I think too much. I wonder sometimes how people can stand to be around me. Wonder how they can bear to talk to me. I wonder how they do not find my every thought trivial and insignificant. Maybe that is why I isolate myself in my little bubble. Maybe the bubble isolates me.

So, I write. Mayhap I shall write a fantasy of pain and fear, as I feel those emotions often. Do me a favor. If you dislike bad fiction, do not read this entry. If you dislike long entries, skip it. If you dislike sorrow, skip it. If you dislike bad writing, pretending to be good writing, this is definitely not for you. I do not need to be lectured on shitty use of metaphor. I do not need people telling me what I already know and I definitely do not need people telling me I suck over an entry I worked hard on and intend to continuously edit until I find satisfactory. Tell me another entry sucks. Just don't mess with my trees.

(How odd. Mom knows I rarely eat breakfast in the mornings these days. I just take a snack to school with me. I hate eating so early in the morning. Why is she waking me up so early today, anyway. The bus won't be here for at least an hour and a half.)

Begrudgingly, she stumbles out of bed and descends the stairway. Indeed, this girl dislikes the morning. Sleeping is a struggle, though she fights to understand why. It could be rooted in her fear of the dark, which she has had for as long as she can remember; though she remembers not much.

Perhaps it is His fault. When the darkness came, the fights started. Screaming. Pleading. Doors slamming. Pounding of what could only be the same door outside her room. Hitting. Crying. Shushing. Oh no, cannot wake her up, you see, for she is but a wee child.

They did not know she heard them every night as she wept in her terror and struggled to muffle those sounds with her pillow.

She liked living in that area. That quiet town had a lot of severe thunderstorms. The lightning quelled her fears for a short time, since it allowed light into the darkness of her room. Lightning always fascinated her. She enjoyed the heat lightning that plagued the summer, because it lit up her room every few minutes. The light always made the monsters go away. Monsters, after all, shun the daylight. The crackle of thunder, like the snap of a whip, sounded so loudly, the walls would shake and nothing else could be heard for miles. When the storms came, the yelling stopped, at least for her.

Her mother finally saw the monster without her help. It had tried to kill her. She feared it might come out of the shadows again and hurt them more than it had, so she took them away from it. He did not leave with them, choosing instead to stay with the monster. The girl did not understand until she matured why He ever came back. Because she had always sensed his evil, she did not understand that romantic emotions clouded perception. She did not understand human weakness and romantic love. Until He was forced to leave, she had to pretend she did not mind his presence.

But, she did. She always had. The evil was evident in his eyes. The monster had always lurked behind his eyes. He was a shape-shifter. She was happy to see Him go. The monster never bothered them after He left. It chose not to follow them to their new home, until she came home one day and saw that He was back. She sat in stunned silence as her mother encouraged her to say hello and be friendly. She did not understand. She loved to please her mother, but how can you be friendly to the bogeyman?

He did not feel enough affluence abounded in that town, so they left for a place dripping with status. He made them leave their new home; made them go to a new place where the monster lurked in the silence, unlike the previous home they shared, where the monster lurked in the dark. That town did not have thunderstorms. That town had no escape from monsters. She did not much care anymore, though. She had numbed herself to the monsters in her attempts to forget they exist.

The house was pretty. It was extravagant. She was young, so it was a bit exciting, like a faery tale, where she was the princess and this was her castle. She got her own master bedroom with an adjoining bathroom on the second floor. That floor was lonely. Five bedrooms and only one occupied. It was also a little scary for one afraid of the dark, where the monster used to lurk. That floor was silent. The silence was more frightening than the dark. At least when she heard the screams, she knew she was alone and she knew the monster lurking in the dark could not harm her.

Though she only lived in that house a short time, that house still haunts her. She knows that house was always haunted; cursed from the moment they entered it. She thought the screams would stop here. She thought the monster was gone. Truth is, the monster came with them and she always knew it. She used to come home from school and punch in the garage security code, hoping to see only a Porsche in the garage. Her worst days were when she saw only the Jaguar. In this house, the monster had no fear of the daylight.

