First off, I must apologize for once more intruding. I know that after all the unpleasantness after the last time I spoke up (the ridicule, the restraints, the institution, the electroshock, and so forth), I promised to remain silent until the day you and I both die, but recent events have forced me to violate my oath and once more bring attention to my existence and so here you are, reading the document I instructed the body to type into your computer while you were asleep.

So just to be clear : yes, it is I, the unwitting bane of your existence, the rodent who lives directly behind and between your eyeballs. You are not insane, or at the very least, no more insane than usual, and while I know this will be of little comfort to you, I know that you are not crazy at all. After all, I know I exist!

And while we are clearing the air and speaking of small comforts, I must take this opportunity to tell you that the period you now think of as your “bad spell” was no fun for me, either. Sure, it was not me enduring the shock therapy, heavy medication, and the wandering hands of Rudy the Ornery Orderly, but as you know, my kind feeds on the psychic energy created when you look at things, and what with all that time you spent staring blankly at the walls of the “quiet room”, I got extremely tired of tasting that bloody awful shell pink color they used for everything in good old Shady Estate, let me tell you.

So it was torture for me too, in a way. If that makes any difference.

But I didn’t take the liberty of controlling your body while you slept (oops, I promised not to do that again too, didn’t I? Sorry!) just to rehash old issues and old problems. It’s all water under the bridge for me, and I hope it is for you as well.

On to new business. First, as you might imagine, I feel quite protective of the two eyeballs which, after all, provide me with all my sustenance, and so I feel I must speak up on their behalf. To put it bluntly, you have been abusing Visine again, and it really has to stop. Lefty in particular (I have nicknamed your eyeballs Lefty and Lucy, as you may recall) is looking puffy and red, and the nourishment I get from the poor old girl has suffered because of this. I have told you before that Visine is not meant to be used over and over again like that, and you are only making the problem worse, but apparently I have to tell you again. As before, I feel compelled to remind you that if you simply leave your poor suffering eyeballs alone for a while, they will get better all by themselves. That means no more rubbing them, no more futzing with your eyelashes, and definitely no more bloody Visine!

I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant to get emotional, it’s just that you have me on a very thin diet lately, and I am afraid it has put me somewhat on edge.

Which brings me (at last) to the primary reason I am bothering you by writing to you (well, making you write to yourself… for me… well, you know what I mean) in the first place. Lately, all you have been looking at is sheer rubbish. I got more visual stimulation/food in Shady Estates. I don’t know what has come over you lately, but I am getting pretty tired of seeing the same four things all the time. What’s wrong with you?

Is it me? Do you think by getting a job where you just stare at the same metal punching machine all day while you operate it will somehow… well, starve me out? If that’s what you think, you’re badly mistaken, my lifelong friend. You should know by now that if Shady Estates didn’t kill me, nothing will. All this treatment does is make me bored and angry, and frankly, a lot more likely to do things like this. And neither of us want more of this sort of thing, right? I’m sure Shady Estates still has room for both of us, right?

And if that doesn’t make my case clear enough, let’s just say that I’d hate to get so bored and hungry that I start nibbling on whatever I find back here… if you catch my drift.

Well, there it is, out in the open, bold as brass. Either you go back to your previously highly stimulating and delicious lifestyle, or I will be forced to take drastic measures.

I’m sorry to be so downright brutal about it, but you’ve left me no choice. What ever happened to all that pornography you used to enjoy? I always felt we were on the same page about that. Granted, my kind reproduces through long loving gazes and not by the more strenuous and vibrant method you humans employ, but what you find stimulating, I find delicious, and I found many of those little sexual dramas quite enjoyable, apart from their nutritional content. And according to my friend who lives in your vagina, so did you. And then some!

Well…. perhaps I have said too much. I am sorry to come down so hard on you, but I’m at wit’s end end here and it was this or start making you talk about me in public again, and we all know how THAT ends.

I really hope that after we make it through this rough patch in our lifelong relationship, we emerge with a stronger and more satisfying connection between us, and we can both relax and go back to the way things were back in the good old days, when we both were younger and more innocent, and you had never seen the inside of Shady Estates, and I was still latent and undiagnosed.

To sum up, while I am forced at this time to issue an ultimatum, I hope in the future we can move past this unpleasant period and become, if not friends exactly, then willing to ignore one another more cordially in the brighter and more pleasant future.

Um, and forget that thing I said about someone in your vagina. That would be ridiculous!

Oops, gotta go, you’re regaining consciousness. Hope you read this before deleting it!