Summer has left me. It is only Autumn but the afternoons are becoming chilly. Charles always goes on about keeping me in the warmth and light to help me get better. I guess that is why he makes me stay in the expansive room at the top of the house. I always used to complain about this room. How the barred windows and the sickly yellow wallpaper made me feel trapped but the patterns the bars make on the paper bring me comfort these days. I like to sit and watch the shadows move across the walls. By nightfall, each little intricate detail of the paper has been covered by one or more of the bars. It is really quite fascinating. Sometimes I can see eyes in the paper, watching me, from behind the bars. But that is just nonsense; no one could possibly be behind the wallpaper.
The wallpaper itself has its own distorted pattern of lumps and bumps as if someone had recently repapered the room. I ran my hands over it the other day and my fingers fitted perfectly into the lines running down the wall. I wonder if someone tried peeling the paper off with their hands. Such a silly thought. Why would anyone want to ruin such intriguing wallpaper? There is also this peculiar dent that follows the entire way around the room at perfect shoulder height.
I decided to follow this dent today around the whole room. The eyes were watching me, moving as if they were my own shadow. My path was interrupted once I stumbled upon a lose floorboard. I went to tell Charles but he was not in. Must be tending to another patient I imagine. While I waited for him to return my curiosity got the better of me and I attempted to look under the floor. Straining my eyes, I could just make out in the dark a piece of crumpled paper. I stretched my fingers tips to reach it and after struggling for a moment, I snatched it.
I smoothed out the paper and could only just read the scrawled out message that lay in front of me. All it said was .