WRITING Iwaku Horror Contest Hall of Fame

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wren.

elegance is more important than suffering
Original poster
STAFF MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Posting Speed
  1. Multiple posts per week
  2. One post per week
  3. Slow As Molasses
Writing Levels
  1. Adept
  2. Advanced
  3. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Primarily Prefer Male
Genres
Slice-of-Life, Gothic, Horror, Fantasy
here lies the
iwaku horror contest
winners
 
IWAKU HORROR CONTEST 2022
themes: unknown, body horror, hunted




1st Place: @PavellumPendulum
Word Count: 1114
Chosen Theme(s): Body Horror
Chosen Format: Short Story

Religion, Gore, Suicidal Ideation



It’s 5 AM.

The bedsheets crinkle and catch under my sandpaper limbs. I pick at a wound on my arm, staring at the ceiling. It’s pockmarked, like I am, staring right back down at me. I shift, feeling my joints shudder and pop, settling into place. My organs shuffle themselves around, scraping at my insides and disturbing my spine. My brain rattles in my skull, a caged prisoner.

I want to die. My veins swell, threatening to burst under the weight of my mantra, repeated a thousand times over. This is my prayer. I feel like I am going to explode. I will become nothing more than a stain on the walls for the other girls to wake up to, a pile of viscera soaking deep into my mattress on the top bunk.

They took my cell phone when I set foot in their domain. They gutted my duffel bag, leaving its innards on their secondhand table, shaking their heads at the pile of contraband. They smoothed out my hair. Young ladies should not be snacking outside of mealtimes. My glasses fogged up from the embarrassment.

I get up and follow the other girls to the communal washroom. The shower is an assault on my senses, sheets of ice tearing jagged gashes down the curves of my body. I shut my eyes tight, hoping no one else sees the blood pooling at my legs, coating the soles of my feet with shame. I avoid looking in the mirror at all costs. My fingers press my frigid skin back into place, feeling it droop away from my skeleton, attempting to return to the damp earth under the floorboards. Anything to be away from me.

I shiver all the way to breakfast. I feel the burden of eyes on me, crawling down my shoulders, following the contaminated droplets of water escaping from my hair. Everyone is watching me eat my rice porridge with morbid curiosity. I beg an unseen power to gouge their eyes out. Inwardly, I tell it that I will believe, I will change, if they grant me this one wish. Nothing happens.

I am an abomination on hallowed ground.

I do not finish my food. I stare at it instead, wondering if I should shove the porridge in my nose, in my ears, in my mouth, until I suffocate and give them what they all want.

I follow everyone to class, sniffling and starving. They’re all speaking in tongues. I fantasize about screaming and ripping my hair out in chunks, if only to understand an emotion on their faces for once. I kneel at the pews. My unsteady legs shake. I bring my sweaty forehead down to the worn wood in front of me, testing the amount of effort that it would take to crack my skull open like an egg. The voice of God echoes from the front of the room.

“God’s gift of sexuality is to be used as he intended. He made man and woman to complement each other. His first command to them is, ‘Be fertile and multiply.’” The voice of God booms from the sinews of a man in white. He is old and frail. I wonder why the might of the Lord has not torn him asunder, if it is to be so feared. Surely, a bag of flesh would not be able to handle the magnitude of His words.

I pick at my skin and leave the scab on the pew as an offering. I am multiplying by the second. My cells are fertile and plentiful and dead. I envision shredding my body into thin slices and laying them across the floor so that I may complement the varnished wood like a man must do to a woman. Tears burn my eyes. I catch the priest’s gaze from across the room and his mercy grips my soul from the back of my throat, like two fingers forcing me to retch. He wants me to leave my sins here, with him, so they may be cleansed.

The body of Christ dissolves on my tongue. His blood stains my throat, but does not soothe it.

When that doesn’t work and my sins stay firmly put in my esophagus, they pull me out of my bed just before midnight. I stumble and trip, only caught by the nuns’ arms linked around my own. They tut at me for being so clumsy. I am led away from the other girls, sleeping soundly in bed. I am the only one who cannot be cured. My ribcage is poking out through my clothes. My stomach acid is leaking onto the campground dirt. The ground beneath me becomes unholy.

It tastes like smoke outside. The lack of a moon is turning the sky into a black hole, transforming reality into a fluid, too hazy around the edges to perceive. I sigh in reverence.

