Tuesday -The hallucinations are becoming intense. Until now I've been able to discern between the real and the unreal. I cannot express the horror of looking down and seeing that I have no more feet. I never noticed that they were gone until I tried to stand up and go to the kitchen for some water. I couldn't stand. Not much pain or anything, but where the hell did my feet go?
As if I didn't know the answer to that. Spiders come at night, and each night they've chewed off a tiny portion of my toes. It didn't hurt much. Kind of a small pinch as the glossy black creatures began feasting on my piggies.
But all of a sudden one night, not only were my feet gone, but so were about half of my calves. I've tried calling for help, but I dare not open my door for fear of the vast nests of the nasty arachnids which have covered the grounds here with their sacs. Hell, even my living room window makes the daytime look almost dark for the thousands of spiders blocking out the light. No electricity here means I can't listen to the news or the radio. And forget the phone. Deader than Lottie's eye. At first I wasn't sure whether they had simply chewed through the building's wiring or something worse had occurred.
Last week I saw some poor bastard running and screaming across the lawn. He was literally chewed down as the spiders ascended on him and chewed him into smaller, more bite-size fragments in a coordinated hunting effort, as he screamed the screams of a man without hope. Seeing what must have been a femur slowly disappear (Did it fall out of sight?) while meat and vital organs began being tug-of-warred back and forth between masses of ravenous black widows was more than I thought I could deal with as I closed my apartment door to the crunching sounds of perhaps a dozen or more carriers of fearful death.
In the morning, all is restored. People go to work. The lawn is green, the sky, overcast. I go to work, stopping for a hamburger on the way in. I feel tense, knowing that night is coming and bringing horror with it. I stopped eating fries with my lunch; the crunching sound is almost identical to the sound made by the spiders being crunched as I fight to close my door at night.
I hate winter. The days are shorter, which gives the horrid black things more time to resume their assaults. One would think that the spiders would become dormant this time of year. It's inexplicable, within the parameters set forth by hallucinations.
Then again, hallucinations' parameters aren't predictable things, as I discover every time night falls and I lose my legs to spiders.
The pain becomes more unbearable each night. The fear quadruples as I'm forced to fight off more spiders with more bug spray, now purchased each night in aisle 6 at Halverson's Food Emporium. I dutifully spray around the entrance to my home as if my life depended on it ( a poor choice of words). Just this afternoon I sprayed over my doorway and maybe five of the little assassins fell dead (Good!).
Wednesday -It was horrible last night; the urge to urinate was gone. A nightmare for any man, I felt one crawling down my pant leg. Falling onto the floor, it held in its pincers a very definite portion of my "manhood". Pain and panic struck at once as I began spurting blood and what I think was urine uncontrollably. Again, my legs were chewed up and gone, leaving live skin, blood, and grainy muscle tissue flapped over most of the otherwise-exposed bone. I remember falling to the floor, begging for the relief unconsciousness and death would bring, but neither occurred. I pulled myself -or what was left of me- across the living room to the bathroom, hoping to throw myself in the tub for at least some temporary relief. I thought I heard myself scream inside my head, which is usually a good sign of an auditory hallucination. It wasn't me screaming. Someone in the building was dying, begging for help. I wasn't alone.
The wall in the dining room began to buckle, first from gallons of venom dissolving the two-by-fours and the drywall, then the mortar between the fire bricks, and finally from the weight of the now-unstable, toppling bricks themselves.
And with it, untold thousands of shiny black spiders spilling onto the remains of my table and chairs.
Carrying with them small, but identifiable, portions of a man.
Thursday -I beat the alarm clock to the punch. Taking ibuprofen for my lower back, feet, and knees, and a vitamin, I quickly shower, brush my teeth (and partial plate), toss on my clothes, and head out for work. The events of the night before were horrifying, to say the least. More so than on any previous night since this whole thing began. What a relief to see that there are no spiders -for now. Still, my anxiety level is quite high and my adrenaline level soon has me scaring slow drivers in heavy traffic. It didn't help when that exterminator truck passed by with a black widow photo emblazoned on the side. Work went by uneventfully. Orders were filled, phones rang, meetings were held, and that lazy bastard Vin Porter was promoted to department head of foundry planning. It was all too fast a day, coming to a close long before I was ready to resume the nightmare.