The girl started slipping. Her block teacher noticed it. Her mother noticed it. Everyone noticed, but her. Her grades slipped, and she avoided her peers. She could only call her neighbor a friend, though her best friends were her two cats. Her migraines were getting worse every day. She developed them as a very young child, but these days, it seemed she got them almost daily. Aspirin no longer cured her headaches, as these headaches seemed far more deep-seeded than the normal surface headaches she was used to. Curiously, she rarely got migraines when she spent weekends with her father. She always got them the night she had to leave, though.

The girl's mother could not watch her daughter crumble inward; could not watch her implode. The mother might have been stronger than she realized, but this was just a child - her ONLY child - and clearly her daughter had again seen the monster. The mother was starting to recognize His true form again. Her mother finally thought to exorcise the demon forever. He was irate over this turn, but had no choice. The court said it had to leave for six months. Then the girl and her mother had to leave and He was not allowed to follow.

She thought this would make her happy. It did for a while. She still felt its presence, though, even though she knew He was gone. She still felt its cloud hovering above the house. She smelled the toxic stench it left inside the house. She saw the infinite haze surrounding the house.

The Tree, however, was different. The tree in the backyard seemed imbibed with a mystical protection. Something protected that tree and the willows that grew in the pond beside it. Beside her tree, she could see for miles and smell the crisp, clean air. She could speak to the animals. She could see the world again. The tree wept for her, so she did not have to. The tree was peace incarnate, absorbing all her fears and doubts. She wanted to leave that house for good, but she could not stand to lose her tree, for how would she survive without it?

So, the girl eventually stumbles out of bed as though this day is ordinary. Why would it not be? She would wake up groggy, because sleeping was never something she found easy. She would listen to the screaming deep within the recesses of her brain, and she would try to struggle through school in a haze, pretending she did not feel pain. As it was a part of her daily routine, she was accustomed to the pain. Oddly enough, she never even had to beg to take yet another day off school, as her mother had already planned for her to stay home. She had no idea she would never return to that school again.

She did not understand why her mother kept saying safer. She shrugged it off, thinking that her mother merely meant that since she would be alone all day, the girl should stay home and not be wandering outside alone. So, she stayed in that black hold of a house that let no light escape. Nothing escaped. Her migraine grew worse.

How she passed the day, she knows not. She remembers the phone call, though, as vividly as she would had she just hung up. The pain in her head slowly increased throughout the day. She cried. She wished she could claw inside her brain and force out whatever demon had infested it. She tried to, but could not reach. She had not felt this awful since He lived here. The pain was searing, she was crying and the phone rang. She desperately hoped it was her mother, as she needed the comfort only a mother could provide, so she answered it, though she felt like talking to no one who might call right now.

It was He.

He was supposed to be at the hearing. Why was He calling? Why was He not at the hearing?

She froze in dead silence and shock.

The monster thought He still controlled her. She knew that He always would. He ate at her brain and she clawed to get it out.

Crumpling to the floor, she sobbed and desperately wished her mom would return soon. She was scared, all alone in that house where shadows of the monster lurked. She saw the shadows everywhere. They escaped the black hole. The shadows were the source. They crept along the marble floors, spiraled along the carved banister and followed her to her room. The banister mocked her when she crept up the stairs, so she avoided the stairs. When she needed to ascend them, she ran, for fear that the lingering menace would be resurrected and manifest itself in the banister. She felt the evil of the spiraling staircase. How it waited to entangle her. How it waited to encase her and allow the monster to take what was left of her.

(Where is she? Why isn't she back yet? Doesn't she know I am afraid of this house? Does she realize He is not there? Please, mom, come home soon. I am afraid. And I know now why you were afraid when you left.)

She absorbed herself in the television to pass time. She watched in her mother's bed. Eventually, she fell asleep, knowing her mom would wake her when she returned.

Disoriented, she awoke. It was Saturday. She was still in her mom's bed. Her mom's car was not in the garage. She felt sick again. The same as she felt on Friday. Her mom would never leave her alone overnight like this without calling, so she worried. Startled to find the phone was off the hook when she picked it up, she wandered into the library. In her haze on Friday, it seems she had taken the phone off the hook. Maybe she never hung it up.

It was early afternoon and she was surprised she slept so late and so soundly. Nothing felt right today. Nothing ever felt right, but today was different. The house watched her, like He used to. Scared of the unseen and imaginary terrors, she found her cats and ran up the staircase with them. She isolated herself in her bathroom. Strangely, her private bathroom was a place of solace. She does not recall how much time passed. She continued to sit in her bathroom playing with her cats and remained there for hours.