I’m dumped unceremoniously into a plastic, foldable chair. It shrieks under the weight of my wrongdoings.

“Close your eyes. Let the Lord speak through you. Let Him banish the Devil within, the temptation to stray from your true path.” They coo and coax me gently, as if they genuinely believe that I can be saved. I want them to. The room is pitch-black. My chest is bubbling, boiling over, desperately trying to please them. My lungs are melting into my intestines, softened by their clemency. The word of God knocks out my teeth. They clatter against the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I sob out into the unforgiving darkness, clawing at my throat, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry-

I become addicted to apologizing. It hurts to breathe. My body is being ripped apart in the name of salvation. The Devil inside of me bristles as the warm confines of my homely body come undone, no longer carefully stitched together by keratin and collagen. The priest is strangling him with both of his papery thin hands. I choke on my own spit and jerk violently in place. I am frothing at the mouth. My bones are breaking and healing every millisecond, the sickening hiss and crack filling the air like the cry of ravenous wildfire. I am sprouting new appendages, being made anew in His image. My fear tastes like the raw skin inside my cheek and twice-digested vomit. I cannot hear God.

He pretends to not hear me.

When they finally send me home, they have banished the Devil from my soul. I am both grateful and dead. He gleefully wears my body home and embraces my parents deeply, until they believe that it is really me. They are delighted by my miraculous transformation. I am too.

I decompose on the plastic chair.

2nd Place: @adumham
Word Count: 1,112
Chosen Theme: Body Horror
Chosen Format: Short Story

Physical and Verbal Abuse, Implied Sexual Assault. Murder Spree



Nadia came from a large family. Both sets of grandparents still lived, their many children with children of their own. They all lived in the same village, in the same long house. The house was only one floor, but it stretched the length of three average-sized homes, very common in their village. They were all under one large, suffocating roof. And the girl was somewhere in the middle of it all.

From a young age, Nadia had been pulled this way and that, tugged on by her mother and siblings and cousins for all that she could spare. The housework befell the girl, her palms raw and ragged from scrubbing every surface in sight. Nails stained with dirt and turmeric, arms spotted with burns from hot oil. And yet, there was always something missed; a muddy footprint—likely placed there by her sinister siblings—or perhaps the curry had a pinch too much salt, resulting in a ruined dish, a hundred takas worth of chicken thrown out to the strays. A sharp sting from the stick hitting Nadia’s palms, leaving a streak of red across brown, and the word useless hanging over them. The weight was too much to carry, so Nadia let it trickle down to her hands, wrapping them in a grip so tight that her fingers joined together until there was nothing but smooth, flat flesh.

Unable to perform household duties, she was married off to a man in a neighboring village so that her family may benefit from her dowry. Her cries and protests stretched the length of the long house, heard even to the woods beyond by other lone animals. Understanding passed between them, unlike her family.

Her father was a harsh and abusive man, and too proud to allow his useless daughter to embarrass him. Moments before dragging Nadia out of the house, his large and heavy hand found its way across the girl’s face, smudging the red lipstick forced onto her by her older sister, a streak of red against brown. Obedience was the word that left her father’s lips, muffling any further objections. She cast her eyes downward and obeyed, her lips slowly forming together, taking the last of the breath left trapped in her throat until the flesh there was smooth and devoid of sound.

Years passed by as Nadia tried to bear her husband’s children, but the pregnancies never lasted longer than a few months, blood leaving her body in gallons, leaving her body weak and broken. Broken, he’d said under his breath, disappointment clouding his eyes. His frustration was left in the bruised bones of her hips and back. He remarried and returned the girl back to her family, leaving her on the dirt in front of their house, only returning once a month to reclaim portions of her dowry. A bad investment.

On and on it went, until she was nothing but a mound of dark flesh. Her nose smoothed into her face until there was nothing unique about it, nothing more than a bump. Her eyes shut and never reopened, her hair vacated her head and body and never regrew. She did not eat, and it was not apparent whether she slept. Her family kept her locked away in a spare room at the very end of the house, unable to get rid of her completely. Patience, they said, as they waited for death to take her.

