Writhing skin

A Story by Niall Madden

As an individual we all have fears. It is unfortunately part of our genetics we are not invulnerable, in fact we are not innately brave as human beings it is safer to flee than to fight I am a strong believer in phobias and their effects I strive to understand and evaluate them in the attempt to overcome them but when fear fights back we flee regardless of any therapy or prescription we have. To be entirely honest I am not sure if that was relevant I apologies for carrying on like that I have tendencies to ramble to skitter on like an insect on your skin, panicked at the fleshy landscape it has immersed itself on as my name and other such details are not important at this moment I shall not impose them on you only give an account of my findings.

I live in a relatively urban area in a relatively urban apartment relative to my general background (surprise) but as of late I tend to grow lonesome. I have the tendencies of an introvert therefore I have no "Friends" to speak of and I find it terribly hard to sleep, as of such I spend a lot of time awake, alone and critical. in the sense that I am able to notice every little thing, this has not worked to my advantage recently, I have begun to notice a lot of dirt and dust around my apartment and I generally prefer the idea of cleanliness. as expected I began to deal with it the metropolis of waste that thrived in my presence (a slight overreaction if i am totally honest). Regardless I began to sift and clear out the filth that protruded from various areas of my quadrilateral dwelling. After some basic polishing up I was almost done when I noticed a small living organism writhing around, an earwig I believe I have never had a fear of insects but this doesn't seem at all appealing, in characteristics it was long, thin, shiny but dirty almost grim appearance like some sort of alien race like in Mars attacks or men in black.

A few days later content with the appearance of my apartment i went to take a shower nothing to detailed or in depth as I exited I dried of placing the towel over my head as if i was kidnapping myself. Then I began to feel a tingle, as if something was placing its miserable appendages in my microscopic nerve endings but yet it was almost as if it had evaporated at that very moment. As I used the friction of the opaque veil to the remove all moisture in my gangly hair, something crawled violently, writhing over my eyeball. As the burn of the touch and fear of unknown set in I unmasked myself from the towel, launching it violently towards anywhere I then dashed out breathing heavily almost with a metallic weight that oppressed my chest, a ball and chain clipped to my lungs with panic inscribed at the base. The ordeal passed like emotions quickly, but like emotions momentarily crippling and psychologically stored in the deepest recesses of the flesh coloured internal hardrive with twenty out of an unspecified amount of years. I had a constant tingle residing in the left tear duct a pool of sadness and pity I also felt fear. Fear is not something that can be grasped by the word emotion for it is nothing of the sort fear is like a rusty scalpel if you are cut it hurts, however it will begin to subsides meanwhile the rust is like a contagion instantly seeping through your body, veins, blood until it reaches you're brain where it plants a nice comfy lawn chair in the center of operations. Here it lies drawing back one traumatic day every time you feel any anxiety...
the next day was uneventful and at this point I felt like forgetting about the whole diary thing and just putting the ordeal behind me, but I persisted ill post back soon hopefully believing this is a good idea.

I recognized this as a brilliant idea two days later people say that some things scare you and you get over it, if you fear it control it or else it sinks in to become, dread now if you dread something the mere impartial knowledge that even one such organism exists in this world and it will find you sending you to a comatose state as you lie in wait as its dread crawls through you're body like a living poison playing away with every nerve like you're body is its toy and you cant escape because it is always there but you cant fight. I really see bugs anymore in a sense. What I mean by this is you would see them if they were there and wouldn't if they weren't because you work. I feel them they are never there but I can feel them. A paranormal experience at best , never mind my days continues as usual I sleep, eat, work, exist this is my life and as basic as life gets I was running low on food to be frankly honest. Considering that consumption is a main factor of human life I took a late stroll to a local shop. It was so dirty there you wouldn't believe it, cobwebs everywhere little patches of moulding filth in the corner a little woodlouse nest allowing a seemingly globules of bestial mass flounder around like a....
I threw up apparently, I couldn't remember according the local keeper of this "store" saw me vomit and began yelling, but he couldn't catch me as I sunk like a brick to the glazed tiled sea that was the floor. I asked why his shop was hive of filth (unable to understand how I beat down the pressure of anxiety I was feeling) but as his exclaimed speech droned into white noise I noticed the place was spotless, flawless. My god I just cant believe it. As the shell of fear walked home with the equivalent of army rations for double the price the brain the was questioning inside tried to piece together the previous ordeals cause, as a man of a straight edged nature the muscled processor tried to understand what had gone wrong with its optic machines, running repair checks and finding no problems with it internally or externally.
I returned home and everything appeared to be in grey-scale, the fridge was light grey, the floor a dark grey, the walls a monotonous grey, the kitchen a cyclic grey, the bedroom an eon of grey, the bathroom a glistening white, the living room an eternity of grey.

Wait, the bathroom was an almost blinding white this is mental, how can this be I entered to hear faint but convoluted noises in my ear. It rang on like a church bell in uneven hellish cycles and in time my skin, oh god my skin began to jump, move, squirm, crawl, as if the muscles were a colony of ants marching in scattered unison, meanwhile the sinews wriggled out of place. in this ordeal there was no pain physically, only mentally, and visually. I understand now that as my skin moved, writhed I felt it, not an emotion, a clamp it was dread, the most horrifying part was, I felt dread in my own skin, how terrified I was. Dread is usually felt over animals, objects, paranoia not over you're own functioning body. As my mind has to watch the eventual dissolve of my own vessel like a captain of a sinking ship it hopes that someone can dive into the ruins and understand what happened, how it managed to be taken down by a dread of things far smaller than us, oh god their burrowing out I can see their heads you have to help me please help their tiny needle like claws piercing my paper skin shredding away PLEASE HELP!...