i'm shutting the door to the life that i once knew

...seems like you end up alone...

It took one cough to throw off her balance and one misstep to ruin the moment. Elbow hit wood and the table jostled. She winced, backed off as quickly as she could in the perceived aeons of slow motion that followed, but it was all for naught. The inevitable scratch. The song was over, the feeling gone.

Sigh. She lifted the needle and pulled the record away from the gramophone to inspect the damage.

Damage. Hah.

...papa says he'd love to be with you / if he had the time...

Between lamenting the loss of her mother and slaughtering Rotti Largo's masses? Instead, she put her focus into the soon-to-be bruise. On the outside of her arm. A nice change, really, from the purples-and-yellows-and-greens that used to pepper the backs of her hands, the crooks of her elbows. Nothing but scratches, scars, and memories, now.

...when no one else would come...

The baby book she found in the attic claimed the song as a mutual favourite of Nathan and Marni Wallace née Rimbauer. It felt like a joke, the same way seeing her intended full name spelled out, in her mother's script - Shilo Magdalene Wallace - did. A cruel trick her father had played, first on...who? His beloved wife? His ailing daughter? Himself?

Shilo broke the record on the balcony fence. Half of it cracked and fell, unceremoniously to the pile of junk that rested below her spire. She snapped the other half in thirds before also allowing it to join the equipment graveyard on her front lawn.

...come today...

Deep breaths. Another cough. But it didn't stop her. No masks, no medicine, no excuses. Another deep breath.

...something said she understood.

from the diary of Shilo Wallace
So STOP READING NOW...that means you, DAD. It's not like I can't tell when the LOCK has been broken!!!

Even as a little girl, I never had any delusions about whether or not my mother was really dead. Of course there are plenty of things my father lied to me about, but that may be one of the only things he told me that was a straight truth. Sometimes, that makes me more angry than other times. There are only two important things he ever said to me...maybe only one and a half important things he ever said to me that were not complete lies:

1. My mother is dead.

2. He loved me. (That's the half. I think he wanted to and maybe he even, sometimes, tried to, but he never, ever succeeded.)

I never questioned the former idea. When I was old enough to understand, I assumed everything would be all right because all princesses who get happy endings don't have mothers. Sometimes they don't even have fathers, which should have made my chances that much better since Dad's almost total absence (even when he was home) basically usually made me feel like I didn't have a father, too. Before I was old enough to understand, I thought she might be a ghost in our house.

My father's house. I get, now, that it probably still isn't my house, even though I'm the only one who lives in it, now. (Almost the only one.)

Just about no one would know because no one has ever been inside - other than Mag, who only ever saw the living room, and GraveRobber who probably doesn't much care what it looks like because it's bigger than a dumpster and has much better coverage - but if you were a four year old girl who spent most of her time in a weird, sick haze, you would probably mistake the portraits in the upstairs hallway for mom-ghosts, too. There are still...tons of things I'm trying to sort out in my brain, since I know most of what I'm used to being told was imagined or dreamed or something not real, but one thing I know for certain is how much it sucked running into a wall because you wanted a hug from a ghost who just turned out to be a hologram.

I've always been scared of this house. Is that a side effect, maybe, of being isolated to one part of it, for your whole life? I've never really known it, even when I did start sneaking out. The graveyard was always quieter, more comfortable. Still full of strange noises and dark corners, but noises and darkness I was familiar with. I wonder, kind of, now, if that's because Mom's tomb is empty. If it's less that I'm just a creepy little girl who likes hanging out with dead bodies and more...there's a dead body in the house I grew up in. Near the room I lived in. It's quiet in the crypt because there's nothing there, except for me. (And sometimes bugs.) (And sometimes GraveRobbers.) It's terrifying in my father's house because it's haunted.

I asked my dad that, once. "Do we have ghosts in our house?" He told me to stop reading Shirley Jackson. (I didn't.) I asked him again, when I was older, if he was sure the house wasn't haunted. He never answered, but I think that was less "Shilo, this isn't something I want to talk about because I have feelings and I don't want to share them with you because I'm your father," and slightly more, "Shilo, please be quiet and do your homework because you're wrong about that." So, I guess the answer I always get is "no". But. My dad was an expert with dead bodies and making bodies into dead bodies, not, like...a ghost hunter or anything.

