Got Framed for Murder in a Dementia Village | Part 1

 

| Part 2

“I didn’t kill her.” That’s how I opened my defense with the officers charging me for having murdered the bitch that got me here.

“Yeah, I really don’t believe you,” the almost albino female officer attacked me.

 Her tag name read something with weird characters that we don’t use in the States, but I guess that a close approximation could be Dalia.

“You have an alibi?” Her companion demanded.

Pavlo, I assume that’s accurate enough, was slightly kinder. He even brought me a soda. I opened the can.

“Ok,” I started after taking a sip from the carbonated beverage. “I want to be honest, so you don’t encounter any surprises down the line. I have a history.”

“For what?”

Both officers approached the hard warm light over the small desk they turned into an interrogation table.

“It was some financial scamming.” I didn’t feel like the nuances would help my case.

Dalia judged me with her melanin-less eyes.

“Already did my time.” I explained. “I finished my parole time working as a guard on the abandoned Bachman Asylum.”

Of course, they didn’t know that place existed. Can’t blame them. Not even the government of my country recognized it, it was a longshot that public servers of a nation on the opposite side of the Atlantic would have heard of it. Yet, that was enough for them.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to mention the land curse of the island it was located, the undead pirates and lighthouse keepers, the beast that haunted greed nor the phantom mad doctor and serial killer henchman that terrorized that place. Most of all, I was grateful I didn’t have to come up with an excuse for my ghostly companion that they couldn’t see.

“So, while working there, I started posting on a forum how I was doing,” I continued. “You know, just to pass time. The thing is that one user became really interested in my experience. I believe it was something like @Rowen_wtch. She contacted me and offered me to come here to work for her.”

“Work for her on what?” Pavlo inquired.

“She told me that something weird was happening here on the Dementia Village she managed, and that my expertise in unorthodox places was very vualuable.”

“And so, you move ten time zones just for a job?” Dalia is hard on convincing.

“Is not easy catching a job after being in prison for ten years.”

Her eyes told me that she felt a little bad about asking. She tried to mask it, though.

“She offered me a good paying job, with all expenses as food and housing covered. I couldn’t say no.” I clarified.

They seemed a little more trustworthy about what I was saying. But not completely on board.

The small room, so artificially decorated as the stereotype of a cozy, mid-century Nordic European style, made me feel like I was a doll in a surreal cage built for my expectations. In the shadows behind my interrogating officers, I could distinguish the figure of a caregiver of this place, analyzing the scene from the distance.

“Where were you tonight?” She shot the question that let me know that they still considered me a suspect.

“Mrs. Rowen, in all the information exchanged with her I never got her first name, bought me a plane ticket that arrived at two in the morning to the local airport. Apparently, it was the only flight available. It came a little late. I took a cab on my way here.” Drank a gulp of the soda. “She was waiting for me in the entrance, with the gates closed.”

***

For those of you who have never heard of a dementia village, it is this small community for people with some sort of cognitive affection. In the case of Morlden Village, it is one block in the middle of a tiny town of this frozen nation. The idea is that in this block, people with dementia can live a normal life, like doing chores, going to a shop or theater, interacting with others and always being cared for by trained caregivers that pretend to just be accompanying them. There are buildings circling the whole place, with only one entrance guarded by a metal, eight-foot high, unclimbable fence.

There was where I was received by Mrs. Rowen. She looked like she was a patient of this place instead of the manager. Old as a fossil, short as a hobbit, wrinkled as a raisin, and covering herself with a heavy blanket that made her look like she was a geriatric worm.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Luke, the ghost that followed me since the Bachman Asylum and have mastered the communication with me through the earphone thing I usually use when there is a weird situation, let me know.

“Uh, nuh,” I denied him, trying to hide my paranormal communication from the old woman opening the gates for me.

I approached her. Luke’s ectoplasmic form, that turned out only I could see, followed me closely.

The toothless mouth of the old hag showed me what she believed was a smile. The injury I had in my shinbone as a toddler started to burn, cramping and numbing my whole leg. The witch turned her look for a second over my shoulder. That should have been red “go away” flag.

“Ask her why she did it!” Luke demanded.

“Good night,” was what I said instead. “Didn’t expected you to be the one to welcome me at this time.

She invited me in by opening the metal door a little more, with a strength very unlikely to her fragile looking body.

“We have been missing a guard, so I had to cover some shifts. I took the liberty of assigning me this to meet you directly.” Her voice was hoarse, deep, with a very strong Eastern Europe accent and half uncomprehensible due to the air escaping though her teeth gaps.

