A. W. I. A. 19: I can't wait any longer

I have to tell you--I can't wait any longer--what the restroom stalls were like. To understand these people, the people who came and got me, all you need to do is see these hinges in their restroom stalls. I have never seen anything like them.

At first, I thought they were solid steel; but then the true horror of them became clear to me: they are hollow aluminum tracks, giving the appearance of solidity but really more of a veneer.


There are these sick springs with protruding ends--can you see them in the photo? like claws--that resist pinching and will force the door closed when it is left open, so that the facades of the stalls always present the same unyielding faces. It makes my stomach hurt to think about what all this means. I will tell you more later.

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A. W. I. A. 18: I see what he's up to

I could not believe it when the man who claimed to be a doctor told me the door to our interview cell was unlocked. I couldn't believe it when he said I could go, unescorted, by myself, to the restroom. It was as if it were the most natural and simple thing in the world to just excuse myself and go to the restroom. I could not figure it out at all, until I pushed open the painted steel door and saw what was inside. Then I understood.

You see, the bathroom was like something out of a nightmare.

The floor positively seethed with razor-edged squares of white tile, a blizzard of matte ceramic that would never melt away in the fluorescent glare. And the monstrous mosaic was not content to remain contained in a single plane; it turned up the walls at the floor's edges and climbed toward the ceiling, avid and eager, stopping only at a white-and-black checked border pattern at eye level. I saw then, how it was all so black and white.

I had not even got into the stall, which was where the real horror began. I think I will be able to show you a picture of that tomorrow, but for now, I have to go. It's getting harder to get a moment away, and everyone is tensening.
Today at breakfast Jenna told a joke: "Why did the pine tree throw a party? Because it wanted to be poplar." Then she burst into tears. Sergeant Tanner said, "I didn't get my stripes telling tree jokes, Girl."

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I had a visitor...

...And it's not that I'm not ready to talk about the visitor, but I don't think you're ready to hear about that. This morning at breakfast we talked about dreams again. Kelly said she dreamt she had a popular doppelganger everyone was socializing with while she stayed home. There was a turtle in her dream that was so small she thought it was a mouse at first, but it grew to the size of a World War I helmet and she was afraid of it. Does anyone know what this means?

Also, Garland says he is doing better but this is his new aphorism: "If life gives you kids, make kid gloves."

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and something else:

I've only got a minute here before they summon me again. The man who claimed to be a doctor has done so much else since our first interview. I thought I would be telling you all of that by now, but it's hard to get a handle on. I want to finish telling you about our first interview, but I'll have to tell you about the bathroom first. And maybe tomorrow, or the next day, I will tell you what Joseph said.

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I have to stop here and say something

Kelly was working as an epidemiologist before she came here; her specialty was the transmission of ideology. She was going to tell me more about it, but Garland got upset. Now we all just want to rest a little, and there won't be more time for a couple of days.

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