(Wouldn't that have been so much cooler? Ghostbuster Dad. Hypno MGz.)

(What would he have done, though, if he wasn't a doctor? Tell me I was possessed?)

Anyway. I still don't think "no" is a good answer. If it wasn't before, the house is haunted, now. I wish I could say it was still just the ghost of my mom that I wanted to always be around, so she could do the mom things I was missing in my life, but...it's never been that. The house wouldn't be so sad, so horrible, if it was her.

...Okay, that's, I guess, another whole thing that Dad never lied about. Mom was perfect and beautiful and kind and our house would have probably been an amazing, happy place if she had been haunting it.

But she's not. And I don't just mean because she isn't...pinned and mounted in the hallway, anymore, so to speak. Dad isn't pinned and mounted (because I'm not a freak who does that to human beings, even if I am a freak who used to do that to bugs) anywhere in here, but he's still haunting it. Yeah, that's what I think. Even if he isn't a ghost who is wandering the halls and knocking things over in the basement and flushing my toilet all the time (no, but really, it's weird and I don't get it...) and uncovering bottles of...pills in places that I'm pretty sure they never were before...his bad feelings and guilt are stuck in the walls. Probably stuck in all the furniture, too, and anything he touched, ever.

This is why I'm going to get better. This is why I don't care if I feel woozy when I flush pills down the toilet. (The one downstairs, that doesn't work by itself, like it's haunted.) This is why I am going to get out of here and go somewhere else, even though there's probably not very many somewhere elses that have tunnels that lead directly to cemeteries I like. I'm going to get better and I'm going to leave this stupid place so I never have to be haunted by Largos or every awful thing my dad ever did or even the idea of my mother that everyone seemed to want me to live up to, so badly, again.

Dad always said, "We will always have each other, in our time of need," to me. But it's my time of need, now, and what I need is to not have what he never was and what my mom could never be weighing down on me.

from the diary of Shilo Wallace
So STOP READING NOW...that means you, DAD. It's not like I can't tell when the LOCK has been broken!!!

Tell us about a time you teamed up with somebody to do something.

Once...well, actually, you know, really, it was two times. Can you say "twice upon a time"? Does that make any sense? I guess I've never really taken into consideration what "once upon a time" actually means, other than being the beginning of a fairy tale. Or something that's supposed to sound like a fairy tale, even if you're just kind of being silly or sarcastic or whatever. I guess what it's probably trying to say is "once, during this period of time"...right? Since it's always for a fairy tale, it's probably just implied that the "time" is some sort of legendary or fantastic or special time. But probably not always, since you're really allowed to use that to start off any kind of story, if you want. So, okay. It does make sense to say "twice" instead of "once". Because then it just means "two times, during this period of time", something happened. Which is what happened in my story.

Twice upon a time, I teamed up with someone to make a narrow, daring escape from certain danger!! I wanted to say "certain death", but I don't think death was all that certain, the first time, and the second time had nothing to do with death, at all. (Not mine, anyway.) But both times were really dangerous and probably could have ruined my whole life.

My first team escape attempt...it didn't work so well. At the time - and sometimes even still - I thought my partner-in-crime (although I certainly wouldn't have picked him, at the time, to be that, if I had been committing any real crime and, if he was considering me his partner in crime, well...he's crazier than I think) wasn't that at all. I kind of thought that he wanted to use me so he could get away, safe. I mean, I know he wanted to get away, safe, but...I know better, now. I don't think he really wanted it to be at my expense. I mean, he tried really hard to help me, even though it didn't really feel like it, then. Then, it just felt like showing off. It scared me so bad, at the time, I almost had a heart attack, but...I know when I thought of it later...when I think about it now? It was pretty cool. I mean, it was really cool. Can you imagine being that sure of yourself? That good at what you do? I watch him do it, all the time. He dances around the search lights like they're not even there. Without even looking at them!

