A Touching Warning
"They tricked me. I've never needed a hug more in my life but it's already too late."
20250709
Prompt from DailyPrompt.com
The little pink diary exuded an odd melancholy, even before you saw how its plasticky spine was cracked from most of its pages being violently torn out.
What was now the first entry read “They tricked me. I only wanted to be free of the endless pain, to get my life back, but as the pain fades other sensations are too. It’s like my whole body’s going numb. Warmth, cold, pressure… they feel a million miles away. Someone else’s dream tickling the edges of my mind. Or perhaps they’re vanishing memories crying out to me. I’ve never needed a hug more in my life but it’s already too late.”
The rest of the page is filled with cutsie hand-drawn pictographs of drinking glasses, steps, a feather duster, and a vacuum. Tracking daily goals? It’s hard to tell without the context of the earlier pages. There’s also a drawing of what might be a face, but it’s so heavily scribbled out you can’t be sure.
Turning the page, the next entry reads “I’m haunted by a novel I read at school about what it was like to have leprosy. How they’d injure themselves without realising and end up needing limbs amputated or worse. I’ve been checking my hands and feet and everywhere throughout the day but it’s hard. Need to buy mirrors or something. Need to” the two lines which follow are scribbled out.
The pictographs are drawn with manic care. Today there is more water, fewer steps. What might be a sponge, or a loaf of bread, or indeed any rounded rectangle. Definitely no faces.
Several more pages are torn out. Some dark substance spots the exposed binding.
The next surviving entry reads “SOMETHING’S IN MY SKIN. MY FACE!! Smashed mirrors. Spent days cleaning shards out of floor and upholstery and me. Can’t look. Don’t know what to DO. What was this spell they used on me??”
Black smears cover the rest of the page except for a space near the middle where a face has been drawn. Based on context, and moderate experience with amateur artistry, you’re fairly sure it’s screaming.
Smears continue across the next few pages, which combined with the degrading handwriting makes entries increasingly hard to read. By tilting the diary this way and that to the light you make out mentions of “won’t stop”, “mouths”, and what seems to be obsessive planning involving the basement. Several entries talk about reinforcing the door. One simply reads “LOCKS ARRIVED!!” with dozens of happy faces.
The final entry is comparatively clean. You can make out “Everything[’s?] ready. I’ll put the sign on the door then lock myself inside. This HAS to work.”
All pages after are torn out. Because they’d no longer be needed, or…?
You return the diary where you found it and head downstairs to tell the real estate agent you didn’t think this place is a good fit. Oh, and, er, were you correct in thinking that the floor plans hadn’t shown a basement?
Prompt was “Write diary entries detailing your character progressively losing one of their senses.”