But death never came, and the girl, lost and confused, dragged herself out of bed one night with her elbows and knees, trying to find the pieces of herself. A low guttural groan could be heard from beneath the flesh that was once her mouth, the sound stretching the length of the long house. At last, they thought, but what did they know of death? Yet at last, with great effort, the once-girl found herself standing above her parents, frozen in fear from the sight. They had not laid eyes on their daughter in almost a year.

The mother screamed as the girl ripped her arm off, sliding the skin and muscle off the bone, to slip her deformed arm in the sleeve. Left arm, and then the right. Her mother was left silent in bed. In disbelief, the father grabbed the girl, but the girl was slowly becoming quicker. Her mother’s fingers clenched and stretched on her body, no longer useless. She took hold of her father’s chin with delicate fingertips and yanked the skin off his jawbone, taking his mouth with it. With those delicate fingers, she placed it where her own mouth would be. Tongue and teeth, yellowed from chewing sweet tobacco, shoved between them, took place unevenly. But the girl yawned open her father’s mouth and the groans came out clearer, vibrated through her chest and throat, breath filling her lungs, dusty from disuse. Her father was left silent.

All throughout the long house, she dragged her body around, searching for the rest of her. Her sister’s eyes pressed into her own skull, her brother’s nose, bent and broken in the middle. Pieces of hair taken from here and there, patched and sewn through her scalp. She was nearly complete.

Sitting amongst the blood streaked across dark brown earth, the girl waited for her once-husband to return on the night of the new moon. The sky was dark and devoid of stars, and the girl desperately wanted to fill the emptiness.

At last, the sound of wooden wheels rolled across the dirt, carrying the last piece of her with it. A gift, a lost item being returned. The man approached the path in front of the girl, toting a new wife, a small bundle in their arms. They mistook the girl for her mother and provided pleasantries, but the girl was mesmerized by that bundle. The missing piece.

The girl propelled herself at the woman, ripping her in half with her jagged teeth and freeing the child-bearing hips from their bones. She wrapped herself in the warm sheath of flesh. The man didn’t comprehend, as if this must have been a nightmare he had yet to wake up from that morning. Surely, he had not left home yet. He had not packed up the cart or his wife and child, they must have just gone to bed, they must still be in bed. While the man tried to convince himself, the girl reached down between his legs and castrated him. At last.

The small bundle, the child, is all that’s left in the carnage, a screaming mess in the red-brown dirt. The girl wrapped it up in her new arms, cradling the creature, and returned to the long empty house.

3rd Place: @unanun
Word Count: 497
Chosen Theme(s): Unknown & Body Horror
Chosen Format: Short Story

Body Mutilation Gore, Light Existential Horror



You awaken to nothing.

In the far distance a yellow light illuminates a staircase, but its reach is too weak to reveal your surroundings. Waving your arms and taking several small steps, you find no walls or surfaces to orient yourself, and eventually trip. You can only cradle the forming bruise over your ribs and hobble on.


You stumble from darkness into the light, a mass of structures that comprise columns set on top of raised reliefs. Some of them have fallen and pierced bottomless holes in the floor. From one of them a swarm of scaled things about the size of your foot emerge, flowing around your legs to their destination, which is up the staircase and out of sight. You grab one and bite into its soft belly. Its insides are sweet and thick.

Finally, the yellow light casts its pale glow over you. It follows behind, the columns dimming and fading away as you ascend. After about a thousand steps, it flies ahead, leaving you in the dark. The only reality left is what your feet touch. Your legs begin to cramp but you dare not change posture. When you finally can't hold any longer, your head cracks against an edge, but you throw your arms out and find the left and right boundaries of the staircase. At least now you can crawl up.


The steps end where the light reveals a corridor only large enough for you to walk into. It swallows the light, leaving only a yellow rectangle set in nothing. If there is an exit, it is so far that perspective has squashed it to a point, and the entrance similarly fades as you continue inwards.

Air pressure builds at your back, displaced by something behind you. You break into a run, but a second swarm of things slams into you. Your body forms a good seal against the passageway, and your legs are sheared away as they burst past, carrying you along the passage.


You tumble along until the wave thins out and leaves you on the floor. A batch of stragglers are drawn to the fluids oozing from your torso, crawling over each other and fusing with the remains of your legs. You are pulled to your feet and walk on towards the light, which has stopped at the exit.