I still don't know if meeting him out there was an accident or what, that night. I mean, as a grave-robber, it's not like it's, you know, weird for him to be in a graveyard or anything. For all I know, he was there, every night, just to work. Nothing to do with me. Or with me, specifically. That being said...it's a big cemetery. I guess he could have been anywhere, in it. But he wasn't, he was near my mom's crypt when I snuck out and, even if he hadn't planned to be, I know he already knew I was there, too. Maybe he heard me come out of the tunnels. Or maybe he didn't know until the crypt door creaked open, but he knew. He knew he'd have my attention and that we were going to be a team, that night. I guess I was probably so scared with the stupid thing I was doing that I didn't even know he was there until he threw that stupid body at me. Jerk. My stomach was already in my throat, by the time he stood up, too, and then he had to go and yell GRAVES!!! at the five or so GeneCops who wanted to, you know, kill us for tresspassing. Idiot, I thought. But he had smiled at me, when he stood up. He knew what he was doing.

I thought, then, that he just wanted to tell everyone where we were, so they would come get me while he got away, but that's not really it, at all. He wasn't just showing off because he's the kind of person who likes to show off (but he really is, sometimes), I think...I mean, I figured out, way after the fact because it made not even a little bit of sense at the time, he was proving himself to me. It was actually his way of getting me to trust him, his way of telling me that if I wanted to get out of this, I could go with him and I'd be safe because he knew how to get away, how to be safe. In the momet, I guess...it kind of worked. I mean, I didn't exactly cling to his side or anything, but when I couldn't get back in to Mom's tomb, it's not like I threw myself at the mercy of the GeneCops, either, or ran in the opposite direction. He said, "come," and I ran to him.

And, you know, the reason the whole thing failed is probably my own dumb fault. I was stupid and trusting (I'm still that), but I was also stupid and scared. My scared won out. If it hadn't been for that, if I hadn't felt my heart going so fast and my breathing get so shallow, I like to think that I probably would have just surrendered to him. Let him take me wherever, anywhere. But, nope. I was terrified of everything. Him, the cops, the dark, the dead bodies in the hole we'd climbed into, the idea of getting caught, the idea of getting killed, and - most of all - the idea of my dad finding out about everything. I wasn't thinking about anything else except how scared I was. I did what I always do, even still, when I'm stupid and scared. It's like I have this stupid setting I default to where all I can do is parrot things my dad used to tell me: I need to be home, I'm sick, I shouldn't be out, you shouldn't be here, blah, blah, blah. I hate that that's what I do, but it's just so automatic. Ugh. So I whined and rattled all that off and wouldn't just listen to him and watch him and go with him...so I got caught.

By the second time, though, I'd learned my lesson. It wasn't even a whole day later, the next time we teamed up, but my whole world had begun to change so dramatically, I'm surprised I didn't of NOS. Or some kind of overstimulation disorder. Anyway, seeing him a second time unraveled that much more of my world and, I guess, whatever fear or doubts I'd had about him (the biggest one, of course, though, being that he wasn't real...). Again, I still don't know if he came looking for me or found me by accident, but I know that he definitely didn't have to rescue me, when he did find me, if it was, in fact an accident. I told him I needed to get home because, while I might be trusting and naive, I also know when I'm in over my head.

We took the long way home and there were probably more than a few times that me, from the day before, would have freaked out (...like she had, the day before) and found a new way to get caught and hauled away. Instead, I promised - myself, at least - that I would, no matter what, this time, when he said, "Follow me." I know plenty of people who don't, now, but I like to stick to promises I make. So, I trusted him when...he...inferred, I guess, that the best way to get rid of an unwanted Amber is to...you know, obviously throw a bale of hay at her. (Maybe it confuses her as badly as it confused me, but to the point of paralyzation?)

Do you know how heavy bales of hay are, by the way? I didn't, at the time, but I just looked it up and the "small" bales? SIXTY TO ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY POUNDS. Does he have superhuman strength????

Sorry. Um. Okay, yeah. When we stopped to...well, do a little business, in the alley behind the support group's meeting hall? ...Yeah, that sucked, but even when it seemed like he was maybe throwing me to the dogs, he never didn't have it under control. He never wasn't protecting me, I don't think. So, this time, when we heard the sirens, I took his hand and I did what I promised I would. I wasn't even scared, that time. I just wanted to run. Hold his hand and run away, wherever he wanted to go, even if it wasn't anywhere near my home. But. Well, I told him that was where I'd wanted to go and, even though it seemed like we'd never get there by his route...we did. He kept his promise, too, even though it...wasn't what I wanted, anymore. Maybe if I'd told him that...I don't know. I just know that my heart kind of hurt when we ended up in the cemetery, by Mom's, and not in the way that meant I had an attack coming on.

