Spiral Bound

I used to draw spirals in the margins of my notebooks when I was a kid. I don’t know why. They made me feel calm, like if I just kept the line turning, nothing bad could happen. Sometimes I’d go through an entire page without lifting my pen just loops on loops, tight, precise, perfect. I remember once, in fifth grade, I filled the back of a math worksheet with a spiral so densely the paper started to tear. My teacher called it obsessive. My mom said it was just a phase. But even then, I think I knew it was something else. I never drew anything else. Just spirals. I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t sleep much. I was always tired, always drawing. It was like I was trying to hold on to something that kept slipping through my fingers. Every curve, every loop felt like a lifeline. The only way to keep things together.

The first real change started with a vein. Just one, on my wrist. It curved in a way it shouldn’t… too smooth, too intentional. Not a branch. Not a loop. A perfect spiral, like someone had etched it under my skin while I slept. I stared too long. It moved when I blinked. Not pulsed… tightened. Like it was bracing. My pulse beat harder against it, like it wanted to escape. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, but when I blinked again, it hadn’t moved… it had deepened. And there was something else, a faint buzzing under my skin, almost like an electric charge running through my veins.

I tried to ignore it. I couldn’t. I kept staring. But as I looked at it more, the spiral grew. I wasn’t imagining it. The skin around the vein twisted and buckled, turning into a miniature whirlpool under my flesh. I pressed my thumb against it, but the pressure only made it widen. Like it was pulling everything toward it.

The next morning, my coffee swirled long after I stopped stirring. My cereal kept turning in the bowl, slowly, even after I put the spoon down. My hair curled into tight, unnatural coils I couldn’t brush out. It wasn’t like the soft waves I used to get after a long night’s sleep. No, this was wrong. The curls felt too tight, like the hair follicles were being twisted. Every movement felt wrong. My fingerprints? They used to loop. Now they spiraled… deep, sharp ridges, like they were drilled into me.

My scalp itched constantly. I finally dug in with my nails during a shower, yanked out a chunk of hair, and under it, the skin was puckered into ridges. When I pressed the spot, it felt… soft. Like cartilage. Or a tightly wound spring. I pressed harder, and something shifted under my flesh, like a slithering, coiling thing. I could feel it trying to make space for itself.
I started seeing them everywhere. In clouds, floor tiles, the way ants moved outside… tight, endless loops. My neighbor’s windchime didn’t tinkle anymore… it pulsed. In perfect rhythm. Circular. Predictable. The wind didn’t blow, it rotated. It wasn’t the wind moving things, it was the air, bending. I looked up once, and the sky wasn’t right. The clouds weren’t moving as they should. They were spiraling too, drawing tight circles across the heavens like the clouds themselves were being folded into something.

I stopped sleeping after the ceiling inhaled.

One night, the shadows on my bedroom walls pulled themselves loose. They unpeeled, like old paint, and flowed toward the ceiling. The shadows seemed alive. I watched them pool in the center, twisting together like fingers, gripping the plaster. The ceiling bowed upward, like a chest drawing breath. Then it exhaled into my mouth. I woke up gagging, my tongue stained black, the taste of ash and static thick in my throat. My chest felt hollow and full at the same time, like something had made space for itself inside me. Like the void I felt was suddenly growing inside me. It was so cold, but I could feel it stretching, filling my veins.
I tried to tell my brother. I begged him to look at me, to see. I showed him my fingerprints, the coil in my scalp, the scar where I swore my molar had unscrewed itself. He just stared. Wide-eyed. Distant. Like I was already gone. Or worse, I wasn’t me anymore. I grabbed his wrist, trying to make him understand, but he barely flinched. The tension in his body was like stone. Then, slowly, he pulled his arm back and started tracing his own wrist. Absentminded. Like he was checking for a spiral that wasn’t there yet. I whispered his name. He didn’t answer. He just kept tracing. And tracing. And tracing.

I walked down my hallway and passed the same cracked spot of wall eight times. I scratched an X into it with a screwdriver. The next time, there were two. Then four. Then gone. Just spiral scratches curling outward like something had peeled its way through the drywall, digging out like a drill looking for daylight. The pattern wasn’t random. The cracks followed me. They looped.

Later, I looked out the front window and saw my neighbor walking her dog. She waved. A minute later, she passed again. Same clothes. Same smile. Same wave. Then again. But this time, she didn’t blink. And the dog’s leash curled around her wrist like a vine.

Food rotted in unnatural ways. Bananas peeled themselves open like curled petals. Mold formed in rings, constant circles of decay. The fridge motor hummed in threes, then sixes, then nines. I heard the hum in my teeth. I felt it in my chest, like my heart was beating in sync with it. The walls weren’t just cracked, they were warped. Twisting, distorting, like the structure of my house was slowly folding into something else.

I recorded myself sleeping. Just to prove it wasn’t me. Just to prove I wasn’t the one doing this. The footage showed me sitting up around 4 a.m., staring at the camera with a slack face and black, spiral-shaped pupils. I didn’t blink. I just started tearing paper, books, envelopes, toilet tissue, and twisting the strips into coils. Then I swallowed them. One by one. With a smile. The camera didn’t capture the sound, but I heard it. The crinkling. The way the paper seemed to melt when I consumed it, like I was absorbing it, becoming part of it.

I tried writing down who I am. What I am. My name, my birthday, my memories. But every time I picked up a pen, I just spiraled the ink. Over and over. Like my hand knew something my brain forgot. My name is always curled into nonsense. Words looping into unreadable glyphs. It looked ancient. Like a language that had existed long before me and would outlive whatever I was becoming. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I was the one writing at all.

My reflection doesn’t show me anymore. It shows a window. And through that window, I’m standing still, eyes wide, while everything behind me curls inward like a closing fist. It’s been like that for days. Maybe longer. I don’t know if time spirals too, but I haven’t seen a straight second in a while. I waved at a mirror once. Just to check. The reflection didn’t move. I watched it. Then it smiled.

I tried looking at my watch, flicking my wrist to check the time. But the face was spinning. The hands had turned into spirals. Like it had all become part of the same thing.

Yesterday, I pressed on my back molar during a panic attack. It slid out like a loose screw. No pain. No blood. Just an oily pop and a metallic taste. The root wasn’t straight. It was coiled. Perfect. Intentional. Like it had always been winding inward. I held the molar in my hand and looked at the root, it looked alive somehow. I tried to squeeze it, and it twitched. A tremor.

I took a knife and cut it into my thigh. Just enough to see. No blood came out. Just thick, clear jelly threaded with hair-fine spirals… and tiny tendrils, moving like worms. I laughed until I vomited. My vomit spiraled on the floor. I could feel it in my skin. In my bones. It was inside me.

I went to a clinic. The doctor looked into my eyes and immediately stepped back. His hands shook. He whispered, “It’s almost here.” Then he walked out of the room. I never saw him again. The door closed behind him, but the hallway outside didn’t look right. The walls were stretching out, pulling in on themselves.

I opened my front door this morning. There was no sky. Just the spiral, stretching across everything. The trees curved. The houses leaned in. The clouds twisted into a vortex of bone-colored mist. I stepped out and saw myself walking away into it, head down, disappearing into the coil. The world had folded in on itself. The path I was walking on became part of the spiral. I had no choice but to follow.

I understand now. The spiral isn’t a pattern. It’s a place. Or maybe a path. A tunnel. You don’t notice you’re in it until the world starts bending in with you. I used to draw spirals to feel safe. Now I see them in my bones. Now I see them on the walls. Now I see them in you. It wasn’t protection.

It was preparation.

Credit: A. Herman