You and the creatures continue the chase, which takes you through many more spaces filled with columnar structures. Since your legs are no longer under your control, you sustain more injuries as the things navigate spaces not meant for a body of your size. At one point your arms are caught in a gap, so you leave them behind. Those too are replaced.


The bruise no longer throbs. Your body is no longer yours, your head attached to a loose amalgam of flowing and shifting scales. The yellow light fills your vision. You can no longer tell how far away it is. It is the only thing you see.
 
IWAKU HORROR CONTEST 2023
themes: uncanny valley, isolation, obsession




1st Place: @unanun
Word Count: 949
Chosen Theme(s): Uncanny Valley, Isolation, Obsession
Chosen Format: Short Story

Body Horror



The following is a journal that was discovered aboard the fishing vessel WSK5627. Previously assumed lost and/or adrift, it was found off the coast of Nordland with no crew, though several bodies in various states of decay were recovered.

Oct 15

I awoke having slept badly. We just passed through a rough storm, and every joint in the ship was creaking. At one point I was tossed from the bed, and the captain was shouting to check the hold to see if the catch was okay. Many were split and roe was everywhere. The smell was awful.

Oct 17

We haven’t caught anything since we tossed the bad ones from the storm overboard. Today our nets came up with fragments of crab, shellfish, and pieces of fish. Our captain ordered the chef to make it into a stew. I did not eat, owing to lingering sea sickness.

Oct 18

There is a strange mood on the ship. Many of us keep staring overboard at night, when there is nothing to see. We are all in a bad mood and frequently get into arguments. Someone tried to jump overboard, and we had to lock them in their room. People keep drinking seawater and splashing themselves with it, even though they can’t hold it down. I have fallen ill as well. There is no porthole in my room, but all I can think about is the ocean outside. The waves on the hull are deafening.

Oct 20

I appear to have slept for two days. I am thirsty. The ship is deserted. The bunks look unmade, the radio was still active, and the engine was at half throttle. I raised PAN-PAN and shut down the engines. Later today, I heard a banging from the rooms. It was the crewmember who had tried to jump overboard. There was a wet flopping coming from inside, and I dared not open the door.

Oct 22

I awoke to the foulest stench. The fish are spoiled, and I had to throw them overboard with the crane. The jaws mashed up the carcasses, and I threw up several times. The back of my throat burns, partly from this unquenchable thirst. The ocean is still, and it won’t carry the mess away.

The noise from my companion’s room has stopped, and I feel responsible for his impending death. I did not have the courage to give him any food and water, but I will try to do so tomorrow.

Oct 23

I checked on the crewmate and found him unresponsive on the floor. His skin was covered in shingles, and his mouth gulped the air like a fish. I left him some water. I raised mayday.

[From this point onward, the entries are undated.]

I forgot to close his door! A restlessness had me prowling the ship at night. I saw him crawling out of the room, leaving behind a trail of slime. I followed him to the railing as he slipped overboard. In the water he turned to look at me. He had a round mouth with teeth that led all the way down.

I thought I saw the captain in the water; his face was stretched out, and his eyes were black pits. He noticed me and swam back to the deeps. I took a sip of seawater. It was delicious. I stopped myself from drinking anymore. It is the path to madness.

They keep swimming around the ship, but they know when I appear at the railing and duck away. I saw the pilot today. His body looked like it was butterflied, and he was spread out like a flounder. Both of his eyes were on the same side of his head.

I drank more seawater. There was some fish left in the hold, although too degraded to eat, so I tried to bait a long line. The first day I sat next to it with the harpoon gun, waiting for something to crawl up, but nothing. The second day the line felt heavy. It was the captain, tangled in the line. His body was bloated into a sausage, his arms and legs were long and thin, and his face was stretched out over one end. I could not look at him and cut him free. I raised mayday again.

I awoke to noises in the hold. The captain and pilot had climbed the long line and came inside, flopping along the floor and sucking at the remnants of the catch. The crewmember was attached to the pilot like a lamprey or barnacle. The pilot seemed content sliding along the floor, his flat mouth reaching for the goo of decaying roe. We made eye contact, but they ignored me.

I am drifting in and out of a stupor, perhaps from all the seawater. A strange mood seized me, and I took the harpoon gun and knife to the hold. There had been a struggle and a victor, the captain feasting on the roe that spilled out of the other two. I put a bolt into the captain’s head.