...You know, actually, it's three times...upon a time. Thrice? Thrice upon a time. Because we teamed up, later that night, too...just, um. Well, I don't really like that story, as much. If my whole stupid life happened to be made up of a bunch of short stories? That one would have the worst ending and I'm so, so tired of stories that don't finish with "...And they lived happily ever after."

from the diary of Shilo Wallace
So STOP READING NOW...that means you, DAD. It's not like I can't tell when the LOCK has been broken!!!

What is your opinion of relationships where there is a significant age difference between partners?

Sometimes, um. Sometimes certain people aren't raised very well to be normal human beings so they can't relate to anyone their own age. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a grownup, not someone as old as you are and sometimes someone who's older than you - maybe in a significant way - is probably the person you want to spend all of your time with because they know everything and you don't really know anything and they want to teach you about everything, when your parents - or, you know, whoever it is that you were stuck being raised by - wouldn't.

Sometimes when a person is ten years older than you are, they know all the things you need and how to get them for you, even when they say things like, "Kid, I'm no good for you. I can't give you what you want." Usually you know they're just saying that because they get scared or something, probably, because you know they can give you exactly what you want, so there's not really any reason to say things like that unless they're scared. Or, maybe, unless they just don't want to be around you and don't know how else to tell you. But I'm pretty sure the first thing is what the case always turns out to be.

Sometimes it's just smarter for someone who's never experienced anything in their whole stupid life to hang around someone who's experienced just about everything. And it's not just the ten and a half years that make the difference, either. Even if the someone who's experienced everything was seventeen, too, they still probably would know a lot more than the other person. But, either way. The extra years of experience help. For both of them.

Um.

So, what I mean to say is that there's nothing wrong with age differences. No matter how many times a person goes, "Kid, I'm too old for you," it doesn't actually matter. Because they aren't.

from the diary of Shilo Wallace
So STOP READING NOW...that means you, DAD. It's not like I can't tell when the LOCK has been broken!!!

Give us a list of perfect moments.

I don't like to complain about things, I really don't. At least, I don't like to complain to people. For starters, I don't really have very many to complain to. I have one person. If I complained to him, I think he'd say something like, "Kid, we all had shitty lives. You had a tough break, but dwelling on it won't get you anywhere." And he's not saying that because he doesn't care or is unsympathetic or anything. What he is, actually, is right. But sometimes I get really sad about things that have happened that definitely shouldn't have happened and I just want to talk about it. I guess that's why I have a diary, but the diary doesn't talk back. Anyway, it doesn't matter, so much, what he says because, in the end, he'll almost always hug me.

I don't know how it is that I always get caught up trying to talk about something that I don't actually mean to be talking about. This was supposed to be a list. And a list of good, at that. My point was supposed to be that I don't like to complain, but that doesn't change the fact that there's been a lot of bad that's happened to me. The bad outweighs the good, overall, but that's only because I'm not done have good moments in the future. But this list I'm trying to make is of good things that have already happened. Not even just good things, but perfect things.

It's going to be a short list.

1. Once, Blind Mag came to my house. There are all sorts of things that you would think should have made it not-perfect, but as one, isolated event that happened in my life, it was. Utterly perfect. I was stupid and tired and had, I guess, scared myself having gotten so far away from the house so many times in not even twenty-four hours, so I didn't know what to say at all. Also, I mean, I don't know how it works for "normal" people, but it's kind of hard to think of anything to say to beautiful, famous people you worship and love, at all, when they just show up at random at your house. Except, apparently, things you had drilled into you when you were a kid as ways to handle people you don't actually know coming to the door. Those were really easy to think of. But despite the fact that I was probably really rude and she seemed really sad, most of the time, and was saying things like, "Shilo, I knew your mom and I'm your godmother," I think it was perfect. She wanted to know about me and listen to what I actually had to say and I wanted to tell her everything and I should have, but all I could think of was how much trouble I was going to get into if Dad came home and a) saw Mag, especially if everything she told me was true (which it was because Mag wouldn't lie), b) caught me out of my room, and c) caught me talking to Mag.

