It is day… 112, I think? It’s hard to tell. The days are so short here, I know I miss some cycles while I’m underground searching for the coal, iron and other minerals I need to survive.

Yesterday I found some reeds beside a lake. After some time at my crafting table, I figured out how to make them into paper, then how to turn the paper into a book. So… this journal. I hope that when I am killed for the last time, this record will be of use to some other lost soul.

This place… It’s hard to know where to begin describing this strange land I’ve appeared in. The physics doesn’t make any more sense than the biosphere. There are no birds here except chickens, no mammals except cow, pigs and sheep. No reptiles. Nothing lives in the water, as far as I can tell.

There are no insects here, either. How do the trees and grasses survive without insects? The only bugs of any kind are the giant spiders, each one larger than me. They’re dangerous, too, once the square sun has gone down; their feeding frenzies begin at night.

I have to be careful of the spiders. They can kill me, and did so once–I’ll talk more about that later, when I’m ready. I’m not… I’m not ready yet–but I don’t hate them. The zombies and skeletons are less dangerous. They are easy to kill and immolate in the sunlight anyway.

It’s the creatures I’ve begun to call “creepers” I hate most of all. They’re ugly and silent hunters. They emerge at night and persist unharmed in the daylight, jumping at the edge of my fenceline as soon as they see me. I know what they want, too. If they can get close enough to me, they explode.

They’re suicide bombers, like the antibodies of this world, sacrificing themselves to destroy me. What manner of beast sacrifices itself in the destruction of its prey, I dare not ponder. Three times have they destroyed me, but after each death I reappear again in the same spot on the beach, naked…

More later. The square moon is setting and a glow in the “east” tells me the square sun is about to rise. I need to venture past the fenceline to collect more wood to extend the fence and find feathers for my arrows.

Day 113

I’ve decided to stick with this numbering system for the days. I have no way of knowing if it is accurate, but it doesn’t matter, I don’t think. God, I hope it doesn’t matter.

I found a giant spider on top of my High House this morning. Can’t understand how it got past the fence line. I know they appear in very dark places, like unlit caverns and hilltops, but I have seeded my whole property with the strange, unquenchable torches I make–it shouldn’t have been dark enough for that. Maybe the trees are too overgrown?

No matter. At least it wasn’t another creeper. I shot it with arrows until if fell over and vanished in a puff of smoke, the way all the living things here die. All it left behind was a couple lengths of string. Even my arrows have been transported away.

As stated, all living things here expire in the same manner: they vanish in a puff of smoke and leave some small object to fall to the ground. The chickens and zombies leave behind feathers. The skeletons, arrows. The creepers, gunpowder (which I have plans for, oh yes).

The farm animals are the same. The first time I killed a cow, I was shocked to discover that the entire carcass vanished except for a strip of leather suitable for protective clothing. Nothing else, nothing else that could be called a comestible–an entire cow! The sheep leave wool (without dying, unless attacked repeatedly) and the pigs vanish, leaving behind nothing but a large chop. So far, that’s the only food I’ve found here. Good thing I’m not a devout Jew or Muslim.

Not that I’ve ever been hungry (or sleepy, but never mind that now). The only use I’ve found for the steaks is that, once cooked, they will heal me of the wounds inflicted by my enemies, or the damage I take falling in treacherous places.

Which means it is not food I am eating. I am replacing damaged parts of myself with the meat from these weird ghostly pigs. What am I becoming? What has happened to me?

I have not yet seen a calf, piglet, chick or lamb. The chicken lay unbreakable eggs which I collect but are nothing more than paperweights. I strongly suspect that, each time I am killed, I vanish and reappear just like these creepers, cows and spiders.

I live as a dead thing, but without burning in the rays of the square sun as the zombies do. If these creatures vanish and reappear when killed, as I do, how am I to win my war of survival? All is futile.

Yet I dig, and chop, and build. Somehow I will find a way back to my own world and my own body. I will be reunited with my wife and children. I will.

Day 119

After several days of planning and work, I have constructed a house out in the bay. It is made of glass and barely extends above the water, and the glass-covered walkway that connects it to my fenced compound is well below the water, and even deeper once it reaches land.

It is a simple, humble structure, but I felt I needed it. I was feeling too like a prisoner and needed a place beyond the fence where I could stand and look at the stars. I needed a place of my own that was beautiful and defiant of this abominable situation.

Still, while I was digging the walkway through this strange rock, a zombie wandered about on the glass roof of my Water Room. The creature’s moaning filled me with dread; I knew it could do nothing from the other side of the thick glass, but if it had been a creeper, I suspect my house would have been exploded and the weird, viscous water of the bay would have flooded in on me.

Thus, while I am proud of my low glass room, I can find no peace there when the stars are out, nor when they are not. My defiance was perhaps ill-advised.

Still, at night, when I stand in the doorway of High House, the torchlight flickers prettily beneath the waveless water. Perhaps I should learn to be content with this.

Day 120

Attempted parlay with a zombie this morning, just before the sun came up. It is, after all, a man, is it not? In reduced capacity, I’m sure, but active, aware, and perhaps not immune to reason?

I spoke to the fellow in as frank and unthreatening a manner as I could devise, but it was no use. It could only moan and attack me, so I slew it.

I am truly alone here.

The rest of the day was spent in furious physical labor to forestall such morose thoughts.