I should not have eaten. My feet are wrong. I have no balance, and it feels like I could spill in any direction at any moment. Seawater tastes so good. I gave in and drank until my stomach bulged.

My upper arms have fused to my sides, and I can only move my forearms. This may be my last entry. The ocean calls to me. I gulp the air but I cannot breathe. My skin burns, my eyes burn. So dry. Everything is dry. I need water. I raised mayday this morning, but the radio was dead. The water. I need the water. The ocean.

2nd Place: @OKSaiph
Word Count: 1559
Chosen Theme(s): Isolation, Obsession, Uncanny Valley
Chosen Format: Short Story

Violence, Religious Trauma, Grief



The world started to end the week after my grandfather died.


I didn't know at first. It was hard to see anything past the casket and his cold, unmoving face. He didn't look like he was sleeping, like they said he would. My grandfather looked like he had started to rot, that his face would slog off if anyone dared to touch it. The stench of formaldehyde made me nauseous.


I barely remembered getting home. I'd walked in the blistering Southern heat instead, fingering the heavy, silver cross that swung from my neck. By the time I reached the mailbox, my body and suit were slicked in sweat and salt. I stood and stared for a moment as I caught my breath.


The once-blue two-story house had been slowly losing its hue until it became soft, almost melancholic. As I trudged through the door into the laundry room, the scent of aged wood and dust hit my nose. And... traces of things I didn't want to think about. Instead, I wandered into my Grandfather's study.


The shelves overflowed with different books; mostly radio manuals, different Bible editions, and sermons and writings from his favorite religious figureheads. In-between the shelves stood a meticulously crafted altar, only just large enough to fit the family bible, its pages delicate and worn from generations of use. A rosary sat between the pages like a bookmark. Hanging above it like an arrow, a silver cross gleamed in the soft, golden light of dusk streaming in through the window above the desk.


I stood in front of the desk, one hand resting on the back of an old office chair. My eyes swept over it, looking at the radio parts strewn haphazardly across its surface. It sat in stark contrast to the rest of the room. Most of the clutter was old rubbish, but a half-built model caught my attention. Its wooden cabinet, a rich mahogany, bore carvings reminiscent of Gothic cathedrals. The radio's front grille held a delicate lattice of polished wood, resembling stained glass windows. Its knobs, though slightly tarnished with age, were sturdy and familiar as I fiddled with them.


I didn’t stop to think. Throwing my suit coat over the back of the chair, I neatly rolled up my shirtsleeves. My grandfather's voice echoed in my head. A clean and proper body makes for a clean and proper mind. A clean and proper body makes for a clean and proper mind. I’d… shower later.


We had worked on many radios together over the years. I relaxed as those memories flowed into my mind unabated, settling in to begin the work set out in front of me. I trembled slightly as I picked up the radio, as if my grandfather's soul had been hidden inside.


I don't know how much time passed while I restored the radio. Clean, wire, test, repeat. My grandfather struggled with re-wiring the most towards the end. I found it fitting that this would be my last task for him. I wondered what his hands felt like. Did they ache like mine do? What had it been like-


No. I can't go there. I refocused on the radio. It was beautiful, oiled and shined to perfection. Each touch of its polished surface like a communion, my fingers tracing the carvings as if I were seeking solace from within. I found myself whispering prayers as I plugged it in. I wanted it to work. I needed it to work.


A phone rang somewhere in the house. I ignored it. The radio spluttered to life, the receiver casting light akin to motif candles, flickering softly. It caressed my skin, chasing away the darkness that had started to settle over me, filling me with light and warmth as I twisted the knobs with numb fingers.


"Samuel?"


I gasped, nearly jumping out of my seat. Impossible. This was impossible. "Grandpa?" I whispered to the radio. It had always been just the two of us. In prayer, in song, in laughter, in sorrow and love. I found myself holding my breath as I strained to hear his voice return, folded within the static.


"Sammy." It was him. It was him. It was him. I could barely contain my joy. His voice slipped away again and I chased it through the different frequencies.
"Save... Everyone. Devils... Here." His voice sounded garbled. My heart raced. "What must I do?!" I cried. My hands clasped in prayer, bowing my head as tears streaked freely down my face. He had reached through the heavens to save me. To save the Earth from eternal damnation.