Which, I mean, he did come home and find out all those things, but before he did, she told me she wanted to know me and for me to be happy and free. My dad ruined everything, but, for the rest of my life, I'm going to pretend that the little pockets of time when I wasn't freaking out, when Dad wasn't home as perfect. If not just because Mag was there and everything she did was perfect, always.

2. My first chocolate. See, GraveRobber brings me lots of things to try. He knows that my dad never knew how to cook and always cooked the same, stupid, boring things over and over again and all of it tasted like cardboard or vomit. (I wish I was kidding, but I am not. As someone who's had to throw up a million times, I think I know the flavor by now.)

Anyway. All the ads and propaganda that gets played around Valentine's Day always made me assume it was a holiday about people looking really "hot" (or whatever GeneCo wants you to think is looking "really" "hot") and having sex with each other. I guess it used to be less about just sex and more about affection and love. People would bring each other flowers and heart-shaped cards and boxes of chocolate. I guess maybe they had sex after all of that, but probably as an expression of how much they loved each other and not just because GeneCo is running those stupid ads with Amber telling you what bodypart ought to be replaced to "ensure" a "happy" Valentine's Day. (UGH. SO GROSS.)

This year, GraveRobber brought me a box of chocolates and not just because he assumed he could have sex with me as soon as I ate them. (I think.) Lots of people, I guess, don't really like these boxes because there isn't anything to indicate which chocolate is which and they're all different. Some people, I guess, don't like raspberry cream or coconut or anything else, but I think they're all great. But I didn't know anything about it, at the time, because Dad always said that sweets were bad for me and would aggravate my attacks. Turns out, that's not true at all because GraveRobber picked me out the perfect piece (it was the one solid chocolate in the whole box!) and I bit into it and it was perfect.

Everthing, actually, that he brings me to eat is perfect. But chocolate is the most perfect because I know it's not made out of anything gross. Tacos...those might be gross. Chocolate is not gross because it is made out of pure delicious and definitely not cat meat. (He still won't tell me if he was joking about that.)

3. Sometimes, when you're just sitting around with someone, talking about, oh, I don't know, everything, you might start to ramble on about something and let your words get away from you. Not in the way that you're embarrassing yourself, but just kind of in the way that you can't stop talking and what you're saying might not be very interesting, but you're still saying it because no one's told you to be quiet or go to your room or to not be so silly. Even if you do find yourself again, though, in the middle of your story that got away from you, it doesn't matter because nothing is more important than being interrupted by someone putting their drink down on the table and leaning in to kiss the words right out of your mouth.

It happened like that, the first time.

...

See, I knew that would be a very short list. But it's okay because I know I still have a long time to find perfect moments. I don't ever have to worry about dying without being kissed or without getting to meet Blind Mag or without eating food that isn't something horrible my dad threw together. Even if I was really sick, if I was dying, if I did have a blood disease, or even if it was just that I have too much poison soaked into my body to get out, I guess it probably wouldn't be horrible to only have the three perfect moments that I've had. It's better than some people have and it's better than I ever thought I'd get.

from the diary of Shilo Wallace
So STOP READING NOW...that means you, DAD. It's not like I can't tell when the LOCK has been broken!!!

If your pet could talk, what is the first thing s/he would say to you?

I guess this might be an easier question to answer if I, you know, had pets. That's not to say there aren't plenty of animals and things in my room, of course. The trouble is, though, that none of them are living. Which...well, when I put it that way, makes me think of this dark vintage comic book - Lenore, I think it is - about this little girl who has....I don't know, a bunch of dead cats. And other dead things. Things die around her, a lot. I'm not sure how, exactly. I could probably say I know how she feels, but I think the books usually try to make it seem funny. That things die around her a lot.

I'm not sure I get that.

