The Change-Up

Dear Diary

Yes, diary. It’s old fashioned as all hell to call your blog a diary these in this day and age, though there is some consolation to modernity in that I’m at least keeping it on a computer. I doubt the internet wants to hear about my goddamn life, and it’s not like I’m much of a writer, so it might as well be one.

 

My name is Elisa Cronenberg, age sixteen, female, typing to you on a computer taken from behind a Best Buy, with a Wi-Fi card taken from school, and Wi-fi leeched from some grandma’s house next door. Most of the stuff I have’s been gotten from dumpster-diving. Not that I have much of a choice in the matter.

 

Mom’s pretty much not-there. Well, she’s there, but she isn’t. Dad died when I was really small, and she lost it from there. The only three ways I see her is sleeping after work, drunk after sleeping, and with strange guys for pay after she gets drunk so she can pay rent. Whatever, I’ve been able to make it on my own.

 

Well, unless you count the spiders in my room. They keep quiet mostly. They’ve never bitten me once. I always heard that spiders were self-reliant, so we’re perfect company. Course, I don’t think they let their houses get this filthy, and I don’t think they have to dumpster dive to eat. So in that respect I’m a bit less than them

 

Well, that’s all for today. Unless you want me to detail every itch and callus on my arm, which I doubt you do. So yeah, tomorrow.

 

-Dear Diary-

School day today. Eugh. Everybody, or at least the everybodies who make the movies, talk about how school is a social pyramid, with the alpha-bitches and sociopaths at the top hitting those on the bottom.

 

But it’s more like a tank of starved pigs, bunch of fucked up idiots put together to rip each other apart to eat. It’s just that the runts are the first to get eaten. I should know, I’m one of the runts, the poor kids.

 

For example, there’s the fact that I spent fifteen minutes cleaning gum out of my locker’s lock today. Or the fact that . Or the fact that I spent another fifteen minutes taping my backpack together after somebody ripped it apart. Though, I don’t see why they’d bother vandalizing it. Damn thing is mostly duct tape anyway.

 

The Ramone sisters are the worst ones. They’re poor too, but less poor than me and a little more popular. One of them; the little weasel; tripped me as I was walking to Math class, and the other, the great hambeast, threw a wad of toilet paper in my face, wet and sticky with god knows what. Everybody else laughed, I got up and walked away. I’m used to it. Nobody’s ever helped me, the teachers don’t give a shit, so I had to help myself through the magic of apathy.

 

But, I at least had a good day dumpster-diving after school. Found a lava lamp and a pillow I could use to replace that moldy one I threw away last week.

 

God dammit, the callus is spreading, and it’s itching like crazy. I don’t think it’s a callus. I still have some Neosporin I nicked from the nurse’s office, I’ll rub it on there.

 

Signing off.

 

-Dear Diary-

Today I saw the boy again. Well, that’s not his name. It’s Gregor Wojcic, I’d be dumb to forget it, but to me he is The Boy.

 

Guys don’t notice me much, which I’m not sure is good or bad compared to what I’ve seen of the other girls. It is kinda schadenfreuden-y to see a Ramone sister with a black eye after flaunting her boyfriend the day before.

 

But he’s different. He’s one of those people nobody really hates, the nice guy amongst ‘Nice guys”, the guy whose smiles always mean smiles. I’ve worked with him in class, once-or-twice. He’s the only one who ever listend to me. The only one who smiled when I talked to him. With that gorgeous face, those great blue eyes, that sweet...

 

Yeah, I like him. But I don’t think I’d ask him out. I don’t think I could ask him out. He’s the kid of some big-shot at Yoyodyne Corporation, and if he doesn’t politely let me down, his dad’d certainly let me down hard.

 

The teachers were eyeing at me all day. Well, eyeing me more than the usual “Watch out for the loser, she might go off” kinda way. Of course, I can see why. I used the Neosporin, but the callus, keeps growing. It’s a nasty shade of blue too, and it won’t stop itching. I was scratching like crazy every period today.

 

Though they didn’t look at The Boy when he was itching his neck the whole day. Typical. But I don’t blame him. Not sure if I transferred it to him or what. Well, at least it seems benign.

 

Dear Diary

Goddamit. I had the weirdest fucking dream last night, and all I can remember of it is the phrase “Blue Fire Before Dawn.” Feh. That’s surreal enough for my all of zilch readers, right?

 

It was little more surreal today in school. These two blonde-haired grinning idiots came in for yet another interruption to tell us about some bullshit cause at an assembly. I tiink it was in reaction to some scandal or something. I can’t tell you the name because, to be honest, they were so dull the name didn’t register.