And a nightmare it was: more screams from the neighborhood. Gunshots from those who chose to end their lives quickly and mercifully rather than being torn apart and consumed while they were forced to watch. Unable to purchase a gun due to my mental illness, I was forced to endure another night of the stinging, tugging, and warm, wet, sticky sensations associated with being eaten alive by a thousand tiny predators. To describe it, the pain isn't too bad until enough live skin is exposed. Then it becomes agonizing as the spiders continually inject venom into the tissue, weakening and then removing it. Your bones are then exposed and stripped, and the cold of both the loss of subcutaneous fat and shock set in as you're irretrievably disfigured en route to your death. Screaming becomes a luxury; it's better to save your breath to regulate your vital organs until morning.
If morning comes.
Friday -I had to call in sick. I got no sleep last night and am so exhausted that even my adrenaline is now depleted. I still can't believe what I saw -or didn't see. It was hard to tell. My blanket seemed as though it were glued to my body. I pulled it, and the pain I felt was indescribable. Yanking it caused me to faint. When I came to, it was as though my entire body was a mass of oozing, live skin. The pain and cold conspired to put me over the edge of insanity. Hearing the scuffling sound of a multitude of pests under my bed, I called 911. They wrapped me -or what was let of me -in some kind of medicine-soaked gauze. I was given God-Only-Knows how many worrying looks from doctors and nurses coming into ICU. I caught a glimpse of some poor bastard missing most of his legs, the remains quivering and bouncing uncontrollably, and realized it was my reflection. Somewhere, I hear an odd beeping sound, repetitious, unceasing. The damn sound is one more thing than I can bear. It won't stop! DAMN it. Someone PLEASE make it stop! Can't you see I'm torn APART?! Must I endure this too?! The morphine makes me want to beep-sing right along with it. Anything would be better than this. But the sound is getting softer and it's getting darker in here. They won't answer my questions about the spiders. "...schizophrenic on his charts -and you should see how he answered on the mental status exam..." are some of the words I hear. A cop is taking notes; as he fills out a report I see what appears to be dried vomit on his shirt. "He won't make it through the night", assesses an emergency room doctor to the officer. "We can't control the infection. This has been going on for weeks..."
Darkness has come.
Morning is here.
As if I didn't know the answer to that. Spiders come at night, and each night they've chewed off a tiny portion of my toes. It didn't hurt much. Kind of a small pinch as the glossy black creatures began feasting on my piggies.
But all of a sudden one night, not only were my feet gone, but so were about half of my calves. I've tried calling for help, but I dare not open my door for fear of the vast nests of the nasty arachnids which have covered the grounds here with their sacs. Hell, even my living room window makes the daytime look almost dark for the thousands of spiders blocking out the light. No electricity here means I can't listen to the news or the radio. And forget the phone. Deader than Lottie's eye. At first I wasn't sure whether they had simply chewed through the building's wiring or something worse had occurred.
Last week I saw some poor bastard running and screaming across the lawn. He was literally chewed down as the spiders ascended on him and chewed him into smaller, more bite-size fragments in a coordinated hunting effort, as he screamed the screams of a man without hope. Seeing what must have been a femur slowly disappear (Did it fall out of sight?) while meat and vital organs began being tug-of-warred back and forth between masses of ravenous black widows was more than I thought I could deal with as I closed my apartment door to the crunching sounds of perhaps a dozen or more carriers of fearful death.
In the morning, all is restored. People go to work. The lawn is green, the sky, overcast. I go to work, stopping for a hamburger on the way in. I feel tense, knowing that night is coming and bringing horror with it. I stopped eating fries with my lunch; the crunching sound is almost identical to the sound made by the spiders being crunched as I fight to close my door at night.
I hate winter. The days are shorter, which gives the horrid black things more time to resume their assaults. One would think that the spiders would become dormant this time of year. It's inexplicable, within the parameters set forth by hallucinations.
Then again, hallucinations' parameters aren't predictable things, as I discover every time night falls and I lose my legs to spiders.
The pain becomes more unbearable each night. The fear quadruples as I'm forced to fight off more spiders with more bug spray, now purchased each night in aisle 6 at Halverson's Food Emporium. I dutifully spray around the entrance to my home as if my life depended on it ( a poor choice of words). Just this afternoon I sprayed over my doorway and maybe five of the little assassins fell dead (Good!).