"Sulfur... Brimstone.... Take.... Cross..." Gone again. No. I needed him. I couldn't do this without him. Please. Just one more time. My vision darkened as I reached out to the radio. I felt so dizzy, so far away. "Please," I begged. Nothing. Something must be interfering with us, with Heaven's reach.


The cross. I whipped my head around, my eyes refocusing on the silver cross on the wall behind me. I reached for it, gently removing it from its spot on the wall. The bottom of the cross tapered into a point and I hefted it, considering its weight.


"Woe to the Earth and the Sea, because the Devil has gone down to you."


I knew what I had to do. Brimming with energy and purpose, I gathered supplies from around the house. I stopped for a moment while I anointed myself in oil to gaze at myself in the mirror. Tall, with fine brown hair starting to fall below brown eyes and a strong, proud nose. My grandfather's nose.


"He is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short."


A knock on the door echoed up the stairs. I adjusted my grip on the cross as I slowly crept downstairs and peeked through the blinds. A man stood on my doorstep, his hands clasped behind his back in patience. The way he held himself felt familiar. I frowned and opened the door.


He was older, but not ancient; crow's feet feathered out from the corners of his eyes, with wisps of salt-and-pepper hair sticking to his face in the heat. He smiled even as I stared intently at him, and offered his hand. "I'm Pastor Brown. I just wanted to stop by, see how you were doing..." He trailed off as I continued to stare at him, saying nothing. Something felt... wrong with the man in front of me. His eyes were cold. Unfeeling. I gripped my cross behind my back.


Pastor Brown stepped forward, stopping less than an arm’s length away. He looked me over. His eyes darted over my shoulder, searching for something. "May I come in?" He asked softly. A pungent, almost rotting odor escaped from his mouth, and it took everything I had within me to stop myself from reeling back. From granting him entry. A second passed, then another.


He’s stalling me. My nostrils flared as my mind raced. He’s not human. The closer I looked, the more it became apparent; the waxy sheen over his face, the vacant, hard eyes, the smile that seemed to stretch wider and wider as we stood together in silence. The hair on the back of my neck stiffened.


"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."


The Devil tried to look unsettled, but the face he wore wouldn't move for him. Could it be that he had the real pastor’s soul locked away, deep inside? "Samu-" I swung the cross into his face, into his mouth, where he could not trick me with honeyed words. Bloody shards of enamel flew outwards as the demon gagged, clawed hands reaching for me as I pulled back, bringing the cross with me. He slid off of it, collapsing to kneel at his feet.


"Lord, even the demons submit to us in Your name."


He was still moving, choking on the blood and broken teeth that filled his mouth as he tried to crawl backwards, away from me. Away from the Holy Symbol and from Retribution. I could see the real Pastor Brown behind those cold eyes, begging to be saved. For me to save him. I swung the cross again, down into the back of his leg. He screamed, an inhuman, wicked sound.


"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."


His body twitched uncontrollably, his eyes rolling around like a spooked horse to gaze up at me. His sulfur-drenched breath came in pants. Almost. Almost. Almost. I raised the cross again. The Devil whimpered, and I smiled triumphantly as I drove the cross's point down into his face.


It caved in, skin and muscle tearing away from bone as I shoved it down deeper. Blood, holy blood, blood of the priest flowed over old wood and iron. I lifted the cross and brought it down on his chest. I needed to be sure that the Devil could not use this body again.


His body shuddered one last time before it stilled. I stroked his blooded hair gently. My mind registered the sound of someone screaming, but I didn’t look up.


"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain..."

3rd Place: @Apocalypse_Enjoyer
Word Count: 1096
Chosen Theme(s): Obsession
Chosen Format: Short Story

Suicide, Violence Against a Child(?)



Feels like I haven't gotten a wink of sleep in years. Impossible. Nobody believes me when I say that. I function well enough, kept my job, my family doesn't notice the bags under my eyes. It feels like I'm going insane. Paid a therapist, went to sessions only to not even get an insomnia diagnosis, she says it's the stress and gave me breathing exercises. Went to the doctor and insisted on the MRI, it says I am healthy, then why do I feel empty? Bought melatonin supplements, helps me fall asleep but not get rest. All of this started when I met that boy, in my dreams. I met him, a long time ago. I don't know when, it's all blurry, but ever since then I meet him every night. He changes from dream to dream, but I know it's him by the way I feel, I just know it's him.



