Thank you for the advice given so far- I’ve been tentatively moving through these last couple of days as if drawing all this attention to whatever ‘it’ is will cause it to happen again. As of yet, I have remained joyously blood-free and within the confides of anything other than a police station.
My relentless pursuit of an answer is driving me to drastic measures; thanks to a (semi) decent credit score and some irresponsible creditors, I’ve found myself buying a farmhouse in Cumbria, miles from anyone. It looks like it’s been abandoned for the last century, and with the benefit of paying in cash I could pick the keys up by the time it took to drive there.
Top of the range CCTV to cover every corner of the house and the surrounding land, all with backup battery packs, are being screwed into place by a team of hardworking men who listened to my instructions whilst looking at me like I was a lunatic. There wasn’t anything of quality to capture the acres of land beyond the vast gardens, so I’ve settled for getting an electric fence to cut off contact to anything out of the high secure zone. The gents fitting it all treat me like I’m a serial killer, but that’s something I’ve grown to ignore over the last few years.
For good measure, a vet with incredibly poor ethical choices and a desire for a bit of cash agreed to insert a little metal pole into my ankle, something he assures me is a tracker that hasn’t been used on any animals. That doesn’t explain that when connecting it to the app on my phone it showed me as a horse called ‘Bella’, but he didn’t seem like the sort of guy you asked follow up questions to, so I kept quiet.
The only thing that seems to be bugging me now is the question asked in the comments about my clothing. The clothes I wake up in are mine, without a doubt, and most of the time they’re the ones I was wearing before I ‘come to’ at the station. Most of the time.
There have been a few occasions where I’ve woken up in entirely different clothing- still mine, and barely something I considered strongly until that comment. Why on those occasions did I have different clothes? I don’t remember wearing anything particularly ‘indecent’ beforehand, so it seems there was no need. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Well, the joys of moving across the country meant I packed my things quickly, some of which being my clothes. I’ve taken a look through them all; while a lot of the times I got my clothes returned after they were finished being detained as evidence, that hasn’t been the case every time. Then sometimes when they have made their way back to me, dried blood is a hard stain to remove and I’ve thrown them soon after realising the colour will never be the same again.
Of the times I ‘came to’ in different clothes that I can recall, there’s one item I still have; a dark grey jumper. Despite looking like a few other grey jumpers I have, from the shaping to the brand, there does seem to be a difference about this one -other than the vague discolouration from the cleaning. This one has absolutely no inner tags. Not in the collar with the sizing and brand information or on the side tag with washing instructions, which would match the other identical jumpers I have. Maybe this was removed for evidence, or maybe it’s a sign this was not my jumper to begin with- merely a lookalike.
Anyway, that’s where I am today. Sitting in what I hope to be the most secure patch of land in the country, examining my jumpers and waiting for the abyss of the unknown. All I can do is trust the measures in place to find out what the fuck is going on, and praying I don’t feel that familiar weight on my body without finding out how to stop it.