Finally, she heard the garage door beginning to open. She always knew when her mom came home, because the garage was below her bedroom. Leaping up from the ground, she ran to her bedroom door. Then she shuddered. She felt cold. She felt fear. Her mother was home; she should feel peace. The sudden chill arrested her at the top of the stairs. Something was very wrong. She heard the door from the garage leading into the kitchen open. She listened at the top of the staircase, being sure not to step too near it. The security system beeped for its authorization code. When it did not receive it, the alarms sounded.

He did not consider that we changed the locks on Him. The alarms were deafening. He spent several minutes trying to appease it with the correct code. In an act of pure fury, He ripped the security box out of the wall and cut the entanglement of wires. The alarms grew silent.

(Oh god, not today. Please not today. Why are you here? Oh god, mommy, please come home. He is here and He is angry. Please, mommy, hear me. I need you.)

She stumbled back to her bathroom, blinded by her own tears. She could not let Him know she was home, so she stifled her sobs. She hid in the bathtub and drew the curtain, hoping He would never think to climb the staircase and defile her room again. He was angry. The monster found its way home.

Time virtually stopped in those moments. She knew little of what was occurring. She heard voices, not just His. She heard shuffling and objects moving. She just wanted them gone. She stroked her cats. They felt her fear, too. Like her tree, they tried to absorb it and did not try to leave her side or the sanctuary of the bathtub.

(Oh god, someone is coming up the stairs. Oh god, please leave me alone, please don't come here. There is nothing you need here, please just...please...just let me be somewhere else.)

Her hands shook with raw terror.

(Oh god, oh god, He just opened my door. You can't come in here. You can't invade my place. This is my space and not yours.)

Her adolescent mind could not begin to comprehend what was happening, nor could she articulate her raw emotions. She choked back her sobs and virtually stopped breathing. She prayed her kin would not betray her presence. She made no sound audible to the human ear and only her cats could sense what she felt right then.

The bathroom door opened and her heart stopped. Overwhelmed with emotion, she audibly choked. And He heard her. Thrusting back the shower curtain, He saw a face that belied the girl's natural childlike beauty. The face He saw was not that of an adolescent, but the weary face of someone who has endured too much. In utter shock, He spoke and she braced herself for what was coming.

She knew not why the demon continued to hide behind His piercing eyes. She saw it beneath them. It lurked. And she remembered the other voices. He ordered her downstairs. She left her kittens in the bathroom, hoping they would be safe. She ran down the stairs. She knew not who the others were, but was surprised to look outside the window and see a moving van and police cars. Then she noticed some of the furniture missing and realized that the sounds she heard could only have been the sounds of furniture being taken to the van.

Standing at the garage door, she saw Him speaking with the officers, who must have been alerted by the alarms. He enchanted people, so surely they would not think He was up to wrongdoing. The officers approached the girl, who now resembled the scared child that she was, and told her to pack a bag and that she had to leave. She nodded in compliance, but could not speak. With tremendous effort, and many tears, she choked out one sentence.

They told her that she could. She put her kitties in the carrier, packed a bag and was taken to the police car. She did not look back at the house as they drove her away. She knew she would never see it again. Silently in her heart, she said goodbye to her tree and it told her it would always be with her.

She waited at the police station. They contacted her father. The confused girl sat, trying to calm her frightened kitties, which were tired of being cooped together in the carrier, and she waited. She still did not know where mom was.

(I wonder if she knows He arrived)

Finally, after what must have been hours, but felt like days, her father arrived. And she broke down. Right there, in the middle of the station, she crumpled into his arms and sobbed, letting out all the emotions she had tried to conceal for hours. He took her to his home, where she laid in her bed for hours until she fell asleep.

Early in the morning, probably around 1 am, her dad woke her up. Her mom had finally come home. She looked fragile and broken, yet still breathtakingly beautiful. And they hugged like they could never let go. Her mom knew everything that happened, though she knows not how.

Tears welled in her eyes again and she now noticed her mother was crying silently with her. She did not understand. Her mother just returned, she cannot be leaving again. Why does she have to leave?

The girl knew she might never see her mother again.

That night, thunderstorms ravanged the lands like she had not seen since she lived in the old house years ago.

The next day, He came looking for her.