Hi Reddit. It’s Alice again.
Four things first. One: we have a working carbon monoxide detector, so I know I don’t have carbon monoxide poisoning. I forgot to mention that in my first post.
Two: as far as I know, Lily hasn’t seen my post. She mostly looks at beauty and fashion subs, so I guess I’m not terribly surprised. (PLEASE don’t try to find her or show her my posts.) I’m half relieved and half disappointed. I think in a way, by posting on Reddit I was preparing myself to talk to her about everything that’s been going on. But she didn’t see it, and I’m too cowardly to bring any of this up myself. Part of me is sure she won’t believe me; she’ll just be further convinced that the problem is me losing my sanity.
Three: we’re not leaving. On Wednesday I brought up the prospect of staying in a hotel room for a few days, but Lily laughed it off immediately, like, “In what universe can we afford a pet sitter for Bugs and a hotel room just because the thermostat’s fucky?” She doesn’t know what I know, and I will not leave without her.
I’m scared, of course I’m scared, but maybe staying is the right choice anyway, because what would we do? Where would we go? We’re not even a quarter of the way through our lease, and both my parents and Lily’s live hours away from Lily’s workplace. I doubt we could afford a hotel or motel for long. And what if…god, I hate even typing this, but what if we do leave, and the creep follows us anyway?
What the hell do we do then?
Four: I quit my job, largely because of…everything. I know that might seem drastic, but it isn’t really. I’ve been working the front desk at a dental office for a couple years, and I’ve built up some okay benefits/pay, but I don’t even need my degree for that job, so it was never my long-term plan. Lily’s had to be the main breadwinner. The less-than-ideal part is that I didn’t give two weeks’ notice; on Wednesday, I handed my office manager a letter explaining that I’m having a personal crisis and need to be at home, so I wouldn’t be showing up on Thursday, or ever. Probably not great in terms of references for future jobs.
I don’t think I had any choice but to quit, though. I’m just so afraid for Bugs (pet tax). He’s our little baby. I’ve refused to let him out of my sight for the past few days, which he’s not super thrilled about because he’s cuddly, but not that cuddly. Thanks to all the pills I was finding in his dry food, I’ve started buying him canned food. Lily got kind of annoyed and said, “You’re the one who said wet food was too expensive in the first place,” so I had to make up some bs about why wet food is so much better for food-aggressive cats.
Lily would be even more upset with me if she knew I quit my job.
But it’s okay. Bugs’ new food has been safe so far. That’s all that matters to me. Keeping my family safe.
After my first post, a lot of people warned me about our weirdly sized DIY doggy door. That…well, let’s be real. It scared the hell out of me. But I took out the cardboard and tried to crawl through the door myself, and I just couldn’t force my hips through. To be fair, my hips don’t lie, and I never lost my COVID fifteen. (Okay, COVID twenty.) Still, I’m pretty small, so I don’t think that whoever’s doing all this is getting in through the doggy door.
Which is even more worrying, in a way, because if not the doggy door…how? We lock all our windows and doors at night—I triple-check after Lily goes to bed. Just to be safe, I moved our mini fridge with all our drinks in front of the doggy door. But I don’t think that’s the answer. I think they’ve found another way in. Some way I don’t even know about.
I did get some cameras to hide around the house. (Thank you, same-day delivery!) One of the cameras looks like a charger, which I plugged into the outlet beside the bookcase for a view of the living room and front door. Another is disguised as an alarm clock, so I put it on top of my cardboard box “nightstand” in the bedroom with my cot, the cat bed, and Lily’s bed. The third camera is inside a clock, because we’ve been wanting a clock for the kitchen anyway. That one should catch anyone who tampers with Bugs’ food or food bowls.
As for outdoors: I wish I had cameras there too, but proper security cameras are expensive, and there’s only so much I can afford. I figured the inside of the house was more pressing, since that’s where everything’s been happening. And the kind of cameras you use outside would be hard to hide from Lily.
No, I didn’t tell her about the cameras, either. I know it sounds like I’m all but leading a double life now, and I guess I kind of am. But if she asked me about any of this, I would tell her. I made a post on Nextdoor asking for security camera recommendations—just trying to scare off the creep, y’know? Let them know that I’m watching them back. (Nobody replied, btw.) Lily doesn’t use Nextdoor, but if she did, if she saw my post, I’d tell her about the cameras. I’d tell her anything she wanted to know.
It’s just a lot to spring on her at once. Quitting my job, and the cameras, and the otc meds I’ve been taking. I don’t want her to think I’m losing it any more than she already thinks I am. I am not losing it. I’m not crazy.
And I know I’m not crazy because it’s been working. Thursday was the day I made that Nextdoor post and put up the cameras. Ever since Thursday, it’s been quiet. No thermostat changes. No pills missing from my recently replenished stash. No torn-up baby pictures.
Except…
I have been losing time, a little. I don’t remember when it started. A week ago, maybe, but I just thought I was coming down with something. There’s that flu going around. I even briefly forgot the myriad benefits of lesbian sex and thought I’d gotten pregnant (ha!). It’s just that sometimes, in the mornings, when I’m feeding Bugs or checking the cameras or tearing out strands of my hair…sometimes I get sick?
