I can't sleep, there's a certain blindness that comes with the repeating lights in the hallways, blurry and leaving trails of nothing, I am gathering the information visually but it's not quite computing.

I can't sleep, it's been around 2 days since that dream, me and zee are looting floor 297, the web spiders are starting to become more prevalent, none of them are coming after us but I can tell they are starting to realise its safe.

I can't sleep, no, I won't sleep. We get home with bags full of things, a multiple assortment of things, again I ask myself, what's the point? If my purpose is to minimize my pain, shouldn't I just end it and retry? Without this curse that I got inflicted with for no discernible reason.

I won't sleep. Zee helps me make coffee, he copies the movements I usually do, he has gotten a lot better at speaking and I have gotten a lot worse. There is pressure behind my eyes, my dark circles are increasingly pronounced, and I think he is worrying.

I won't sleep, I mean I get it, worrying, he woke up to the bed that was covered in blood and me cowing over the sink with blood coming out of my mouth. He has been incredibly mature but struggles to ask why I seem to be torturing myself.

I will never sleep. He taps my shoulder while holding a mug of coffee, “thank you.” I say softly, speaking hurts still, my gums are gross to look at and I'm pretty insecure. My teeth would grow back if I died so, maybe I should just...

I can't sleep, I finish my coffee and walk upstairs to floor 299, zee follows, while I try to setup my farm, I use tubs and jars filled with the little soil I got from floor 294, my compost isn't working too well, it's just gotten gross and green, smells awful.

“Bad nose hurts.” Zee leans over the compost, conveying his thoughts with caveman accuracy.

“Smelly, box is smelly.” I correct him.

“Box is smelly makes nose hurts...” he stays silent for a while, looking at me “what's Alice makes bad?”

I am genuinely confused on what he is asking, “hm?”

“Alice makes hurts...” he shakes his head, “Alice is hurts, what's makes hurts?”

I smile softly, my movements clunky, I kneel down and kiss his forehead, trying to soothe whatever worries he may be feeling, I can't... really convey why I can't sleep.

“I can't sleep because a monster is in my dreams trying to kill me.”

He looks confused and shakes his head, I decide to just write down what I said so he can figure it out, we found a notepad yesterday so I've been doing that a lot lately for complex sentences, hoping he can learn easily that way.

I tear the note off and give it to him and hand him a pen so he can write down his little theories, he goes to it straight away, sitting on the floor tapping the pen, I grab a bottle and water the plants. I close my eyes for a bit too long and have to slap myself to wake up, it feels so good to just let go and close them, but what next will that dream thing ask me? Take a finger?

“Zee, we are going back.” I drop the whole cute broken talk, he needs to learn how to talk normally eventually, I can't always lower myself to his level to just make things easier short term, I am not a short-term person. We walk down the stairs, the sound of face spiders are obvious, they are completely free to do anything they like now.

“Stay...” I pat his head and go to floor 297 to gather a sample of webs in a jar, i need to find an easy to way to do pest control, i open the door slightly and see a giant egg sack right outside of the stairway, turning left and right i can see about 7 egg sacks in total, this is getting bad, they’ll move to floor 298 soon and i cant do a thing.

I would be able to smoke these things out if i had a way to start large fires, but alas i don't. I use a knife to cut a sample of the web, I'm going to grow it on the roof and then experiment on it. It stays sticky in the jar, staining the glass red while it suctions to the glass.

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I walk back up, keeping the jar wedged in my armpit, zee hasn't seen the face spiders yet, and i don't intend him to witness them in all their glory any time soon, I can deal with them, he will just deal with the bigger monsters if necessary.

We get home and i write out some rules for poker, the hands you need, what beats what. I also scribbled some numbers on ripped paper to give as tokens for the game, i miss gambling.

“Poker.”

“Poker is game?”

Where did he learn what game meant? “Yes.”

