I’m about to do a very stupid thing.

I know it’s stupid. I know it. But I don’t think I have a choice anymore. And I have to do it now, while I have the nerve and the will and while my hands are still steady.

I’m sick. I’ve always been sick. Some days are better than others. When I was young my parents prayed that it might just be a precursor of the onset of epilepsy, but the seizures never came. I just… can’t trust myself.

I see things. On some days, I can hear them and smell them too. I should say that I used to see them. After being on every possible combination of pills three doctors could come up with, I thought we’d finally found the right chemical key for my misfiring brain. It’s been six years of stability and relative normalcy, trading a halfway house for a tiny studio apartment, a collection of mostly tolerable side-effects, and a steady job. I realize this probably sounds dull for most people, but I cherished every moment of that achingly simple monotony.

It went bad all at once

Friday morning. I awake from the first dream I’ve had in years, a vivid phantasmagoria of colors and sounds, and begrudgingly leave my perfect and sterile clean apartment for the short walk to work.

I notice it as soon as the elevator opens, the unearthly stillness and silence in the heavy air. The front door of the complex is hanging open, unlocked and swinging gently, the faintest trace of smoke drifting inward in the damp breeze. Outside, the wide streets are empty and bare. My mouth is suddenly dry and I rock back on my heels, cresting a crippling wave of panic and déjà vu.

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Do you know what a Cordyceps is? I didn’t either until 20 minutes ago. It’s a family of thousands of different types of fungus, grows all around the word in various rainforests and jungles. The awful thing about them is they’re parasitic, they grow on other animals. An ant happens to run into some spores, and then it starts to colonize his insides, starting with his brain. At some point, the ant starts to act visibly ill; standing in place and shivering, or walking in circles. If a fellow colony member sees him in this condition, he will be dragged to the border of the colony and exiled.

Then, when it’s almost over, the ant weakly climbs as high as he can up the vines, and locks his body on tight. Finally, he dies, and the fungus emerges from the back of his head, bursting forth like a long and foul fruit. After a short time, the little stalk spews forth its own spores, leaving the mummified and broken ant clinging to the stalk, his eye cavities filled with drying fungus.

I mention this because last night, when I was up on the roof of my apartment complex, I found my brother’s body.

He’s been back from 18 months on duty in the Philippines for less than three days. This was the first I’d seen him. My parents called me up the day before yesterday to tell me that he was on his way up. They told me he’d stayed in his room since he got home, and then suddenly got up and announced he was on his way to see me. They thought he was drunk, I’d thought he’d never made it.

He must have come straight up to the roof and died, by the smell of it. I was just finishing a cigarette, all torn up with anxiety and head throbbing, and when the acrid smoke vanished I caught a whiff of rot on the hot wind. It took me just a few minutes before I’d found him; face down behind the vents and fans. A slimy gray column rose up obscenely from the base of his skull, and a frozen waterfall of roots and tendrils was dangling from his eye sockets and mouth. At the top of stalk was small arrangement of feathery wisps, a white powder drifting idly from it tips.

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As a child, I was always quiet, and my conversations with others would always end up awkward. Because of that, I always preferred to be alone growing up. Which probably explains my strange obsession with toys, being as old as I am. They never talk. They just stare. I have to say though, being alone in an apartment full of figurines can be creepy sometimes.

However, being with my girl for almost two years, she understands my obsession well, but with this much, she would probably be shocked when she first sees them.

That night, she was more than excited to see my house. as we approached the door, she could barely contain her excitement, so without further delay, I swing the front door open. “Make yourself at home.” I say to her, “it’s kind of messy, but its more comfortable than it l-” her face was in shock, then absolute terror as she started to scream.

I tried to calm her, but it just got worse. I was puzzled. is she afraid of my toys? “I understand its a bit strange, but is it that horrifying? I take a quick look in my house but theres nothing horrific. I had to calm her down, as the neighbors were starting to come out. With a quick impulse, I quickly drag her in my house as I try to ease her mind. Her screaming just got louder and louder. At this point, I had no choice but to put my hand over her mouth. She watched me in terror with tears rolling down her face. I turn around and they were all staring at me as well.

…

I’m alone again. I placed her doll on the top shelf above all the others I have dated. Her look made me feel depressed, so I made it face the wall until I was able to get over it.