I just nodded at her.

“I have to let you know,” she told me while locking the door behind me, “we have an issue with a couple of the staff quarters. Someone is going to come to fix them next week. In the meantime, it is okay for you to sleep on one of the patient residences?”

I wasn’t thrilled by the idea, but the alternative of sleeping in the cold, almost frozen street was very discouraging.

“Do you see the red fountain made of cubes at the end of this avenue?” She pointed at it and didn’t wait for my answer. “You turn left there, into building E, you can’t miss it. Room 5 is yours.”

Her shaky and boney hand swirled out of her unconventional coat. It was clutching with arthritis a key with a blue keychain so big it was impossible to stash on any of my pockets.

“Thank you.”

“Good night, we’ll talk about every question you have tomorrow at a more prudent time and weather” she replied while walking to the staff quarters that are just to the right of the main gate.

I grabbed my case with the little clothes I owned and started my journey to my sleeping place through the freezing wind that threatened to clutch my toes into an unnatural position.

“What are you doing?! We need answers!” Luke wasn’t keen on the idea.

Guess when you are dead, sleep seems superfluous. And cold is like your natural state. But that wasn’t my case.

“I know. We’ll get them tomorrow. Really this doesn’t seem like the proper context to figure out why an old lady that can’t chew food on her own would be a mastermind that planned your murder.”

“You don’t believe me she sent me to that island?” Luke was more confrontative than usual.

“Of course I do, man. But really, at this hour, with this wind and the jetlag, it would had been very hard to find out anything.”

Luke kept on walking by my side, in a letdown silence.

“I promise I will not leave her until we figure out why she sent you there,” I told him.

Luke stared at me inquisitorial. I opened my eyes to him.

“I promise.”

That was enough for him to trust me for the night, even when he was not the happiest about it. But, as a wandering spirit, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

An old lady, little overweight and creepy, walked alone in the middle of the coldest night I’ve ever experienced wearing just an open dress pajama. Before I was in a talking distance, she screamed at me.

“YOU ALSO TALK TO IMAGINARY FRIENDS?”

That was my cue to ignore the crazy lady and continue my way to the “unmissingable” E building. Which, in the front of it, has a house size bright red “E” painted so that even blind people can identify it.

While opening the door for my room I noticed two things. The big keychain was a plate with a red “5” so that you don’t mess up and open another door. And the door of the room could only be closed from outside. Of course, fucking lunatics.

The building on the inside was dark, all lights were turned off. The snoring sounds of old hard-breathing people were like a non-sleep symphony. And, as I will eventually get to realize, felt fake as everything in the Morlden Dementia Village. This fucking idea of doing everything exactly as expected so that nobody feels out of place made me felt exactly that way.

Nonetheless, I fell asleep immediately.

***

“After that, I was woken me up around nine and brought here.” I finished my storytelling to the officers, obviously avoiding the supernatural parts.

Pavlo turn on the lights of the living room in the staff quarters. Dalia relaxed a little, but her piercing glare never abandoned my eyes.

“We will need the camera recordings of last night,” Pavlo indicated the caregiver that witnessed the whole interrogation.

William, as it says in his Morlden staff name tag, stood up while nodding.

I avoided Dalia’s direct eye contact. She didn’t yield.

“Well,” I threw my last resource, “you don’t have any incriminating evidence. That I arrived yesterday doesn’t means that I killed her.”

It wasn’t my best use of the language. Dalia stood up and bend over the desk approaching me.

William, to my rescue, approached her, and whispered something to her ear.

Dalia didn’t like what she heard. She backed a little.

“This isn’t over.”

***

After leaving the staff quarters, I made the smart decision of leaving this place. I rushed to building E to get my personal affairs and not deal with my employer murder investigation.

The earphone I always carry in my pocket vibrated. I knew what it will be. I placed the device in my ear.

“What the fuck?! We can’t leave,” Luke instructed me though the paranormal technological gadget.

“Oh, just watch.”

I continued my way faster.

A couple of old people sitting on a bench in one of the seven park areas started clapping at me. That was all the support I was getting, and more than enough.

I broke into the building and my room. Now there was a warm light, staff members cooking and playing cards, a choir of yelling and complaints from patients on their existence, and the fakeness of the place seemed like a Dalí painting.

My bedroom was open and I entered.

“I’m serious, we need answers.” Luke threatened me.

