[Another entry is made, next to the previous.]
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Patient: Saskia Niederhauser
Condition: Extreme weight loss, soreness, lack of sensation in left leg, exhaustion.
Diagnosis: Death, broken limb.
New Symptoms: Heightened intensity of intrusive thoughts.
Diagnosis: Remains unknown.
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I was dead.
There is no other explanation for what befell me, yet here I am, able to write these words. There are records of physicians who have determined their patients to be dead, only for them to recover in a few seconds or minutes after that determination. There is no record for such an event occurring after three months.
I feel that I am still waking from sleep. I cannot support my own weight without assistance. My leg, shattered when I fell from my horse and it followed, will be slow to recover.
When I first washed after my recovery from a usually final state of being, I saw my reflection in the water and I looked more like a cadaver than some I have examined. My features, sunken. My complexion, pale, the skin tight over my bones. Sometimes I almost believe that I can feel the maggots and other carrion feeders crawling around inside me.
But I know, even if it takes many months, that my body will heal.
My mind's malady persists. More than that, it is worsening. Perhaps there is a physical element to my affliction. Perhaps my exhaustion causes me to experience these intrusions more acutely.
The nightmares, I expected. The sight of myself with that rag in my mouth, drenched in my own saliva as I struggled to cry for help. That, I expected. A greater intensity to the violent images, after all I suffered at their hands - this almost makes sense. The bleeding eyes of that painting in the depositions room as I interviewed Joachim - that was the most pronounced the waking violence has been in my mind. I have been so busy. But there has been some relief.
I cannot deny that there was a kind of medicinal property to Will's presence after so long a separation. Perhaps mine was a more base need. I feel the cold more keenly now, small as I am, and he is warm. Inviting. Every sense has been more intense since my return to life. His scent is more powerful. His touch leaves a mark.
I felt secure. While the female body is in such a state as mine, recovering from such a loss of weight (usually observed in times of famine), it is so focused upon regeneration, upon healing and returning to full strength, it cannot afford the energy required of such a body to conceive and develop a child. I am assured by this knowledge. I become more and more convinced that my father's assertion is correct, that any child I birthed would suffer the same affliction that I war against, and have done so quietly for as long as I can remember. But knowing this, knowing that there was no such risk, and that I could have my fill after almost two years of restraint...
Thus, I yielded to mutual desire. A small part of me dared to hope that with this reclaiming of my body, and the absence of any fear of consequence, I might go some way to allaying those perverse images. Will cannot know. He cannot know the filthiness that ravages my mind whether I am in company or solitude. Any hope I had that I could counter them with knowledge of true sensations, and diminish their power, died swiftly.
They have only grown worse.
I can almost smell them. I can almost hear it, flesh against flesh, every gasp and cry of pleasure and pain. I can no longer tell if this new dimension is part of the images themselves, or if my imagination fills the gaps for me, as if my head looks to torment me more. I feel as though I am being watched, that there is another witness to the depravity I am served, one who can pass judgement on me -- as though I had any part in them at all!
They were their very worst last night.
It had been a strange day. I'd heard reports from an Ezrite inquisitor, C. L., about some depraved cult. He and his friend, one Armand LeBarthe, were regaling us in all sorts of lurid detail with little by way of factual evidence. After this, I was required to interview Joachim in connection with some business in Barovia. That was when the images first started. Brief flashes of myself with Lebarthe. More of those scents, those sounds. An image of a woman I think was some perverse representation of Ezra. Perhaps not unexpected, after being so battered by theology by that Inquisitor. He told me he believed I was ill long before my current illness. He is right, but not in the way he thinks he is. I think he sees my lack of religion as an illness. If only it were something so simple.
I finally found some solitude later to make my report of that interview. I had locked myself in my office to try to get it on paper. The clinical coldness of the morgue usually does something to sharpen my mind, but soon enough, they began again. I felt driven to check behind the door of my inner office, to remind myself that these intrusions are not real. I told myself this as I opened the door. It seemed that I had only taunted the intrusion, and it intensified.
My mind barraged me with further images in quick succession. Lebarthe bending me over the safe in the corner. Myriad men and women crawling at my feet, touching them, kissing them. Then, the men and woman again, crawling towards me as I awaited them before the roaring fire. Then finally, Lebarthe once more, rising from the mass of bodies, and having his way with me by the fireplace.
Why, when these faces, these people come from my own head... why is it never Will? That is not to say that I do not think of us, together, but these are my thoughts. Thoughts that do not terrorise me with their intensity and leave me unable to function. My hands bled as I scrubbed at them with the soap for what felt like hours, so desperate I was to send these images away. And yet, despite this, I know that there was pleasure, too. That even though I do not want this, my body responds as though I do, yielding on my behalf.
I washed myself fully once they finally subsided, and though I was exhausted, I could not sleep.
I can never wash the filth away, because I am the filth.
It is no wonder my father hates me.