You just moved into your new apartment, in a very big city. After a year of this life, you have almost given up hope of making any friends; be it at work or any other means. You feel very lonely. After looking for a peaceful place to spend your time, you find a quiet diner on the outskirts of town. The waitress is very attractive. Also, she seems to be the only employee there, ever. You never see anyone else eat there either, ever. The place is perfect for you.

Making love to her becomes a routine. You go there every night for dinner, and then to see her.

You eventually make other friends, and eat at the diner less and less. After some time you stop going completely.

At a bar with your best friend, you tell him about the fun you had with the waitress at the diner. He says he absolutely must see her. You take him there one night, but the building is in a state of ruin. The front door barely opens. The grimy insides of the diner are disgusting, and, behind the counter, is moldy corpse, reeking of pus and rot.

When the police come to the scene, they interview both you and your friend. You are shocked to hear that the body is of a runaway girl from another province. The police tell you this is a homicide, and that she was also raped dozens of times, after she was killed. The police say they can get a match for DNA and eliminate you as a suspect. You are suddenly very worried.

An unpopular young med. student had been particularly annoying one day and some of her classmates decided to play a trick on her. They snuck into her room after she’d gone to bed and placed an amputated arm into bed with her. The next morning they anxiously awaited her reaction but got none. Eventually they went up to check on her and found her sitting on the bed, moaning and gurgling as she gnawed on the arm.

In rural southern Illinois a toy company began selling “realistic” baby dolls to expectant mothers. But apparently after the mother had her child the toy baby would start crying. Eventually the “rocking motion” advertised to calm it down wouldn’t work, and you couldn’t get it to stop without shaking it. Eventually when it started crying the parent would have to beat it, and the beatings and thrashings would have to get harder and harder to get it to be quiet. The only thing that seemed to shut the baby doll up permanently was the bash its head against the wall to destroy whatever mechanism triggered the crying. On more than one occasion though, neighbors called the authorities to report child abuse, and when the police arrived they found the bloody remains of infants smeared across the walls and the floor. In most cases the mother couldn’t understand why the police were there, she just “got rid of the stupid doll” as she rocked a baby-shaped bundle in her arms.

“Those used to be green!” the man said aloud, staring at the plants on the sill.

“I swear! They were green just yesterday!” he shouted to his wife, who was reading a book across the room.

He looked around. His eyes were unable to focus clearly for a moment, so he rubbed them. Looking around, he shouted again, “The walls! They used to be blue! We painted them blue just last month! Why aren’t they blue?” He was unable to control himself anymore. His wife looked over at him, surprised to see him in such a fervent uproar.

“Honey! Relax! You’ve just had a long day!” she affirmed. He wouldn’t have any of it though. “Don’t tell me what I’ve had or haven’t had!” he commanded as he stormed out of the room.

Figuring her husband had possibly been drinking, the woman tried to continue reading her book. But her concentration was continually broken by the yells of her husband.

“This used to be orange!” she could hear him yell in the other room. “These used to be brown!” he yelled again. Several minutes passed, but finally he was silent. Content that her husband had calmed down, the woman continued reading.

However, moments later a loud crash could be heard in the kitchen. The woman sprang from her chair in surprise, and darted over to the kitchen to see what was the matter. As she entered the room, she let out an incredible scream. There lay her husband on the floor, drenched in blood, with his abdomen slit wide open. Holding his own bowels in his hands, he uttered one last breath, “…these used to be red!…”

The great geniuses throughout history had one startling thing in common, they all went through a day where everything clicked, everything seemed to make sense, and everything they did from that day on was perfect. This is a very rare phenomenon, but cherish it if it happens to you.

There is an opposite side to this coin, however, where one will have a day that is so devoid of feeling, so depraved, that every day from that point on they will be slowly deteriorating into a physical manifestation of pure insanity. If you start to have one of these days, kill yourself immediately, for after 24 hours you won’t be able to die. You’ll just roam the world getting worse and worse…

I live in a small apartment by myself, on the fifth floor. One night, a while back, I heard strange noises coming from down the hall. They weren’t shouts and they weren’t banging noises and they weren’t people fucking. They were weird. They sounded like gurgling. Loud gurgling.

Normally I don’t give a damn about what goes on in the rooms around me; my stance changes when whatever is going on pisses me off. These gurgling noises were doing just that. So, I left my apartment and headed towards the door at the end of the hallway, which seemed to be the source of the sound. I banged on the door and shouted at whoever happened to be in there to shut the hell up.