“Fucking no! We need to get to safety.”

Luke stared at me unpleasantly.

“Well, at least for my safety,” I corrected.

Luke didn’t enjoy my reasoning. But, if he didn’t follow me, he would stay on a looneys village with no one to communicate with. We had learned that I was the only one who could see him and talk to him, even with our special earphone.

The main gates of Morlden were locked. Fuck. I shook the heavy metal doors attempting to break a half-inch thick chain. I evidently failed.

William exited the staff quarters. He kept his distance.

“Hey, calm down,” he talked so calmly.

“Fuck that! Open these gates right now.” I ordered.

“Sorry, I can’t.” Beat. “I don’t have the key.”

“So go look for them!” I almost screamed.

“I don’t have the authority…”

“Don’t care about that! Just do it.”

William approached slowly. His voice kept being very calm.

“It is inside a safe. The only one with the password was Mrs. Rowen.”

An old man also arrived at the scene.

“When I have to go to the hospital?” inquired the anonymous elder.

“And the police? How they entered and left?” I pointed William’s plot hole in his story.

“What police?” Fucking William pretended dementia.

“Town police!” The old man with actual dementia started yelling.

Fuck this. I ran away from the situation.

“Wait, mister!” William raised his volume.

“Town police!” shrieked the man.

***

I went back to my room and examined the window. Yeah, it led outside. But there were iron bars holding me prisoner on this hellish lunatic place.

An old lady entered my room with her pants down to her ankles and a caregiver trying to pull them up. I wasn’t going to be a part of that.

Once I found myself on the other side of the village, in another of the parks that seemed to be having less transit, I went back to my supernatural aid.

“Luke, please. I’m sorry, but I need your help,” I begged him.

The ectoplasmic materialization of the half-torn body of my ghostly friend appeared smuggling in front of me.

“Now what?”

“Please, don’t be like that,” I continued my begging. “I was scared, and now I’m trapped. I need you to get out through that building and get some sort of help.”

“How do you expect me to do that?” Luke was very closed-minded.

“Not know. Just possess someone and crash a truck or something to the gates.”

Shit, in retrospective, my ideas escalated quickly.

“You insane?” Luke whined a little. “I can’t just possess someone.”

“Why not? You have possessed me before.”

“But you allowed me to do that. Not that I ever want to do it again, now.”

“Fuck, Luke. You’ll think of something”

“Oh, go to hell.”

Luke turned around and floated over the building at the edge of the village.

“Thankfully, I’ll not see you there!” I replied in a cool comeback when it is said to a ghost.

Luke froze at the edge of the village.

“Now what? Why don’t you just leave?!” I screamed almost losing my voice.

“I can’t…” Luke whispered confused, which I heard clearly in my earphone.

“What?”

“Not know… Something is keeping me inside.”

“Something like what?” I screamed at my phantom interlocutor.

“Not know, is like an electric field.”

“FUCK!” I yelled at the air.

“Please, calm down,” William arrived. “Everything is going to be okay.”

I doubted it. But I had to try a different approach. Diplomacy.

“Hey, man, sorry for what happened before,” I approached him while putting away my beyond-the-grave communicator device. “Is just that, I am not supposed to be here.”

“Yeah, all people say that” William kept his calm voice.

“I’m serious. I came here last night on my own. Mrs. Rowen hired me because she said there was something weird in this place.”

“Okay,” his flat voice was getting on my nerve. “I understand. Let me tell you, someone is going to replace Mrs. Rowen, and she will know what to do.”

“Okay,” I exhaled with fake relief. “I’ll wait.”

“Thanks,” ended William while going away.

“Do you think he is going to do something?” Luke asked me once I placed my earphone back at my ear.

“Not sure. That’s just plan b,” I replied.

“So, what’s plan a?”

Luke floated to my side.

“Look for a weak point in this place before they manage to convince me that I’m actually insane.”

***

Morlden Village was a very disturbing place. Not creepy as you would expect, not a shadowy isolated place falling to pieces. I can deal with that. This was the opposite. Everything, the buildings, fountains, parks and even the people were so stereotypical and in such good care that it seems like a simulation maintained to keep you numb. No single leakage, no restroom was broken or missing soap, not even the clothes anyone was wearing seemed old or dirty.

Imagine what a perfect fantasy North-Eastern small village, cold and full of old people. That’s exactly what this place is. It is a trap brought out of collective imagination.

