midnight had passed, however, he was the same-old invisible though. The same thing has happened the past 3 nights since, and I've reasoned that the reason I've never noticed him do that before was because he always made me let him outside beforehand. I've been wondering if the clock tower has anything to do with this, or if it's just the time. I'm pretty sure the time Campanella died was not midnight on the clock. Maybe this is just one of those things that happen without an explanation. Who knows. But I think I'll go check out the clock-tower later this week.

I've also been having nightmares since then. 

June

I've always hated cats.
Their "high-stead" behavior has always grated on my nerves. They slink around like rats, acting cutsie for random people to give them food, and then abandon them and move on again. I swear they're all laughing at us behind our backs.
When I was a little girl I had not yet awakened to my knowledge of my hatred of them. I innocently approached the cranky neighbor lady Loraine's cat "Lacie" to give it a pet. The animal jumped on my seven year old head and deeply scratched my cheek into 3 sections. Not only did I get hurt, but Loraine was right there in her yard, reading her newspaper in a purple hamock, drinking her orange juice. She just stared at me indignantly, without coming over to help.
If there's something I hate more than cats, it's the people who love them.

But, fast-forwarding, this cat just won't leave me alone.  I'm talking about the invisible animal thing that I was writing about in my last entry(was it already several months ago?). It stole my goldfish, remember? I didn't know what it was at first, but I've decided that it's a cat. It's been creeping into my room(I'm not sure how, since I close the window, and there's nowhere else it could have gotten in, maybe it goes through the walls?), and curling up with me when I'm sleeping. You can't tell it's there though, except for the weight, and the way the fabric is flattened down. It's not completely invisible, however. It shimmers sometimes if you catch it in direct sunlight(really indirectly though). I've tried to drive it out by throwing pillows at it, and dancing like a madman in my room to scare it, but it's persistent. I've pretty much given up by now. The pillows just go through it, anyways. I wonder what it's doing here. I hope it's not sucking my soul, or anything freaky like that, but I digress.

I find it in my room most mornings, but it always leaves by evening. Since I never really leave my room anymore, I've been tracking down the dates I find it, and the time it leaves on those dates. This has been going on in this yellow notebook, where I had pretty much given up keeping a diary in except for that one entry two months ago. Sorry. Here's a few entries from the beginning of November:

Date:     time:
11/1       9:12 am
11/2       8:57 am
11/4       9:32 am
11/7       noon
11/8       1:32 am
11/14     7:47 am

Conclusion: they have no pattern whatsoever.

Conclusion: I have no idea what the heck this cat is doing here.

Question: What am I supposed to do in a situation like this?

Anthony

It was a Thursday in April. I remember because I had taken a glance at the calendar before I had went to bed and thought of how I was born on a Thursday. Not in April, obviously; June. But I remember thinking that. So I know it was a Thursday. But I don't know which one it was.

I had lost track of the days, and the date, and even my sense of time was withering away. I am usually stuck in a vortex of nothingness, and there are times when I have even felt like I have lost myself in the abyss there. It was three in the morning when I thought to glance at the clock, and like a ghost I decided to pull the covers over my head. I could smell the odor of my own sweaty laundry covering the floor, and the film of rot in the air from the dirty dishes. Stale chip crumbs crunched under my bare feet, and I didn't even bother to brush my teeth; I just collapsed from exhaustion, and something else, onto my bed. I breathed in the scent of the musty green sheets, and felt the filth of my life hover over me in the darkness.

I was a few minutes into dozing when Giovanni jumped on my bed, simultaneously snuggling next to me and waking me at the same time. I fetched my hand out of my covers and gave him a scratch on the head as he purred. And then I heard from my deep underwater ears a scratch on the door. Grumbling, I climbed my way out of my sheets, and navigated through the dark to the back door. I turned the handle of the unlocked door, and opened it a slit, expecting Campanella to walk through with his tail all proud and prancing in the air. After a moment of seeing nothing, I gasped and swung the door open to see who was there playing tricks on me at three in the morning. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, but with the door entirely embracing the thick blanket of darkness and the slightly rustling plum tree to my left, I could see absolutely no one. My confusion rose, and with it, my fear, and I was left with my hand stuck cold to the door knob, unable to move. My eyes swung back and forth for any movement, and my ears pitched into the night for a single sound. But my eyes found it first, sitting at my feet. The sliver of moon came out from the clouds, and I stared at the thing below me. It was a sketch, an outline, a reflection of moonlight on an invisible body. I watched it stare back at me, as though introducing itself once again to me as what it was. The plum tree rustled in my ears; how many days ago had I buried the cat in it's roots? My head instantly soared to the clouds.