He nods and tries to make sense of the rules, I give us each 2 cards, place a card face down, then show 3 cards.

“Raise.” I say while putting in 200 tokens, I have a 4 and a 7, the 3 cards show a 5, a 3 and a queen. I really want to win on a straight.

He puts in his blind of 10 tokens and calls 200, I put another face down and show another card, it's a 4... okay.

He speaks softly, “raise... 600.” We only have around 5000 tokens each, so this is a risky move, is he aware of the rules already?

I have two spade cards, but the board has no chance of a flush really, only on the hearts where there is a heart of queens and 5 of hearts...

“Call.” I put in my 600 tokens, I have double fours right now which seems alright, I was never good at poker.

I show another card, a 4 again, 4 of clubs, that's a triple for me... not bad...

“Raise.” I put in 1000 tokens, I wanna see if he gets scared, he nods, looks at his cards then at the sheet, then at me.

“Call...” he speaks confidently, putting his tokens in, I put them all into one paper pile and show my cards.

“Triple 4s.”

He smiles a bit, “double pairs...” He shows off a queen and a 5, he had double pairs since the beginning, “makes triple 4s bad. Double pairs strong.”

That does indeed beat mine, nice... if I wasn't so tired id easily win... probably… if I wasn’t so tired... I'm tired...

I close my eyes.

299... 298... 297... no... 299... 298... 297... 296... 295... 295... fuck... 299... 298... 296... no... 299... 298... 297... 296... 295... 294... 293.

Figures... I'm on the balcony again, “HEY, WHAT DO YOU WANT?” I look down at the man, he is still waving, his limbs a bit too long, a bit too thin, a bit too wrong.

“To talk...” A voice that sounds like my mom comes from behind me, I turn around and there she is, her flowing grey hair that reaches her shoulders, the age of her face without a face.

“You don't do this, don't use her body.”

“You don't get to choose what I do.” She grabs my shoulders, the fingernails digging into me.

“Okay what do I do this time? Because if it's any more self-mutilation I'm out.” I try to shimmy out of her grasp, failing when she digs in more.

“I want to see you sufferrrrrrr...” she leans on the last word almost forever, “I won't let you wake up, until... you... hm... what would traumatise that kid of yours?”

I try to push her, but my arms don’t move, “don't.”

“Or what? Actually. answer this question and I'll let you wake up: do you think you’re a good person?”

“No?”

“Do you think you belong here then?”

“no.”

“Then you think you are a good person.”

“I don't, it's a spectrum.”

“I'm not asking for a spectrum, I'm asking for a black and white answer. Do you. Think you’re a good person?”

“no.”

She nods and I wake up. The feeling of zee shaking me beside the living room coffee table makes my brain rattle in my skull, “wake, Alice makes wake, Alice makes wake.” He repeatedly shakes me.

I open my eyes and sit upwards, “hey... it's fine. Sorry, I am just tired...”

“am... am? Is is am?”

Is ‘is is am’ a good way to describe it? My brain really isn't working, “I am tired.”

“I...” he points at me, “I?”

“no...” I point at myself, “I.”

“no.” he points at me, “Alice.”

I can't do this right now, “I am Alice.”

“... I... I am zee? Alice am tired?”

I just get up, ignoring him, I have too much on my mind right now, my shoulders are bleeding. I go to the bathroom and take my shirt off, the nails that dug into my shoulders left deep cuts. The blood had dried so I had to wet toilet paper and dap my battle wounds with it.

“What's makes Alice hurts?” Zee stands by the doorway.

I want this broken speech to stop, “its ‘what hurt Alice’ or ‘who hurt Alice.’”

He nods but doesn't really get it, “what hurts Alice?”

“Bad monster.” I speak simply, not even knowing if he has a concept of what monsters are.

“Dream?”

What? “Huh?”

“Dream monster? Hurts Alice?” He steps forward, turning on the shower and pointing at it, “good shower, go.”