This village has a movie theater in the South area. It is small, for like forty people tops. You can go inside it free of charge, which doesn’t mean that there are no caregivers that treat you like a retarded incapable of walking up the ridiculously long ramp. The building is basically a black box that, according to the billboard, just plays the same movie three times every day. Guess that with people who forget almost everything, you no need more than that.

I entered the screening room to look for a way out. The tall ceiling, almost 20 feet high, caused the sound to echo in a storming way. There were just two old people sitting in different rows watching mesmerized the black and white couple’s argument. I could hear the projector, it was an analog one, which was weird for a place so state of the art. The screen was on the wall at the edge of the village.

I entered being watched from the distance by a caregiver, before he exited the place to return to the ticket booth. I assume he didn’t want to watch the same movie for a thousand time. My rubber shoes screeched on every step on the sticky black and red rug full of the solidified food that a lot of patients had failed to put in their mouths. The closer I got to the screen, the echo made the old speakers and the projector sound more like an approaching evil truck.

I stood in front of the projected image, with Luke by my side. I was surprised that none of the watchers said anything or complaint of the blocked image. I mean, Luke of course didn’t interfere, but my shadow did obstruct a considerable portion.

“You check in the top of the screen for some sort of window or room,” I whispered to Luke.

He levitated up while I looked behind the screen at ground level, surely morphing the image. Nothing. Just a brick wall.

“AAAGHHH!” shrieked both old guys watching the movie at the same time.

I ran out of the place before a concerned caregiver could enter, and would find me bothering others and looking for a loose brick.

“You got something?” I asked Luke.

He shook his semi-fallen head.

***

We then went to the north end of the village, where there was a small supermarket where you pretended to buy things from a disturbingly nice cashier who lets you take out whatever you want as long as you mimic giving her money. Sounds like a great deal, but only from the outside.

Inside, everything looked like a fifty’s supermarket packed with food on outdated packages. The cleaning soap was on single color boxes, there were discontinued brands of cereals, and the cans didn’t have the opener you assume will be on every can you get your hands on. But not here, it was like a frozen in time building.

Yet, the food itself wasn’t. The bright lights in the ceiling made it hard to see through the transparent plastic wrappers of some products. But, after casting my shadow over them, it was clear there was something wrong. The bread looked moldy green, the hams were covered with colorful fungus and even things like sugar seemed like a single block of yellowish mass.

Yeah, didn’t “bought” anything. Hope nobody in this place does.

Not even Luke, who looked very similar to the half-decomposed chicken packages, felt comfortable there. I didn’t feel like he would be appreciating that comment at that moment.

***

Defeated, I took a break in one of the parks. I walked this whole village from one side to the other multiple times, but there was no way out. I supposed that watching old people attempt to walk from a bench would be as good as anything.

“So, there’s actually no way out?” Luke inquired.

“No,” I practically just whispered, “it seems not.”

From my location, I could look at the inside of a barber shop. You know the drill, as a seventy’s barber shop in perfect state. Yet, there was something even more creepy in this one. The barber, who was shaving some old man’s beard, wasn’t looking at the client with the blade on its throat. He was looking directly at me, with a smile so wide and forced that his face was shaking and tears almost rolling down his cheeks. I tried to ignore it as with all the weirdness here.

The old lady from last night, the one walking in the freezing wind of three in the morning, sat on the same bench. She kept her distance, as if she knew that Luke was sitting by my side. A caregiver stayed a couple of feet away, keeping an eye on her.

“I know this place is a trap, but you are always given a key,” she advised me.

Just the thing that I was needing, an old paranoid woman with her perception of reality severely altered. I just nodded, attempting to bore her off so she would leave me alone.

Shit! I do was given a key!

I ran back to building E without even looking back at the old lady who sparked that idea on me. The bright red “E” shone my eyes with hope as I entered the habitational residence.

Two caregivers were playing a boardgame with two elders, while William was doing something in the kitchen. Didn’t pay attention to him, I flew directly to my bedroom. The key was no more. The doorknob that had a lock just on the outside, where I left the key hanging, was now bare.

I put back my diplomacy mask and went out to the kitchen where everything is so big, unsharp and colorful that it looks like a Fisher-Price functional play set.

“Hey, William,” I started dissimulating my true intentions as bad as possible. “Have you seen the key to my room?”

“No.” he answered. “They are for the residents to keep.”

“I left it on the lock when I arrived here last night.”