 

They were talking about poverty and homelessness amongst the student body. I know, I know, an issue that should be near and dear to my heart, but they were the typical “condescendingly babying white guys” (I consider my race to be “ambiguously brown if I haven’t told you already). They kept talking about how you needed to have “sympathy” for the “less fortunate” and “speak up” if they know ofone of those “poor widdle disadvantaged uwchins” in their class.

 

I only got that much, nobody else even listened. Well, except for The Boy, and he didn’t seem to like much of what he was hearing. Couldn’t really tell over that hoodie he was wearing. And I’m pretty sure nobody gave a shit about what they were saying, given that when I woke up (Yes, woke up) some asshole’d taped a picture of a cardboard box with the note “Go Home Freak!” on there. At least we didn’t have class.

 

The calluses are still growing. Thank god I wore a sweater today, even if it was a piece of shit. They’re a weird, shiny blue now, around my elbow and my left tit, and they feel like rocks now. Pretty sure it’s not a tumor, as I can’t find anything online about a tumor like this. When I tried to “lance” it with a knife (Don’t worry, I ran it under some hot water first), the knife bent. This is problematic.

 

Dear Diary

Fucking callus still itches, and now it hurts like hell. I can’t stop sweating either. But I’m not sure it’s sweat.

 

I can’t really concentrate anymore on my classes. Despite what you might think about my class and my whining, I’ve always been a pretty decent student. Not like I have anything else better to do as a social outcast, after dumpster diving for my daily whatever of course.

 

But the itching, the “sweat”, that pain, I can’t take it, always jittering around in my seat. Teachers have noticed of course, but after the first time at the councelor’s office, squirming and scratching and leaving that yellow-y sticky “sweat” (Which they apparently think is some sort of drug stuff leakin out of my coat), they musta declared it a lost cause. I’ve always been a lost cause to them, this just gives them an excuse to act on it.

 

The fat Ramone knocked me down and tried to punch me out after school, as per usual every two weeks. She stopped after she saw I didn’t react. Her punches didn’t hurt me. She just ran.

 

There’s also something funky going on with The Boy. He’s always walking away from those groups he keeps standin’ in when they come by, always careful to keep them from looking at him, and he’s got his hoodie real tight so you can’t see his face. But I can see he’s not smiling anymore. And his hoodie’s weird and lumpy.

 

Oh god. As I was typing I spit out a tooth. Just fell right out of my mouth. And, Christ, is that my hair on the keys?!

 

I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m scared.

 

Dear Diary-

It’s worse today. This little “infection” is now all over my right arm, thighs and my chest, and the sweating’s getting worse now, big phlegmy gobs of it all over. I’ve made do using Dad’s old clothes, but everybody still notices I’m hiding something.

 

The Ramones keep spouting their stupid insults, but they always stay a few feet away from me, always backing up as I walk closer. I’m too fucked up for them to pummel. Teachers won’t even look me in the eye anymore either.

 

Whenever I’m going for a “bathroom break”, I always spit up a couple of teeth. Always pull out a few more clumps of hair. And I’ve had to take a lot of these “breaks”.

 

One time, I fell asleep in class, I had that weird dream again. I remember it, fields of roiling meat, strange fleshy towers and strings, lakes of tears. There was no blue fire, weirdly enough, just the words “Blue Fire By Dawn”, like a distant song, before the teacher rapped the ruler to wake me up. God knows if I’m going insane or if it’s something else.

 

The Boy now doesn’t even talk. He I wonder, did I infect him? Did I give him what I got?! God, I hope not. Don’t want to drag him down with me.

 

Only the spiders in my room now bother to touch me. I can feel a sharp something poking from below the gums where my teeth fell out, and from my cheeks. Heh, maybe I’m becoming a spider…

 

I’m not sure whether that’s a joke or not.

 

Dear Diary

God, I’m getting worried. I’m so hungry now, sweating like a pig, this phlegm rolling off of me in sheets. I ate the whole contents of a McDonalds dumpster, a tube of paste, a dead… something off the road. I can still smell the stink of it. At this point I don’t care.

 

I once or twice onsidered calling Urgent Care, but I doubt Urgent Care would have anything to do with me. And if they did, it’d be to send me to goddamn Yoyodyne. No, if I’m going to die horribly, it’ll be on my own terms, as I’ve always done it.

 

Not that I was going to amount to anything anyway. I never could get a scholarship, so after high school it would’ve been one long slide to the grave. That’s the only reason I stayed, a little more time. Thank god it’s not a school day.