Fortunately, a lot of the things I have around me that aren't living were never alive to begin with. That'd be my stuffed things. My toys, I mean. I don't know if I could say for sure what, exactly, they'd all want to say. Most of them, I guess, might say something like, "It's not like we asked your dad to buy us, either!" or "We appreciate that you don't do it anymore, but getting thrown around really sucks, you ought to know!" or maybe even, "Now that you're not sick, can you please stop stuffing pills into our folds and things?" I'm not sure how to respond to any of that, though. All I can really do is apologize for taking everything out on them and hope they understand that it was either them or my dad. And I think if I'd started taking things out on my dad sooner than, you know, I actually did...he might have. Um. Well, anyway. It's easier for them to get thrown around than it would have been for me. I hope they understand that.

When they were done voicing their gripes, I guess I'd hope they'd thank me for the good times. We did have a lot of very nice tea parties when I was little. Well, some of us, did. And I would hope that Rabbit might thank me for still letting him sleep in my bed and not always over on the settee with everyone else. I'm sure he knows I've always liked him best (even when I did throw him around or stuff half-taken pills in his pouch...), probably because he came first. He came at a time when I didn't mind getting stuffed toys for every single present. He didn't make me feel like a child. ...Also, he's the only one who's perfect for cuddling. Hippo and Lion are too fat and Monkey's arms are easy to get all tangled in a person's wig. (I learned all this the hard way.)

So Rabbit might say thanks, but no thanks, next time it's not just me sleeping in my bed because, despite being optimal cuddling size, he is easy to lose when there are other things to be hanging on to and then he just gets lost in the sheets and usually winds up between someone's legs and that's really just awkward for everyone. No one wants to say anything about that.

Or, well. Rabbit and I certainly don't.

Now, the other not-alive things (the one that are actually dead) that surround me are all bugs (save for my mom). Insects, actually, because like I've said, six legs is the maximum number of legs one should have. Unless one is an octopus, but then you aren't a bug at all, so you're okay. My insect collection is just that. A collection. Not a collection of pets because they're more like decorations than pets. I've caught a few that I've contemplated not sticking in the killing jar, right away, but what it's always come down to is that I've never really had any way to take care of them. And they're just another thing that my dad would have come up with another reason for me to not keep. Because they'd make me sick, if they were alive. But obviously, once I suffocate them and impale them on blocks of wood, then they won't make me sick anymore.

Right.

So. Really, I guess some of them might just say, "Shilo, why did you kill us? We could have been your friends! Can you please take these needles out of our backs so we can crawl around and not feel like we're being stabbed to death all the time?" And that makes me sad, especially since I can't fix it.

I don't really like this question, anymore. All it's done is make me feel bad and, big surprise, want a real pet. Even the butterfly cage dad bought me, a million years ago, was better than nothing. Even though he always yelled at me for trying to hold them. And we let them go, almost as soon as they'd hatched out of their cocoons. Or, at least, I guess I thought we did. Knowing him, he probably threw them away and made up a whole story about how we let them fly away, to bigger and better things, together.

The story of my life.

from the diary of Shilo Wallace
So STOP READING NOW...that means you, DAD. It's not like I can't tell when the LOCK has been broken!!!

Have you ever told a member of your family that you wanted them out of your life? If so, why?

Um.

Yes.

And, I mean, I meant it at the time. I'm not sure if I mean it anymore. I definitely meant it when I said it. A little while after that, I wanted to take it back. I don't know what's right, though, anymore.

See. Here's the thing.

I used to be sick. I'm still kind of sick, but not because of the same sick I used to be. It's because I'm still trying to work the medicine out of my system. If I gave it up, altogether, I'd probably...well, have an attack. But attacks are what I had when I thought it was still medicine. It wouldn't be an attack, now, it would be...what does he call it? Oh, right, duh. Withdrawl. I would have withdrawls.

...I should start over.

I guess I can't really say I used to be sick because what I "used" to be sick with was a blood disease that it turns out I never actually had. Who knows if my mom even had it, even though I was always told that I inherited it from her. My dad told me that, at least. But only because no one else could ever tell me anything because, for seventeen years, my dad was the only person I ever knew, ever talked to. Well, okay, he was the only person whoever talked to me.

Wait. Even that's kind of not true.