But introductions were over, and Campanella moved swiftly and silently into the open doorway.

June

My name is June.
I thought that if I was going to write in this notebook, I had better introduce myself. Though, truthfully, I'd rather not. It's not like a name matters, anyways. And this notebook is my least favorite color; yellow. I doubt I'll be able to write in a notebook that resembles the color of pee for very long. So it's not like my name matters.

But speaking of names, my name is June. I realize I have already pointed this out, and you might already be getting bored of me repeating things, but it's just wrong. My name, I mean. For one thing, I was born in November. But when I emerged into the world and screamed my first mortal cries, my father held me in his arms and called me June. My mother was stupidly in love with him, and agreed to it. And she's still in love with him, even though he left more than 18 years ago. Every time she calls me by my name, I can see the naive reminisce of love for my father. It's disgusting. That she still has a blind feelings for a man who betrayed her. That she sees that man when she looks at me. That the man left his mark on me, in the worst possible way, when he didn't even stick around. That my name is a show of who they wanted me to be, not who I was.

So I hate my name.
It's simply not me.

But enough of names. I take comfort in Shakespeare.

"A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet."

Not that I am an avid reader of Shakespeare. Or Romeo and Juliet. I had to read it in ninth grade for English, and I simply couldn't stand Juliet at the end, when she discovers that Romeo died because of her plan to play dead. Instead of accepting the responsibility, she kills herself "for love". No, I don't read Shakespeare. I mean, I have never really experienced love either. I've tried my best to avoid it. If love is shoving off all your responsibilities, and killing yourself for someone that's already dead, I'd rather not experience it.

But unfortunately, I am not a rose. Nor do I smell sweet most of the time. So, if that quote has any reference to me, it might be a miracle. No, I am a rather dumpy, unpleasant girl, in personality and looks. This used to affect me the most in middle school, where I would tell my mother how ugly I was every evening. At the beginning, she would try her best to convince me of the opposite, as people do every time someone says one of their faults. But she soon got tired of me, and stopped saying anything. And I realized that it didn't matter to anyone but myself. And that it shouldn't matter to me, since I had decided not to go after men either way. I was only trying to satisfy my own craving for vanity. And after I realized that, I stopped saying anything, in an attempt to wield off my caring for it. It's mostly worked.

Geez, I sound like a soap opera.

Enough of that. I was writing in here for a reason, not just to complain about my life. Although, I am going to do that here, because it must be done. No one wants to hear it, not even me, but I suppose I'll have to suffer through it. Anyways, the reason? Right.

This morning I woke up at seven. Well, that in itself is unusual. Ever since I stopped going to school, I've taken to being awake during the night, and asleep during the day. Not that it's healthy. It's just more relaxing. No one's around.

So I woke up at seven. It was a cloudy morning, so it was still halfway dark. Normally, I would be dead tired, but for some reason I was wide awake. And quiet. I didn't move. I knew something important was going to happen, and I also knew that if I even twitched a muscle, it wouldn't. So I didn't move. I kept my eyes open, staring at the fishbowl by my bed. I have a goldfish in there named Cricket. And I was pondering on the past of this fish, when I felt something jump on my bed. I jumped up, startled, my covers in a mess, searching for the culprit. But nothing was there. Nothing. But I could still feel the unnatural weight on my bed. Nothing moved for a moment in eternity, and then I felt the weight shift and start walking towards me. The weight was nothing much, just about the weight of a cat or so. It walked right up to my leg, and I could feel it's wet nose and whiskers smelling my pajama pant. And then it was gone. The weight was, I mean. The room was quiet, and after a moment I relaxed, settling down out of bed, and engaging in my morning ritual. After ten minutes in the shower, I came back inside the room with a head full of turban, convinced that I was having some weird, sleep-deprived illusion. I casually dressed myself, and then walked up to the fishbowl, meaning to sprinkle some food in there.

And realized the fish was gone.