Hospital “The Unliving”

“I have been told that words are very hard to write in a dream, and even harder to read. So as I write I will not be able to look back on what I am saying and be able to check whether or not I have begun to dsistance myself from the truth.

I don't know if this is possible, or if what I am expewriencing is just some degranged nightmare. Or if I a,m someone elses nightmare.

I am supposed to be dead, but I am not. I remember dying, remember feeling empt y and without movement. My chjest did not rise and my limbs refused to respond to my will. I was afraid that I had become paralized, and that I woas going to stay that way, but the reality was that I was dead.

I was dead, and I am dead.

I wouldn't call what I am experiencing now life.

There are more of us that feel this way than you would think. It seems that the numbers seem to grow as time passes, but only up to a certain point. There is only so far you can push it, befire you have puished it too far. There is only so much space, and the body does break down eventually. Those who can no longer speak still seem to stare at you with eyes that follow movements but don'

t seem to understand what is going on.

As the systems stop, it becomes something else. No one knows for sure why it is tha t the body seems to keep on going even after the blood slows and the life is lost in the heart and the lungs. No one knows how it works, or why those who's lungs have died can speak, but those who's mouths have ceased to work cqannot.

The rules seem to be arbitrary.

Maybe I am not dreaming. Maybe this is real, and my inabiltiy to read my writing and follow it is more up to disasociation and a mockery of a breain and eyes than enything eklse.

It is getting harder to wrtite mnow and I an struggling to put all these things together. I am trying to get it down beofore my eyes fail me and I am stuck in a rut, unable to function at all.

Does the body keep on going, does the mind simply never die even when I can no longer morve my form>

I can't feel my hands, and it is only the sounds of the keys art as I click on them that lets me knows that I am writing something. I press too hard I thingk. I think I broke my fingers, but maybe they are fead and the rot has htaken them.

I am trying t owram

I am trying t o warn you.

This is coming whether we want it to or mnot. I need ...we need to stick around long neoung t oknow how it ends.

How it ends.

I can't ,v

I can't move my eyes.

I am trying but I can't move my eyes, and my shoulders won't move.

There is something behind me. I think. OI t. It is watching , or lurking or waitng. It is the dark, seeking and seeking. The spaces where they light should be.

Whetee is the light.

I it is all black.

All tblack.

Blakc.

Dakrm

Mom Mom MOm Koml MOM Mojm;l m,;lL<

'jukdas;lk aslllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllk

…

I am fine. You will all be fine. Rthis is how it must be. How it always is.”

After many months, I finally have managed to set up a meeting with the man who sent me the letter all those months ago. He had written to me, telling me how his lungs had ceased to work, but somehow he kept living.

He says that the above letter is one of many that he has collected since he wrote to me in November. Since that time, he has been moved to an external facility, where he is granted 24 hour care. When he first wrote me his condition was stable, if only in a relative sense. By now he has lost one leg and the other foot, seven teeth, the use of one of his eyes, and on certain days he is unable to eat without assistance.

Despite this, he was good spirits when I came to talk to him. He said it would be alright if I were to share what we talked about, insisting that it is something that should probably be made aware to as many people as possible.

For now, I have stored the notes in my office until I decided what to do with them.

This is the conversation we had, at least as far as I have been able to report. The session was recorded, but sometimes his voice drifts off, and he ends up talking silently for long periods of time, only stopping once corrected.

N- This is Naomi [withheld], speaking with Mr. Saul [withheld]. I am having this conversation as a representative of the Wellington Street Historical Society, and have been asked by Saul to make this conversation available through what channels I can.

(dish breaks as Saul adjusts himself in his wheelchair, knocking over a coffee cup)

According to our correspondences, you have been in this state for an extended period of time. When was it that you first started noticing that something was wrong?

S-It was my husband who first noted that there was something going on. He had noted an off stench coming from my mouth, and had me go to see a dentist.

(Saul chuckles to himself)

There was nothing they could find wrong with my teeth, and so I went to my PCP, who gave me a referral for a gastric-intestinal doctor...Between my visit with my PCP and the visit with the gastroenterologist, the ability to take my blood pressure reliably had become impossible.

At that time, it seemed more inconsistent than merely dead.

Now that is no longer the case.

N- You mentioned before the start of recording that you had gone through a battery of other tests at the time, trying to figure out what was wrong. Did you ever find a source of this condition, or perhaps a consistent exposure that is shared-

(Saul cuts me off)

S-No no no. You know as well as I do that this is the wrong line of questioning. I didn't contact you with the intent of having a medical discussion. By now I am part of a growing community, all of which have been failed by medical means to find an answer or a direction.

But now that is no longer true.

N-Are you referring to the 'dark' that has been noted by you and your congregation?

S-I wouldn't call our collective a congregation. We don't find any faith or reassurance in all of this. No. The dark provides us a direction, not pleasure. We are helpless. Utterly help...

(He trails off here, and it takes twenty seconds before I am able to explain to him that I couldn't hear him)

...You feel and see it, in the way the rot meets the world. The dead moving. The dead dying a half death. You see it. I know you do. You feel it.

Like I feel the wriggling in my legs.

They say they are clear. Done tests. All that. But I know.

...Skin isn't real...Between the muscles, the tendons...

I feel them moving. Them moving. Moving.

(Saul trails off again, and is unresponsive)

What this all means I don't want to guess, but I...

This isn't what I wanted to hear.

I was hoping for some answers, some way to help explain all those things that I have been seeing and hearing, but all there is is a stream of connected decomposition, and the thing that connects them is just as unknowable as what it would feel like to be dead.

I was hoping I could help.

Why did I think I could help?