I stayed in front of the door for a little while to see if the noises would stop. They didn’t. I banged again and shouted again.

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I’d had them ever since I was a kid.

I can remember being incredibly self-conscious about them, hiding them in my pockets under books and bags. The kids at school never said anything to my face, but I knew they were laughing behind my back.

I remember asking my parents to take me to the doctor, to get them checked out. The growths on my hands seemed to be the elephant in the room back then, since they’d just say I was fine and change the subject. But I knew better.

I had tried to remove them as a child, but without avail. Scissors, knives, potato peelers; trying to cut or scrape them off was always a lost cause because I couldn’t continue once the pain kicked in.

But today was different. It’s amazing how numb you can get with a couple of tourniquettes and a bottle of Jack Daniels. I was originally planning to use a sharp knife, but figured that trying to slice through the tough flesh of the growths would be too arduous in my drunken state. I opted for the slightly more technological plan B.

I had to hurry though. I was already pretty light-headed and was starting to feel dizzy. My hands and forearms, nearly blue from the lack of circulation, couldn’t wait much longer either. The whirring of the blender helped to put me in a sort of trance–ready to do what I had wanted to do since I first looked down at my strange deformities.

I shoved my left hand in first. The immediate sensation of sharp blades slicing through flesh was jarring, but I was surprised at how well the alcohol was working–I expected it to hurt more. I could hear the sharp metal churning and cutting, working perfectly as planned. I pressed my hand down harder. All those bad memories, all of the embarrasment–all of those horrible things were now nothing more than a thick red pulp.

Breaking from the feelings of ectsasy, I pulled out before the blades hit knuckle. I smiled, taking a good look at my new hand. As for the growths–well, five down, and five to go.

You’ve been dating your girlfriend almost two years now. You often stay late over the summer and on weekends and arrive home long after the rest of your family go to sleep.

Every night you drive the deserted rural roads back home from a pleasant evening at her house you become overwhelmed by fears that you will arrive home to find your family dead in their beds. Each night you peek into your sister’s room and see she’s fine and hear the reassuring rumble of your father’s snore as you pass your parents door.

You chuckle at your silly worries and drift off to sleep. Finally one morning you decide to tell your mother about your late night fears amidst some jovial conversation for a nice laugh. As you tell her a concerned look comes over her face. She sweeps the hair away from her face as she says, “Oh honey, you know we were all shot almost two years ago.”

You scream as you see the gaping bullet hole in her forehead.

You get a phone call from your Mother. Since her car has been in the shop, she asks you to go to the grocery store and pick up a few odds and ends for her. Bread, milk, cereal, and chicken breasts.

After writing down a small list you reluctantly get in the car and pick up the items at the store. The lady cashier makes an odd remark to you, “You know, we’re in no danger of a milk shortage.” Upon arriving at her house you knock several times. No answer. You decide to try the door. It opens. You place the grocery bag on the counter. Strange. There seems to be six other grocery bags, each with identical contents. In a couple, the chicken and the milk has gone bad. “Mom,” you call out, but no answer. You make your way thru the kitchen and into the living room. Sitting on the couch, with her head cut off and neatly resting on her lap, is your Mother.

Naturally you call the police who come over to investigate. They mention that she has been dead for nearly a week. Furthermore, the police psychiatrist is at the scene and talks to you after you give your initial statement. Sitting on the front steps, you overhear the psychiatrist talking with the crime scene investigator. “It’s not uncommon for people suffering from schizophrenia to get locked into a series of repetitive behaviors,” he says.

You think to yourself, “They can’t be talking about me. Schizophrenia? Nah. Repetitive behavior? Do they think I did this?” Suddenly your cell phone goes off. “Hello?”

“Hi hun, it’s me. Could you stop at the store and pick up some chicken and milk. Ohh, and I need some bread and cereal too.”

“No problem Mom. I’ll be right over…”

oK so basicaly its like this. youare at a friends house for like the night or watever and then you guys are making out on the couch (yeah!) and then like.. her dad calls on the phone and says “no i she likes it more if you use the other hand… yeah” and your alllike “oh dude your dad is trying to give me advice on how to diddle you” and then she’s like… “i don’t have a dad..” or whatever… but what!? WHO WAS PHONE?

also:

So ur with ur honey and yur making out wen the phone rigns. U anser it n the vioce is “wut r u doing wit my daughter?” U tell ur girl n she say “my dad is ded”. THEN WHO WAS PHONE?