Wednesday -It was horrible last night; the urge to urinate was gone. A nightmare for any man, I felt one crawling down my pant leg. Falling onto the floor, it held in its pincers a very definite portion of my "manhood". Pain and panic struck at once as I began spurting blood and what I think was urine uncontrollably. Again, my legs were chewed up and gone, leaving live skin, blood, and grainy muscle tissue flapped over most of the otherwise-exposed bone. I remember falling to the floor, begging for the relief unconsciousness and death would bring, but neither occurred. I pulled myself -or what was left of me- across the living room to the bathroom, hoping to throw myself in the tub for at least some temporary relief. I thought I heard myself scream inside my head, which is usually a good sign of an auditory hallucination. It wasn't me screaming. Someone in the building was dying, begging for help. I wasn't alone.
The wall in the dining room began to buckle, first from gallons of venom dissolving the two-by-fours and the drywall, then the mortar between the fire bricks, and finally from the weight of the now-unstable, toppling bricks themselves.
And with it, untold thousands of shiny black spiders spilling onto the remains of my table and chairs.
Carrying with them small, but identifiable, portions of a man.
Thursday -I beat the alarm clock to the punch. Taking ibuprofen for my lower back, feet, and knees, and a vitamin, I quickly shower, brush my teeth (and partial plate), toss on my clothes, and head out for work. The events of the night before were horrifying, to say the least. More so than on any previous night since this whole thing began. What a relief to see that there are no spiders -for now. Still, my anxiety level is quite high and my adrenaline level soon has me scaring slow drivers in heavy traffic. It didn't help when that exterminator truck passed by with a black widow photo emblazoned on the side. Work went by uneventfully. Orders were filled, phones rang, meetings were held, and that lazy bastard Vin Porter was promoted to department head of foundry planning. It was all too fast a day, coming to a close long before I was ready to resume the nightmare.
And a nightmare it was: more screams from the neighborhood. Gunshots from those who chose to end their lives quickly and mercifully rather than being torn apart and consumed while they were forced to watch. Unable to purchase a gun due to my mental illness, I was forced to endure another night of the stinging, tugging, and warm, wet, sticky sensations associated with being eaten alive by a thousand tiny predators. To describe it, the pain isn't too bad until enough live skin is exposed. Then it becomes agonizing as the spiders continually inject venom into the tissue, weakening and then removing it. Your bones are then exposed and stripped, and the cold of both the loss of subcutaneous fat and shock set in as you're irretrievably disfigured en route to your death. Screaming becomes a luxury; it's better to save your breath to regulate your vital organs until morning.
If morning comes.
Friday -I had to call in sick. I got no sleep last night and am so exhausted that even my adrenaline is now depleted. I still can't believe what I saw -or didn't see. It was hard to tell. My blanket seemed as though it were glued to my body. I pulled it, and the pain I felt was indescribable. Yanking it caused me to faint. When I came to, it was as though my entire body was a mass of oozing, live skin. The pain and cold conspired to put me over the edge of insanity. Hearing the scuffling sound of a multitude of pests under my bed, I called 911. They wrapped me -or what was let of me -in some kind of medicine-soaked gauze. I was given God-Only-Knows how many worrying looks from doctors and nurses coming into ICU. I caught a glimpse of some poor bastard missing most of his legs, the remains quivering and bouncing uncontrollably, and realized it was my reflection. Somewhere, I hear an odd beeping sound, repetitious, unceasing. The damn sound is one more thing than I can bear. It won't stop! DAMN it. Someone PLEASE make it stop! Can't you see I'm torn APART?! Must I endure this too?! The morphine makes me want to beep-sing right along with it. Anything would be better than this. But the sound is getting softer and it's getting darker in here. They won't answer my questions about the spiders. "...schizophrenic on his charts -and you should see how he answered on the mental status exam..." are some of the words I hear. A cop is taking notes; as he fills out a report I see what appears to be dried vomit on his shirt. "He won't make it through the night", assesses an emergency room doctor to the officer. "We can't control the infection. This has been going on for weeks..."
Darkness has come.
Morning is here.
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