Where is he? Where?! I woke up sane once more. I can’t allow this to continue, I deserve this misery but I am compelled to reject it. Suicide is once again dressing in alluring lingerie, seducing me into taking the easy —and maybe only— way out. I need the insanity, but the dragon’s spell seems to have forgotten me, or my mind to have become immunized to it. Anyone sound of mind and brave would be excited to learn of the latter. I, being myself, am scared shitless, and maybe out of common sense. Or sense of any kind, for that matter. The diary is halfway done, halfway consumed, halfway burned. Half half half. The sand falls through the hole in the glass and I push every grain. The stress stresses me out. The mask weights so much, so much, it hurts so hard, so hard. There is no pretense of a bed anymore, only hard stone, restless nights or mornings or evenings. All dark, all the same. And what if I reveal my face in front of the devil in scarlet and blue, if I forfeit the game and let this end by this sword that claims to be mine or by her teeth that dress up as a smile. And there’s Abeline too, that cries half in the cross half in the lady’s brow half in my fondest memories half in the depths of the cave half in this hell and I hope half in the heavens above. Half half half half half half. Half of all men are not half as miserable as half of me can half claim. Half half half half. I miss watching Alf before bed. It made me laugh half of the time. Half.

I have plucked tufts of weak hair out of my head. I have ingested one of them, chewing the bunch as if it were bubblegum, getting threads between my yellowed, uncared for teeth, inadvertently making them to bury into my inflamed gums. It hurts, I bleed, I like the taste, I bleed and it’s sweet, I bleed and it’s not because of her but because of me, I bleed and I deserve to bleed and tomorrow I will deserve to bleed some more.

It is imperative to calm down but how? How? I don’t want to see the true face of Gadorprims. Even a normal dragon is a distressing sight now, and I am sure he is no normal dragon. A dragon, yes, but which kind could want to mate with Scarreladai. She is supposed to be alone, her practices frowned upon by all that lives. But she was supposed to die by my blade, too, and look how that ended up. Is Gadorprims even alive? He seems to be a bit… confrontational, a tad too much for an undead servant. He speaks to me, probably out of his own volition. He negotiates with Scarreladai, and I can’t help but see an old married couple at work when I witness their interactions. There is a tolerance for each other hijinks, an implicit understanding developed through years of dealing with each other. Whether their relationship is, in a dragon’s eye, orthodox, a friendship or a mere business deal, I can’t be sure of.

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I… don’t necessarily dislike Gadorprims, either. He fits my prejudice of a dragon, all high and mighty, filling each of his words with haughtiness as thick as honey, while not as sweet. His methods appear to be more direct, less surreptitious than Scarreladai’s. He’s the beast of greed and honor I was told I would one day slay when they bestowed Jillsenbane upon me, when I got cursed with this fate.

I still wonder about her, about Jillsenbane. How to gauge the honesty of a blade? A cut can’t be lied about, and sharpness cannot be easily concealed. They have no eyes to look into, no lips that would tremble. And this uncertainty causes in me a fair quota of existential anguish. I must have felt similar, before the advent of DNA tests that is, when a man doubted the origin of a child under his tutelage, without any definitive way to know whether or not the little fellow had been siren by him or by some lover of the woman he called his wife. A matter that reality has decreed it’s not to be settled, but the brain calls for it to be at once. Thirst while adrift on a raft amidst the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Talking about anguish, I keep consuming pages with my rants, as if the diary were my therapist. Does it matter at this point? Who will outlast who? The Diary could very well be immortal if it makes its way out of here. I don’t have that privilege. Do I deserve it? I’d like to believe I have not earned enough merits as a villain to deserve immortality. I betrayed my loved one out fear. I keep being a coward. I am befriending my enemies. Those are only human, little everyday acts of a larva. I am still not enough of a sinner to deserve immortality, only mortal torture, right? Right?

The Scarlet Lady is calling for the Pawn. Once more the time has come to put on the mask, go out on the stage, and perform for the public. If there is a deity of acting, of theatre, please, let him or her grant me the grace of living the role I fulfill in this macabre play. What would be a better ending for me than to be become, for real, a pawn of a beautiful lady in scarlet, to clean a palace bigger and more luxurious than any a real king would inhabit, to live in the bliss of the unaware and ignorant until the end of my days? I used to fear the dragoness would consume my mind, without realizing I am my own worst enemy.

But if to serve her while sane, while living in the cave and not in the palace of dreams, is my only option, I hope I still have a little bit of that finely aged traitor in me. Kill the dragon, Francisco! Kill Abeline then, quickly, without asking, out of mercy. And, lastly, and for the same reasons, cast yourself from the highest mountain you can find, and pray the floor has enough of a good Samaritan in it to provide a swift death.

Now go out and flawlessly perform your role in this tragedy of yours, hoping you know how it ends.