 

On my dumpster dives, I’ve improvised an outfit. I look like a stalker/flasher/creeper/pervert, but I don’t care. It’s better than looking like a horrible monster infectee, with the growths (Not calluses now, growths) all over me, itching and hurting and pushing.

 

When will this end?!

 

Dwar Duary

 

I cann barleyu mofve. The skin iss dgroeing over me likw a scagb. I fell so hoty. Feel Like Im dying. Iff anyfbody reasd this Plleasw Remewmber Me. Blkuse Fire Bewfoer Dqan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Diary-

I’m not gone. The worst is over. Thank Christ. Though I don’t know whether to thank him or damn him, with all the shit that happened to me.

 

I’ve been stuck in that tumor cuccoon for a few days, and I’m writing this about three hours after I got out. Mom never checked in once. Typical.

 

Everything’s covered in bits of meat/plastic/egg-y shell/tumor/whatever and that sweat. The spiders seem to love it, which is sorta funny weirdly enough ,se the little bastards goofing around in the broken horrible soul crushing disease-thing.

 

It changed me though. My skin feels sort of a weird hard-soft right now, sort of like alligator boots. Looks like an alien’s hide too, like the one that bursts out of people’s torsos, all ridged and gothic-ed up.

 

Face looks sort of like a t-rex in the mirror, big lizard jaw with big lizard teeth, albeit with pointy ears; a feather/Mohawk thing, and with these two little movable nubs with big ol fangs. Like a spider, ha. I was sort of right. Legs look big and dinosaury too. And my arms look like weird, flexible five-fingered bug’s legs. Though, as you can see, I’m typing just fine now.

 

I’m wearing the stalking flasher outfit now. Yes I call it that, har har har. Can’t go out looking like this. But, I don’t give a shit. They never cared about me before, so why should I care what they think now?

 

I dreampt of the Meatland again. “Blue Fire Before Dawn” again, as per usual. But, there was something different. Before getting there, I remember walking through a giant fleshy hole (Yes I know, laugh it up), right on my wall. And it didn’t feel as terrifying this time. It felt… fascinating. Like a whole new world to explore, which I did, up and down. Fucking weird, but fascinating. And some of the spiders seem to be hugging the wall instead of my broken cocoon-thingy.

 

You know, I’ve never heard of somebody feeling so alive after a near-death experience. I at least have something to live for, some sort of mystery to find out. There’s a story to be found, After sixteen years of nothing, I can finally see a change.

 

Dear Diary-

Back at school today. Nobody noticed my absence. Everybody’s staying away from me like they were before, teachers don’t like me, and I am a generally mocked non-entity. In other words, everything’s mostly back to normal, other than one big thing.

 

Well, other than me being an alien monster-thing now. So two big things. Feels so second-nature to me I don’t even count it, like a big rubber suit you walk around in. But nobody seems to notice that, they’re to busy getting away from me in my creepy perv-o-suit. But I see that as a plus rather than a minus.

 

Oh, and there’s that one big thing. Ya see, The Boy was there. And he still had his hoodie on. But now he had big-ass goggles on, and a weird surgery mask too. And, more interestingly, the hoodie looked a lot less lumpy. Well, except for I nthe back.

 

You know, before now I would never have done what I did today, after school, just as everyone but him left. But fuck it, something big’s happening, and I wanted to go for the gusto! Grab fate by the balls! Cliché number three! I’ve always been so concerned with surviving and being a smug, aloof, goddamn bitch. I’ve been afraid far too long. So, I ambushed him.

 

I’ve been feeling a lot stronger after that change, so I thought it’d be easy to sneak up, pull off the hoodie, and see what the hell was happening to him. But damn, he was harder than I thought. Not just because it is a pain in the ass to try and tackle someone when you’ve been running all your life, but also because… Well, to put it bluntly, my hunch was right.

 

But I was a little stronger than him (ain’t that atypical), and I pulled ‘em off. He just stared at me, with three eyes, horns, big-ass tongue. He was scared, though I don’t know whether it was due to the crazy tall lady on top of him or the fact that I saw him like this.

 

If somebody told me “You are not alone,” I wouldn’t have believed it. I never didI’ve always been alone even before this, and I probably would have called you insane a few days ago if you thought I did. But, I pulled off my disguise, the scarf, sunglasses, hat, and looked at him, fucked-up monster face to fucked-up monster face. Then, for the first time in ages, he smiled.

 

He’s here right now. We have a lot of catching up to do.