... they're beginning to take over

... they're beginning to take over; small things at first. Little tasks, little pieces of work that you would normally perform in your day-to-day life are already completed when you come to do them.

It's very strange; and yet not altogether unwelcome.

They've clearly been doing more than just trying to distract us over the past weeks... they've been starting to become us !

But this is less disturbing than you might think. I believe that the awful way in which the Sllennoc plague is treating our minds, and to a greater extent our souls, is wearing us all down. We have less fear now of the uncertainty to come. We just want to be out of this accursed process.

We just ache to be free.

Someone here seems to have found a new path; once the canker has done with her she feels certain that she knows where she will be going. I'm doing my best to find my way like her, but this requires some amount of faith - and I believe that the Sllennoc effect has robbed me of the capacity to trust.

V : 1 / F : 2

... we are our own worst enemies

... we are our own worst enemies. We find ourselves now wishing for the end, praying for some respite to these painful days, hoping...but no, we have lost all hope.

Apathy seems to have settled about the office today, like a crisp even layer of new snow. A layer that leaves a chill in your soul, and a slow dragging footfall as you go about your daily business.

The dopplegangers appear to be picking up on this apathy, though; and appear to be exhibiting it themselves. Alarmingly, the few that circle around my desk are becoming less and less of a distraction to me now - not because I'm building a weary immunity to their bothersomeness, but simply because they appear to be losing interest in bothering me.

The monitors that we have set up strategically around the office are doing their job to draw them all, like proverbial moths to their 21st century candles: but more than this, they seem to just want to keep themselves to themselves, and effectively co-habit with us!

Although I'm not sure about the one who appears to be their leader (certainly he seems to hover around my superior's desk); he doesn't appear to have moved or done anything in days. Maybe this is something that their kind goes through at some stage in their cycle.

They disappeared early today, which is further evidence of the feelings expressed above. It was nice to have time away from them for a little while.

V : 1 / F : 2

... another day over

... another day over, another day closer to the end.

Most of us survivors seem to be finally growing used to the irritations that we are feeling each day, to the increasing uncertainty about the future; and to the beings that haunt our working hours.

There seems little animosity now, between us and these things. Our dealings with them now being more akin to those between the parties of a drunken office indiscretion, on the following Monday morning.

We try to avoid each other's gaze; we take our time making the tea when they are waiting for us at our desks; we feign civility, in the vain hope that this will hasten any encounter with them: and yet we know that they will not leave us until they are done.

However we have found a way to distract them. We've found that an unoccupied PC terminal appears to draw them all towards it, like moths to a flame they bathe in it's flickering cathode light. Maybe it's the light that draws them, or the warmth of the CPU.

It must be cold and dark where they are from.

V : 1 / F : 2

... every morning it's the same

... every morning it's the same. After the respite that the evenings afford us we're once more thrown into this ghastly employment.

The pariahs haven't appeared to us yet this morning; but it's only a matter of time, I'm sure, before they will be with us once more.

Maybe there will be less this time.

Maybe they will be kinder to us.

V : 1 / F : 2