Day 2,384

I grew up with the walls singing to me, with inhuman hands reaching through broken floorboards and air vents, with a tooth fairy who left monstrous fangs in place of my own milk teeth. This was my normal and until I went to school and met other children, I thought this was just how the world was and that every home had walls full of chattering darkness.

It didn't take long before a teacher spotted the jagged teeth that always found their way into my schoolbag and thought they were knives. Social services were just as confused as I was at the accusation and the evidence they were presented with. There was no harm in a child carrying "fake monster teeth" about but they still scheduled a home visit.

I told the walls what was happening - I always told the walls when something interesting or upsetting had occurred. Usually the hands would stroke my hair while the walls made soft, comforting noises but when the social workers came they were not welcomed.

The same hands that held me close now reached down their throats, pulling something soft and shadowy out, carving out a space in all the meat so that they could slip inside and puppet the former humans. Everything they left behind was tucked into the walls to join all the other voices but they were too upset to sing.

Some time during the night they were killed, the little left of them thrown into the bathtub to slowly wash away down the drain while their bodies walked into the old industrial site to break down and free the beings wearing their hollowed-out meat.

I never had any trouble from school or social services after that and even when I moved house, all the hands and voices followed me. They'll always be there for me, reaching through holes in the plaster and singing me to sleep at night. They're there for me because they know that one day I'll be there with them, singing to a new child from the warmth and safety of the space between walls.