If you’ve ever gone too long without eating and ended up shaky and nauseous, it’s kind of like that. I feel this static hush of exhaustion like a sandbag weighing down my body and my head, making it impossible to climb the stairs or stand or even sit up. My stomach pulls into a sick knot. I get dizzy, almost drunk. And my hands tremble and my lungs clamp shut and black spots drift through my vision and I feel so tired. I feel so tired. So clammy and breathless and so, so tired.
I know that sounds bad. I guess maybe it is. But I’ve had low blood pressure all my life. When I was younger, I even used to faint on rare occasions from standing up too fast. My pediatrician was convinced I had POTS until he did a tilt table test and I fared okay. He told me to drink more water, take a multivitamin, and eat more salt, and I’ve been doing alright since. Sometimes I wear compression stockings.
But this? This is new. When I’m lying on the kitchen floor, staring blurry-eyed at the ceiling, fighting to catch my breath, sweating even as I’m racked with chills…that’s not normal, is it? When my vision goes black and I have to lie down and I wake up in a whole new room of the house—that can’t be right. That’s never happened before.
Yesterday I was alone in the house except for Bugs. Lily was at work. I was having cold cereal for lunch because I hadn’t felt right all day. And it happened again. I got sick. I put my head on the kitchen table and closed my eyes, just for a second. I swear it was only a second. This isn’t like when you tell yourself you’re just gonna “rest your eyes” and end up conking out; it was like anesthesia. I blinked, and when I woke up, I was in the bathtub.
Reddit, the faucet was running. It was running so hot it’d scalded my skin pink and raw. And there was water streaming down the side of the tub. An inch of standing water on the floor.
I grabbed the faucet handle and turned off the water and threw myself out of the tub, but I slipped on the wet floor, and I hit my head on the wall and sort of really hurt myself. Even now, I can feel the bump on my head throbbing. And when I opened the bathroom door, the hallway carpet had kinda been stopping up the crack under it, so a tide of water started bleeding into the carpet, and I just stared at it and stared at it and cried.
And I have no idea what happened. I checked the footage from my little clock camera, but all I saw was me sitting with my head on the table for thirty or forty seconds before I stood, slowly, and stumbled out of the kitchen. Like a drunk person, but I wasn’t drunk. A sleepwalker, but I don’t sleepwalk.
No other cameras caught me on my way to the bathroom. I don’t know if I was unconscious in the tub or just…just…I don’t know. I don’t know how long I was in there. I don’t know why I ran a bath. I don’t even like baths.
I don’t like to leave the house anymore, either. What if I blacked out while driving? Or worse, what if whoever’s been fucking with us wants revenge on me for getting cameras? What if I passed out and woke up in their basement or something? What if they hurt me? What if they kill me? What if I never get to tell Lily how sorry I am that I didn’t protect her better?
I’ve been trying, Reddit. I’ve been making her share her location with me. We’ve never been the type of couple who always has to know where the other one is, but I told her to turn on her location and never turn it off again. For my sake. And she did, because somehow, Reddit, she loves me, even now. I make her send me a selfie every time she gets to work, text me at the start of every lunch break, let me know she’s coming home the moment she gets off. If it were up to me she’d text me at all her red lights too—nothing much, just “I’m safe,” “I’m coming home”—but I can’t ask her to do that.
We don’t own guns. Neither of us likes guns. But I’m thinking about getting a concealed weapon permit. I’ve already bought us both pepper spray. She wants to know why I’m so paranoid. She wants me to go to therapy, get anxiety meds, see a support group. Something.
Lily, I am doing something. Don’t you realize that I’m doing all I can? I’d ride to work with you if I didn’t have to stay home and watch Bugs. I never want to leave you alone. If I could open my chest and carry you around inside my ribcage, I would. I would let you curl up safe inside my heart and feed off my blood, if you’d only let me.
So don’t worry, honey. There’s no more poisoned food or missing pills or headless babies in our house. The only person watching you through a camera lens is me. For you, I made all of it go away—at least for now.
And I’m starting reconnaissance on our neighbors. They watch us, Lily, I swear. But I’m watching them back. Sometimes I crack open our front window and close the pale pink curtains and lie on the couch listening to them talk in the courtyard. I’m going to figure out which of them is trying to kill us. Maybe it’s only one person. Maybe it’s all of them. I don’t care.
They’re trying to drive us out of our skulls, baby. Late on Wednesday night, when I got too scared to sleep, I went downstairs to check the doggy door and re-lock the windows and count all the pills in my bottle of Benadryl. There on the kitchen floor, I saw a single drop of blood. Just a little pinhead globe of red, still wet, pristine and perfect and nearly black in the moonlight. Whose blood was that, Lily? Who the hell was in our kitchen?
I’ll figure it out before December 1st, my love. And when I do, I’m goingrdssssssssdlkj djjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjhhhhhhhhh hnnnn n
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I’ll figure it out before December 1st, my love. And when I do, I’m going to make sure that no one ever—ever—fucks with our family again.