But for all intents and purposes, for seventeen years, my dad was the only other person in my immediate world. I knew there were other people, outside, but I wasn't allowed outside. That's how sick he told me I was. So sick that I couldn't even leave my room, much less the house. Sometimes I believed him, too. I think I believed him more when I was little, but I guess that makes sense. Well. No, I believed him about a lot of things, but particularly the sick thing was what I didn't always believe. The being-too-sick-to-leave-my-room-bit, anyway. Because I left my room a bunch of times. I didn't really poke around the house, too much, but I did take the tunnel to my mom's tomb. I wore my gasmask in there, for a while. Well, I always wear it in the tunnel. That's just common sense and there's dirt and a lot of gross stuff, probably, to be inhaling. I mean, I'm the only one who uses it and I know I don't clean it when I do. So, safety first.

Okay, well, maybe someone else uses it sometimes, too, but I know he'd never clean, either.

When I was really little, I used to visit my mom's crypt a lot, actually, even though I was sick. My dad even took me, most of the times I went. When I was seven, though, he told me I had to stop, though, because the air quality outside was too gross, I guess, for me to breathe. It'd trigger an attack or something and that could be dangerous if I went down there, especially without him. But, since he spent most of my life being far too busy for me, he never wanted to take me, after that. So I started sneaking out. I even wore my mask, for a while, in the tomb, but that got uncomfortable and made it really hard to eat. Nothing bad happened when I stopped. Sometimes my chest would get a little tight, but usually that was because I'd forgotten (or hadn't wanted) to take my medicine earlier. And it never got so bad that I passed out or anything. ...Most of the time.

I guess kind of in Dad's defense, the first time I actually tried to leave the tomb, I did have an attack, but later, he told me it was because I hadn't taken my medicine. Which is a lie, I definitely remember taking it before I went down to visit Mom. But he also told me I hadn't been outside at all and dreamed the whole thing up. Which was also definitely a lie because I'm pretty sure GraveRobber isn't someone I could have ever imagined, for starters. I'm pretty sure the reason I had that "attack" might have had something to do with the fact that I was being chased by GeneCops and hiding in a mass grave and seeing real dead bodies for the first time and being shoved around once I got caught. All that, just to catch one silly bug.

The good news is that I did catch the bug and he survived the whole ordeal, just like I did, in one piece. He has his own shadowbox and everything. :)

I got definitive proof, later that day, actually, that my dad was lying to me about pretty much everything. Like GraveRobber. Who is very definitely real. And other things, too. Like about how Mom didn't actually die from the blood disease I "had", but because Dad killed her. I still don't know if it was an accident because no one ever told me how he killed her, but I guess it makes me feel better to assume that it was an accident because I know he loved her very, very much (more than he ever loved me) and I don't think he would outright kill someone he loved. I think he wanted to spend a long time with her. Maybe he would have liked me better, if he'd been able to. I don't know.

And I'm getting off the subject.

Anyway. I think he probably killed Mom by accident, but what he definitely didn't do by accident was lie to me about how sick I was. Which, it turned out, was not at all. Well. Okay, kind of. But I was sick because he made me sick. Because my medicine was never medicine, it was low-grade poison. Never enough to kill me, just enough to keep me sick so I'd have to always depend on him, so I'd never be able to leave him. Which meant he'd also lied about all the times he tried to find something he said he thought would cure me. Whatever he put in those, he just made me even sicker with so I would be tricked into thinking I should just keep taking my regular "medicine". He...never wanted me to get better.

GraveRobber explained the problem with my medicine, once. I guess people can get addicted to just about anything and my dad gave me so much of that poison, I got addicted to it. So it kept me pretty weak, most of the time, but it also made my body freak out when I wasn't getting enough of it. That's why it seemed like my attacks were always worse when I didn't take it. Because my body was starting to go through a withdrawl.

I think I got a little ahead of myself. I told my dad I wanted him to go away and to die before I knew all of that. I wanted him to die because he lied to me about being a doctor. He wasn't a doctor, at all. All those days and nights he spent being too busy to spend time with me, to take care of me, to be a real dad instead of a jailer, he wasn't caring for patients at the hospital. He wasn't giving new organs to those in need. He was murdering people. He was ripping organs out of their bodies and bringing them back to stupid, evil, old Rotti Largo at GeneCo. My dad was a Repo Man. You'd think that was bad enough, wouldn't you? But the whole reason he was there? Was to kill Blind Mag and take her eyes. Just because she wanted to stop being Mr. Largo's puppet and live her own life.

