The Parchment

"Time to get to work, Little Girl." I put the cat onto the floor, despite her protest. Slowly I walked down to the basement where all my tools for my trade sat waiting.

"Okay," I said aloud. " I need to start writing." The confusion was replaced with confidence as I put on my special socks, the ones I wore when I got the email that my book had hit the best seller's list, and tried to ignore the smell that that they carried with them.

CiCi jumped on my lap and looked at the screen. She was my best critic. I would ask her if she liked a paragraph and sometimes she would respond with a meow. I knew that meant I needed to change it. She recently has been meowing at everything. I understood. It was all starting to be crap. I turned the computer on and waited for my familiar wallpaper, a picture of CiCi and me staring at the screen. My lover had taken it before the accident. It was the daily memory that I had. The daily memory that reminded me of how very alone I had become.

As the computer ran through its process, announcing at each step the company's logo that created my program I sipped slowly on the coffee. "I miss smoking," I said to the cat as I stroked her head. "I really miss it. I hate to start again. It took that long visit to quit and I don't want to go back again." She pushed her head into my hand and moved enough to get a solid petting.

The wallpaper, with which I was so familiar, had not appeared. Instead, on the screen before me was a scroll. It was parchment and rolled inward at each side. I didn't do anything at first. It was one of those moments where your body takes a few minutes to catch up to your mind. The scroll unrolled and the icons spread evenly across it. Suddenly the words "It's true" appeared in bold letters on the wallpaper parchment.

What had I done? Was it starting again? I've been sleeping. I put my head on the keyboard and sobbed. I couldn't go through this again. I didn't have the strength or the emotional stamina to do this again. I must have done it last night and then left the trail for myself this morning. I recognized the symptoms, but this time I had a regular sleep pattern. This time it was serious. This time it wasn't from lack of sleep, but.... I couldn't let my mind go to that possibility.

Within seconds the screen changed to the familiar picture and the scroll had disappeared. Was I now seeing things? "You saw that didn't you?"

CiCi responded with a concerned meow and a bump against my hand.

"I thought so. It did appear then." I was getting reassurance from a cat and feeling better about the situation. That would have driven others directly to their psychological council, but it was my norm. "Thanks girl."

The day wore on uneventfully as I continued and soon the mystery of the parchment was buried in the recesses of my mind. I finished several articles, ate lunch, watched Leno, and wrote some more. The hint of the sun through the ivy leaves covering the basement window and sound of chattering from morning birds told me that it was time to get some sleep. Suddenly the events of the previous day assaulted my memory and clenched my gut.

"Okay Sweetie. You are not sleeping with me tonight. I'm locking myself in the room. I won't go back there. We'll put a stop to this once and for all."

I typed myself an email. "It's 5 a.m. and I am going to bed. This is my last message to me." I knew this would at least give me a time reference if the problem occurred again.

I locked the bedroom door from the outside, scoured my room for a piece of paper to slide in the doorway, put the string on the floor with the key on the outside of the room and the end of the string on the inside, and closed the door locking it with no way to get out. I would have to pull the string in with the key, unlock the door, and as a double check, the paper between the door and the frame would tell me if I had opened it. If I found the paper on the floor in the morning, that would tell me what I needed to know. I checked the night table and dresser tops for pen and paper and when I was convinced that there was no pen or paper, parchment or otherwise, climbed into bed and went peacefully to sleep.