The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch Page A

He knows the planet will not betray him. This light will come, and stay, leave only to return on schedule. He has a promise. The universe's habit, conveniently requiring a twelve-hour fix of the two extremes.
    His time is the evening, the hour during which rescue is least possible, and when most with pure hopes and dreams and memories of swinging on swing sets are fast asleep. Their eyes moving quickly under their lids.
Seeing nothing.
    Never is there a noise that stirs even those who sleep in the next room. Never does the world lean a bit for me, cast a vote, and cause an eye to open... See the man... see the way his eyes are frozen in the image of my face in a scream. No explanation for WHY he has chosen me, or even if he has a final plan.
    I can only wait. Hold my tired eyes open with the energy of a dare. A fight to see who in fact is the darkest. Who, when forced to see the other side, will in fact survive?
    I sit awaiting his arrival, kept awake by the notion that I shall grow accustomed to the dark far easier than he to the light.

    Laura

September 10,1986
    Dear Diary,

    Enclosed please find my mind and its memory. As well, a characteristic the enemy lack in excess-conscience. "Guilt" is simply a word he uses to silence me. He has no regard for mortality, no concern for danger.
    How could such an intruder fear death, or the possibility of imprisonment, and still manage to come so consistently up the side of my home, using my window as if it were familiar to him?
    He mocks me entering dressed in the clothes of one who could be a best friend. A neighbor. A traveling salesman who casually invites himself in, goes as far as to request coffee, regular, before dissolving into the daydream he sometimes is?
    Does he expect to sit down and chat before taking the house's only child from her room and treating her like an experiment?
    I am either dreaming him to life, and slowly killing myself, or he has told my parents of his visits and has offered, in return for their own safety, that these visits will continue without possibility of interruption. They would simply go unnoticed. Junk mail, somewhere in the house. I imagine that they would have to hear me as I am led out. Is it possible they do not care?

    L

September 11,1986
    2:20 A.M.
    Dear Diary,

    I cannot tell you how much it upsets me that I am no threat to him.
    He is too safe with the idea that he will always gain entrance to my home and exit painlessly and without sound. In the dark he knows he will find a grip around my wrist strong enough to silence me, and to carry me, like a child drags a doll, to a place where he knows no one will find me. He knows this because the place is miles from any source of light other than that which pours sometimes, so clearly in my memory, from his lips and eyes-the very light stolen from within me. The girl who, ever since she can remember, made a patient effort to tolerate, and keep secret the very man who wishes to steal her innocence, never allowing her to mature, never permitting the joys of maturity. The time this little girl has dreamed of ever since she knew how to skip, and run, and smile at even the slightest breeze, the way it tickled her so. Unselfishly, she gave and gave of herself, emptying the delicate basket inside her, of her soul.
    I hope to call him to my window soon. I fear he is waiting for me to tire of these all-night writing sessions. These moments where I lapse in and out of the part of me who plans to open the window this time and give my hand willingly. The part of me that doubts anything really exists at all and that therefore there is nothing at all to fear outside that window, and so am willing to venture to the usual spot, without struggle. I who swears a noise or powerful slap at the back of the head will not cause even the slightest change in footsteps. The part of me that has rehearsed its cries for more and more incisions, more insertions, more insults and threats, and has planned to continue them until