FYI, Blind Mag? She was not only the most beautiful, amazing, wonderful, talented singer in the whole history of the world (my favourite), but also MY GODMOTHER. My mom's best friend. Yeah, that's right. My dad knew that I was obsessed with Mag for my whole life and never bothered to tell me any of that. And she never came to tell me herself, until that night, because he told her that I died with Mom.

Ugh. I'm getting really, really, really mad again, just thinking about it.

Mag was already dead, though, by the time my dad could have gotten to her. I want to be glad that she went out on her own terms, I guess, because it would be unfair to not want her to be free the only real way she could have been...but...I still don't know how to feel about that, either.

That's when I told my dad to get away from me. For forever. And I wished he would have. But then I found out all the other stuff (on stage, even, in front of everyone in the audience and, like, everyone in the whole world who was watching the Genetic Opera that night) and wished it even harder.

...And I got what I wished for, even though by the time it happened, I'd kind of stopped wishing it as much.

Like I said. I don't know if it was the right thing. I didn't want him to die. But I think nothing would be different if he hadn't. And I'm glad everything's different. I'm glad that, soon, I won't have to worry about being sick anymore. I'm glad that I'll probably have hair, soon (I hope!). I'm glad that I can have friends and that I have someone who wants to help take care of me, but doesn't want to keep me locked away and helpless. I'm glad I'm learning how to be a real person, a real adult.

Sorry, Daddy. I never could have done any of this with you. But I still love you, I think, most of the time.

from the diary of Shilo Wallace
So STOP READING NOW...that means you, DAD. It's not like I can't tell when the LOCK has been broken!!!

People, animals, places, things - post some pictures of whatever gives you those tender feelings.

Well, this should be very, very easy. More than anything else in the world, I love the following.

Bugs!






Those are my favourites, obviously, but I love all bugs. Well, okay, no, I love all insects. Anything with more than six legs is unnatural. Sometimes milipedes and centipedes are excused from this, but only on a case-by-case basis. And, really, the only centipede excused is Mr. Centipede from James and the Giant Peach, which Dad never bought for me. I didn't even know it existed until recently. I think he did not want me to get any ideas in my head. Although I don't know what he expected me to think. I mean, first of all, where did he think I was going to find a real piece of fruit? That grew from a tree, in the ground, much less? I don't even know.

But that's another thing I love, James and the Giant Peach. Actually, I don't know if I love peaches, to be honest. I don't think I have ever tasted one. And James was all right, but what I really loved was escaping from somewhere terrible with a bunch of very nice insects (save for, of course, Mr. Centipede and, also, Miss Spider, who, now that I think about it, is also an exception because she was very nice, despite being an arachnid) who want to be my new family. I think I would have liked that to happen to me very much.

So, that's one of the things I love most in the world.

BLIND MAG!!!!


There is no one in the world more talented, more beautiful, more spectacular, or more wonderful than Magdalene Defoe, aka Blind Mag. ...Also known as my godmother. She was nice to me. So nice. Like, the real kind of nice, too. Not the fake nice that Mr. Largo kept putting on, every time he wanted me to sneak out of the house so I could help him get some sort of stupid revenge on my dad. Mag was nice to me because she wanted to be nice to me. Because she ccared about me and she loved me and she loved my mom.

We didn't have much time to actually be together, but I've loved her, really hard, for my whole life. I don't even think that knowing she was my godmom made me love her any more or (obviously not) any less. I'm sorry I didn't get to tell her any of that, but I'm not sorry that we only had a little bit of time together because I would rather just have had that little bit of time with her than no time at all.

I hope she knows how much I love her, even though I never got to say.

And the last thing?



:)

Since Shilo doesn't even know ten people, the first five are people who have disappointed her and the rest are people she's (under the impression that she's) disappointed.

* * *
1. Her dreams turned rotten, again. How, at the age of four, could she have understood the meaning of the word "hologram", especially when Marni stood just outside her room, waiting for her with open arms. Shilo ran, but hit the wall before she felt her mother's touch.

She didn't just cry, when her father carried her back to bed, she sobbed. Wailed. "She's not real, Daddy," she bawled. "I. Needed. Her. She's not real."

And that marked the night Nathan began locking his daughter's door.

( The rest are hiding under here. )