Some days I wake to the warm reaches of the light cast out by that distant star, and am immediately struck by a familiar thought. Well - a feeling, really. To put it to words I suppose I wonder if other people feel loneliness the same way I do. That little pit inside of you that rolls around throughout your stomach like a marble. As it clatters through me, it touches my heart. Sometimes my mind. At each turbulent crash it bears forward a strange melancholy, the pondering of my existence. If I could ever be loved, or find love? Or if it even matters.

​

I've been here for some hundred years, give or take. I stopped counting back when the roads were noisier. Cars louder, the smell of gas and oil runoff polluting my nose. 'Here' being somewhat relative, of course. I move apartments, houses, even campsites every couple changings of the seasons.

​

I've been sloppy. Amongst humans, they have a term: 'Serial killer.' I've listened to documentaries and strange radio cast about these defective creatures. An anomaly noted in them as that most of them are not caught through the perseverance and clever workings of their pursuers. Rather, they want to be found. To be seen. Noticed as they truly exist.

​

Maybe that's why I did it? Left small clues. The trimmings of my too long nails, yellow and hard as iron cast out across my floor. After all - no one goes in here but me, right? Perhaps that's why I molted freely in my homestead this time, rather than venture out into the secluded reaches of the Viamese forest just off the highway. Let the smell waft through the air vents as my most outer layer peeled away and sloughed off me, releasing the smell of solvent.

​

I was still surprised when she noticed, of course. Maybe my mind had tricked itself up to that point that it still didn't want to be found. You wouldn't think an old woman like her would be so keyed into her surroundings. Then again what else have old women to do?

​

Now, her eyes follow me through the halls. I feel them. Their ice blue iris's and tired whites streaked with blood vessels which still clung onto their decaying frame. I can sense her presence through the thin living room wall, always listening. Smelling. The clockwork thumping of her heart as she lay in wait.

​

And.. it feels.. good.

​

Good to be thought of. Skepticism, fear, annoyance, or what have you. All negative emotions by their usual connotation. Yet when you've had none for so long, does it matter? Does not even the soured and ichor ridden coolness of sewer water do something to quench a throat that has not tasted water in days?

​

So I drink, and I drink deeply.

​

I leave more hints. Let my facial features sag and grow sallow in our small passings. Elicit her fear, and consume it like the last crumbs of a death row inmates final meal. Relish it.

​

Of course this will end. I know that much. Not due to her decaying mind sparking its dying neurons to corner me, no. It will end from my apathy. It will end when this feeling grows too large to be contained by my ageless frame. It will end when I can no longer fool even myself.

​

It will end when I am seen. When I am free. When the consequence is finally a timid thing in the face of continuing this life... this existence.

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