“Maybe some of the other residents from here took it,” he was so calmed regarding this felony situation. “I’ll ask around in case anyone saw them.”

I nodded without energy.

“Come here to eat, it is ready,” William said while taking the chicken with vegetables out of the frying pan and placing it into a giant inch thick blue plate. “Yours are the blue things, don’t grab from the others.”

Now he was very concerned about felonies.

But my hunger prevented me from complaining. I was starving. Hadn’t eaten anything since I arrived at this hellish place.

I took a seat on the dining table where the plate had been laid by William. He sat beside me, over Luke, forcing him to disappear and reappear on the chair opposite me. I didn’t eat anything.

“Where do you get this food?” I demanded to know.

“They bring us food every week to refill all the residences fridges,” William explained.

“It is not from the supermarket here?”

“No, that one is just for residents to bought themselves.”

Bullshit. I stared at William.

He grabbed with his fingers a piece of chicken and threw it into his mouth.

I didn’t take my eyes from him.

He bit and swallowed.

I hid my surprise.

He smiled friendly.

I started eating it like it was the best dish ever tasted.

“Slow down a little,” William obstructed my feeding. “I can’t have you choke before meeting the police officers again.”

***

My shinbone hurt again. It started the moment I got inside the improvised police accusing room. That burn that extends all the way through my leg in the presence of evil. Something was wrong in this staff quarters office where I was going to be interrogated a second time today. It was a medium-sized one, stereotypically perfect, full of paintings of birds and a desk in the middle.

On my way in, I managed to glare at the North wall and notice that there were a window and a door that led to a bigger, well-illuminated and rustic-looking office. A giant old safe, tall enough to touch the ceiling, hijacked my attention. Yeah, that is, or was, Mrs. Rowen office.

But I was more concerned with the immediate threat, so I took a seat at the end of the desk. Thankfully, in this situation, the room was properly illuminated by white led lights. The situation felt more relaxed.

Nonetheless, the two police officers, Dalia and Pavlo, were already waiting for me on the other side of the desk. Also, on a small chair to my left, a middle-aged woman with a note block on her lap was fidgeting with her pen. Everyone waited for me in absolute silence, which didn’t seem so friendly.

“We have new evidence,” Dalia started the moment my butt touched the chair.

I swallowed before answering.

“Good. Already know who did it?”

“We have a pretty solid idea,” Pavlo intervened aggressively.

No more good cop bad cop.

“You’ll see,” Dalia continued, “turns out that the camaras here inside casually failed last night and didn’t record a thing. The ones outside did.”

“You were walking last night outside,” Pavlo accused me.

“Sure, I arrived at night and walk the avenue into the residence where I slept.”

“So you said…”

“I even encountered an old lady, ask her.” I hoped that it would work as an alibi.

“Other residents can’t be used as witnesses. It isn’t reliable due to their condition,” the lady to my left finally intervened.

“Thanks Ms. Rowen,” Dalia expressed.

“What the fuck?” It slipped out of my mouth.

“Sorry, I’m Ms. Rowen, the niece of the recently passed Mrs. Rowen. I’m going to be taking care of her duties,” she thankfully clarified the situation.

“Well,” Pavlo continued, “we are aware of that. On the video we can see you walking to the E building and encountering Elisa, who later returned to her own residence just half an hour later.”

I raised my left eyebrow waiting for an apology.

“Yet, we also have you walking back towards here one hour later, and then back to your assigned residence,” Dalia sentenced.

Shit. No, I don’t remember any of that. My shinbone burning intensified as if they had thrown fuel directly into it. Now the game was bad cop worse cop.

“Bullshit,” was the best defense I came out with.

Pavlo showed me on his police iPad a security video of the main village avenue during the night. Yes, it did show what they were saying.

I breathe deeply, in silence, a couple of times.

Dalia took out a plastic black box, around a foot long, and placed it in the desk dividing us. She made a gesture pointing with her head to the box.

“What’s this?” I inquired hoping not to shit myself out of fear.

“We found it on the crime scene,” Pavlo clarified. “Well, what is inside the box.”

I nodded, signaling my understanding.

Dalia pushed it towards me.

I took the box in my hands. It had a rough texture, and it was completely black. Yet, there was some engraving on it. While touching it, it felt like an arrow. Looking at it against the light, it was clear it was a diagram of instructions on how to open the box.

Pressed the side of the box and pulled strongly the lid at the same time I rotated it. It opened.

Inside, there was a plastic bag marked with the local police logo.

