- Diary -

• One day, a mother of a young family brought home a doll. She did so out of necessity rather than on a whim, or out of strong desire.
• It wasn't the kind of doll you'd normally see on the shelves of a large supermarket.
• It wasn't a particularly beautiful model, being pudgier and noisier than her peers. Her insides were made out of slime that always seemed to ooze out of her nose and mouth.
• But the mother seemed to be content with those unsightly defects. The doll was supposed to melt into a sticky, dripping wet foul-smelling glue that would keep the mother's marriage from falling apart, after all.
• The doll became a fitting addition to the house's interior, for she fit perfectly among the counterfeit porcelain tea sets and useless trinkets stuffed onto the shelves.
• Pictures reflecting her snotty face filled up the family albums - a thousand fabricated certificates of a model family life.
• One day, the glue went dry, and the family fell apart.
• As the porcelain plates hit the walls and the trinkets fell from the shelves, the doll remained still. The slime inside of her turned into water, and flooded the room.
• The woman who bought it left the house, leaving all her former possessions behind. A new owner soon came, and Henry was born.
• To my classmates, I was a wind-up doll they could push around by provoking it, laughing at how clumsy it was.
• Due to almost too-cliche parental neglect, I was never taught proper hygiene. So my peers made sure to laugh at the way I smelled after forgetting to shower for weeks, and the way dirt gathered under my fingernails.
• Silky shirts, short skirts, kneesocks. Fluttering lashes, flawless mascara. Not a single pimple on my skin. It didn't matter that I was stuffed with chunks of meat swarming with maggots. Squirming, wriggling, eating me from the inside.
• In class, he would often respond to the name of a girl classmate, and everyone would start laughing. He'd cover his mouth, mortified, realising that the teacher's question wasn't directed at him. Stifled mutterings, jerky movements. Constantly on the edge, anxious and detached - Charles Eyler was far from pleasant. Yet, I found us to be similar.
• It felt like there was something eating him from inside. Maybe he was stuffed full of maggots, too.
• "I couldn't hear you well in this noise." Eyler's voice echoed throughout the empty, eerily quiet classroom.
• Henry used to be a high-achiever in elementary. By middle school, he'd lost all motivation to study. Eventually, he stopped leaving his room.
• "Mom and Dad only buy things for me. They don't care about me."
• "If I say anything, she'll throw my pet cat out of the window. Or worse."
• I'm terrified, too. Of him, and his mind.
• It was dawning on me that he didn't want to own, to possess, to consume. He didn't want me. Didn't want anything I was able to offer. He wanted something that couldn't be seen, something immaterial and ethereal. He wanted to be saved.
• Did he feel the same when he talked to C, I wonder? Feeling above everything, unaffected by surrounding opinions. That person really must be someone strong if they were able to influence Charles to this extent.
• Perhaps he's lying on the bottom of the vast sea, his form flickering, uncertain. I want to lie down near, and make sure his carcass doesn't float away. But that's a selfish wish to have.