September 10, 2020

I was looking at apartments in a college town even though I wasn’t intending to continue my education. I was worried about how I was supposed to find new friends. My dad warned against approaching academia. I asked him why - after all there may still be individual courses that I wanted to take.

I trudged down the mountain with a heavy weight in my chest. I felt a destructive energy welling within me as my shoulders hunched up and my skin thickened. There was a group of children playing in the woods and among them was a couple of boys throwing pebbles at the other kids. I slowly approached the boys but it seemed like I was invisible to the kids. I made the air around me colder until the boys were too creeped out to continue and ran off.

I waded through the swamp undetected until one of the girls seemed to be trying to find me by following the cold air. I walked back and forth just to confirm that she was indeed trying to track me down. One time I got close enough that she tapped my cheek. I immediately recoiled and began to back up deeper into the swamp but it was too late, she was now chasing me into the water.

I got to the far end of the swamp and she was still swimming towards me. I got out of the water and ran into a public restroom in the middle of the woods which was illuminated with red lights…

I had done something horrible and felt that I needed to remove all traces of the deed.¹ I took her small body and ripped it to shreds with my bare hands. I was already past the point of no return. All that was left of the girl was a pile of flesh and bones in the corner of the restroom floor. I picked up a jawbone and gave it one final snap.

I ran out of the restroom onto the city streets, not wanting to think about what had just happened. Someone poked their head out of a doorway, shouting “what have you done!?” as I ran past them.