“What’s this?” I asked already knowing the answer.

“That’s the murder weapon,” Dalia gladly answered me. “A kitchen knife.”

Ms. Rowen stopped writing and lifted her head.

“It is marked as belonging to building E, which is the one you were assigned to sleep, right?” Pavlo also joined the game of asking questions we already knew the answers.

“No…” I started without having any idea what I was going to say next.

“These knives are kept on these special boxes,” Dalia interrupted me while grabbing the black box, “They are on every residence building. Their purpose is that the patients here with dementia can’t open them.”

That made a lot of fucking sense.

“Also,” Dalia wasn’t finished with the evidence, “the knife had your fingerprints on it.”

“How do you have my finger…?”

My counterargument was interrupted by Pavlo, placing on the table, inside another plastic bag, the can of soda I had drank from this morning. Shit.

“We are also checking DNA match as we speak,” the motherfucker threatened me. “But we already got enough evidence to bring you to the police office.”

“No, wait.” I said without having any defense on my own.

“You also looked at the crime scene when you entered here,” Dalia assured me, knowing as well as I do, that that didn’t mean anything.

I backed a little in my chair.

“You can’t do that,” thankfully Ms. Rowen joined the situation on my side. “He has cognitive detriment. You can’t believe him or question him formally. It’s unreliable.”

That bitch. Fucking mediocre help.

“We need you to come with us,” Dalia assured me kind of condescending with my overventilation.

“All evidence points to him, we need to take him in,” Pavlo indicated.

“No, you can’t,” I hoped Ms. Rowen help was less humiliating this time, “he needs to stay here were we have the means and experience of dealing with people like him.”

Shit.

“Please,” I begged.

I stood up and backed a little.

Ms. Rowen also stood up.

Dalia and Pavlo approached me slowly.

I wanted to get out of the room, but it would just have made things worse for me.

Luke, behind me, also wasn’t helping the situation.

“But…” Ms. Rowen was also out of arguments.

Pavlo grabbed my left hand.

“Please, I didn’t do it.”

“Sure.”

“You have the right to remain…”

RING!

Thank you.

Ring!

That motherfucking sound interrupted my arrest.

Ring!

Dalia took out his phone.

Ring!

“We need to take this,” she indicated to Pavlo. “You two stay here,” she commanded Ms. Rowen and me.

Both police officers left the room as Dalia answered the call.

I finally managed to take a complete breath.

I felt Ms. Rowen stare.

I lift my head to make eye contact. It didn’t happen. Her glaze wasn’t on me, was over Luke behind me.

Luke was frozen in shock, also noticing this.

“You can…?” I started.

The door opening behind me interrupted my question. Both officers came inside the room.

“Sorry about that,” Dalia started with her head down.

“Yeah,” Pavlo followed up with his hand caressing the back of his neck, “we got new evidence from the autopsy. You’re free to go.”

Thank God.

I nodded at two hundred nods per second.

“Sorry about the misunderstanding. Yet, we will need to talk alone to you, Ms. Rowen.”

“Sure,” the new manager of this cursed place expressed with relief.

I exited the room by the main door, held open by Pavlo.

***

I wanted to stay in the next room attempting to hear what new information had exonerated me, but William was already waiting for me, wanting to take me back to my new permanent residence on building E of Morlden Village. And, at that point, I wasn’t in a position of fighting about it with him.

So, yeah, right now, I’m in this difficult situation where everyone around me thinks I have some sort of early dementia and that I’m a patient here. I will try to find a way out, but I will have to wait for tomorrow. It is already very late, cold outside and I’m so exhausted I will need the little sleep I can get.

Thankfully, due to this place being planned for old people with cognitive deterioration, there are not any limits on signal or internet access in this place. So, I can post whatever happens to me in this place. I hope that will help keep me sane, able to distinguish and record the truth.

Luke, on his side, has been bothering me the whole time I had been writing this. He keeps vibrating the earphone we use to communicate, placing his deformed ectoplasmic body between me and my computer screen, and even throwing at me the little items in the bedroom that are not glued to the walls or floor. I hate this place.

Fuck it. I finally decided to listen to what he has to say.

“Please, stay calmed, there is something that I really need to let you know.”

“That doesn’t sound like a great start,” I pointed out.

“Well, you do kind of killed Mrs. Rowen last night…”

“Fuck you, man,” I contained my anger to avoid yelling and waking up the demented horde I share residence with.

“I mean, not you yourself, but I possessed you.”