I avoid change like I avoid the opening scene to a movie. I lack a particular vulnerability in myself that would allow the natural joy in discovery. The slow burn of new scenarios unfolding. The mounting anxiety in the unawareness of what you should be aware of. Eyes darting from one end of the screen to the other, searching it like a crime scene. Parsing it for sub-text, text-text, arming yourself with the things you’ve noticed. What the author can’t pull over your head.

If you’re right, of course. Instinctually, sure. In prepared thought, consideration and presentation? Absolutely not. There is a sweet spot of analysis that I have yet to find. I either teeter too close to over-analysis that everything I say is derivative and moot as a point. Or, I’ve flown too far and away from the sun without proper preparation and everything I say is derivative and repetitive.

Horror is joy scalped and stripped, fileted. Cozy, safe places transformed into traps donning traditional drapery. What happens in a home to make it an asylum. What happens in an asylum that is not so, anymore. What neglect is bestowed upon a hotel for its fixtures to fracture. What lights no longer flicker in a carnival marquee.

I’ve never been particularly good at waking up, I’ve always found it difficult to wipe the sleep away from my burning eyes. Crusted and draining with the fury of a terrible night. Unsure as to what was done and what had not begun. Anxious, pounding, dread of what is to come.

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I didn’t know shitaboutfuck.

Willing myself out of the bed, letting the slight moisture of the sheets evaporate off of me as I reach the warming wall-unit.

“Huh, still working.” Surprising but expected. Letting the warmth wash over me for a moment, allowing for a brief moment of comfort.

“Want some breakfast, girl?”

We head to the kitchen in our usual manner. Slow, creaky. The floor bending to the will of my weight and answering in a droning cry and…

*tchuuuushhh*

My foot hits a small pile of sandy sediment. Looking down, I follow the trail into my bathroom.

“Lily, stay.”

Rounding the corner I find more dirt scattered along with ceiling drywall, damp from the constant leak.

“Okay, don’t freak out.”

I whip around towards the voice faster than I thought better of it.

They’re taller than me, at least by a head or so. Thin. I can take them, but not right now. I have to stall for as long as possible.

“You came out of the ceiling?”

Good one, goober.

“Not originally,” they said.

“Did you just make a joke?”

“...yea.”

“Odd choice,” I reply.

“Did you know that you have mushrooms growing up there,” they point to the hole above my toilet. “They’re edible, you know.”