He doesn't speak, but he's always there, in the periphery of my vision, or in plain sight. The scenes range from decrepit castles, ruined villages, abandoned ghost towns, run down fishing settlements… the only constant is that boy. I don't understand. There are other people in my dreams, always are. Friends from school, strangers I saw on the street, coworkers, family…. And that boy ranging from seven to ten years of age. The others evoke emotions and participate in nonsensical scenes, but the sensation of having the boy present is like having electrodes strapped on the lobes of my skull blasting on medium power. It gives me no peace, only uncertainty and frustration. I write down the dreams to see a pattern, and the only thing certain is him. What does he mean? Somebody I slighted in the past? A kid that never came to be because of my past failed romantic relationships? A forgotten childhood memory? When I try to converse with him, he just stares with those brown almond shaped eyes. The eyes stay the same, you see, but his hair and physical appearance do not. It's in the eyes. I feel like he's looking for answers in me, yet I ask questions. I have no answers, only questions, why can't I rest? Why do I feel tired all the time? What does he represent? Why is he always present? He does not answer, never does. Restlessly I write in my journals to decipher some sort of meaning, rhyme or reason. I talk to specialists, therapists and trusted friends about this, and I never get close to an answer. I tried the breathing techniques, to limit my screen usage, to cut down on pastries, to journal. Nothing works.



Coffee helps, in functioning. Drink five a day. When the coffee crashes I involuntarily dream once more. Every fucking night. Once, I approached the boy and started asking questions again, he stared as usual, little bastard. Socked the fucker in the face. Fell on the ground with a bleeding nose and stared at me, this time crying. Like it's my fault I snapped, like it's my fault I feel tired all the time. It's his fault, all of this, it's his fault. I asked if he will speak now, he continued crying, wailing. Filled my ears with a high pitched scream that felt like needles piercing my brain. Kicked him in the stomach to make him stop, he did, wheezing for breath, but resumed shortly after. So I did what worked the first time and kicked him again, and again. I didn't even aim, just kicked until the screaming stopped. Until he was quiet. Laying motionless on the ground in the pool of his own blood, battered and broken. The buzzing in my ears stopped and I finally heard… silence. Only then did I realize the electricity was from him. But I woke up tired, again. It didn't fix anything. I dreaded that night to go back to sleep in fear of retaliation, but that night the electricity resumed… and the boy was there… like nothing changed. In a futile effort to change things I killed him over and over again. Strangulation, savage beatings, caving his head in with blunt objects, stabbing, throwing him off a high place. I killed him so many times in the effort to change anything…. It didn't change a thing. The exhaustion didn't get worse but it didn't get better either. The buzzing in my brain resumed every night. I do not derive pleasure from the things I have done, but I am running out of options.



Coworkers started to gossip about me, they say I seem "out of it", that I am suffering from burnout. Some even say I am suffering from drug withdrawal. Don't have the strength to argue. I use all my energy to figure out why, why this is happening to me. Days upon months upon years have yielded no more answers than the first day I met the boy. I've conceived all these theories of who he might be, introspecting about my past, present and future. Brings me nothing but more questions. What have I done to deserve this? I am not a good man, but surely I'm not the worst, right? I am not evil, nor a sociopath or psychopath. Not a narcissist. I've dabbled in drugs yes, in college, weed and MDMA once. I drink, but only socially. I have been formally diagnosed with OCD, but that doesn't have anything to do with anything? Maybe it does? God I'm so tired. I can't do this anymore.

Today, I bought a dose of horse tranquilizers and a bottle of top shelf whiskey from the money I reserved for bills. Tonight, I don't plan on waking up, nor dreaming. I am going to bludgeon my consciousness into oblivion until I cannot see, hear nor think about that boy.

Mom, tell that drunk bastard I call my father I am not sorry for missing his birthday, and to stop trying to reach me. This message is for you only. I don't feel like myself anymore, like I am a husk of what I once was. I am not the son you raised and once knew. But know that if there is a semblance of that son in me, that he loves you very much. Wherever I am going, it's going to be better than the hell I was forced to endure. I am sorry for giving up. But there is nothing else left for me to do.

I love you mom. If there is a God, I will put in a good word for you.
 
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