Public Confession (Restricted)
Diary of Insanity No. 30062026 — Addendum
Entry — Before Dawn
Tone: Ash Gray with Embers
Voice: First Person

I woke.

The darkness brushes the back of my neck, and it comes from your eyes. The tawny mist rubbing itself against the windowpane sketches across my shoulder blades the outline of some forgotten memory.

The smoke—from the fire outside or the one within, I cannot tell—moves like an animal pressing its muzzle into my hand, asking to be held. The flames dance. I know I ought to wake. The candle's tongue grazes the window frame, which I never imagined could burn so beautifully, so quickly, with such hunger.

The fire grows. My cats keep trying to wake me.

Why am I still asleep?

The smoke and the medication. That's it. Their combination. How did time stretch itself this way? The tongue of fire is already licking the ceiling by the time I finally open my eyes.

My cat seems relieved.

I run for water and put out the fire. The smoke is black, thick, and damp. I am not frightened. Only surprised, and slow—as though all of this had happened to someone else's body, in someone else's life, and I were merely watching.

No one but the cats noticed a single thing.

It is that easy to die.

So easy that what frightens me most is that I never felt afraid.

The sun set, painting the white walls with the colors of fire. Little reinventions of the blaze. Or metaphors, perhaps. I no longer know how to tell the difference between what is real and what has burned inside me.

I curl up in bed and watch the aftermath.

No one was hurt. My cat lies beside me, purring against my stomach before falling asleep—as though nothing had happened, as though the fire were only another dream we had shared.

But the mark on the ceiling remains.

And I do not know whether I regret it.