Did He Really Ever Have It?

He couldn’t decide if it’s worse to lose it or to never have had it to begin with. Waking up in a cold sticky sweat he looks in the corner hoping it will still be there. For a year the pulsating sac was there emanating a fear that he could use throughout the day. It was a drug that he hated. The nightmares and paranoia were not worth the words he put on the page. But, now it’s gone and he is afraid that it never existed.

He wanted to be a writer for as long as he could remember. Reading was a passion, but he could never find the story that he wanted, so he decided that he would write it. At first it was stories about love and teenagers, but those never hit the core of what he wanted. Then his stories were about depressing individuals that lived tough lives and could never win. Those stories were closer to what he wanted, and would eventually morph into what he desired, horror stories. It was around then that he noticed the fleshy sac growing on the wall of his bedroom, a color of dead skin left in a swamp for far too long.

Staring at the corner now, he thinks about the night that he discovered the sac. After a long boring day at work and a fight with his wife, his night of sleep was spent tossing and turning, hating the clock for bringing the sun and another day of work. When he got up to go to the bathroom he saw the sickly glow of something in the corner. At first he thought that it might have come from a street light shining through their bedroom window, or something reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall of their room. He turned the bathroom light on and went back into their bedroom to see what was on the wall. The glow came from a sac that was about the size of a quarter and hung low like a pregnant woman ready to give birth. Sticky strands of mucus held it to the wall, but there was no trace of how it got there. Inside the sac something moved, but the skin was too thick for him to see what it was. He felt a twinge of fear and creativity as he stared at the sac and his mind grasped the mixture hungrily and caused him to throw up his first horror story on paper.

The next couple of months were a blur of ignoring everything else in his life except writing. At work, at home, throughout the night, all of it focused on writing stories of horror and fear. He remembers those as good times, before he overdosed on the fear the sac fed him and his life took a terrible turn. Now sitting on his bed in the dark he looks over to the empty space on his bed, just one part of his life that was ruined from his addiction. He barely remembers his wife leaving, telling him he needed to get some help. He was glued to his computer, furiously pounding the keys, didn’t even have the strength to look up as she left. While this happened, the sac kept growing and sending out more waves of fear.

The paranoia and fear started out as simple everyday things. While at work he would fear that his boss would catch him working on his writing more than projects. Or he would worry that the police would pull him over because he was speeding home to get back onto his computer. Holding his head in his hands with his knees up to his chest, he laughs at himself thinking about those little fears and how they were nothing compared to how much his fear grew the last couple of months. He isn’t sure if the paranoia grew the fear or if the fear grew the paranoia, all he knows is that it was harder and harder for him to leave his house. There was some solace in front of his computer screen, but he had to plaster the wall behind the screen with mirrors to make sure nothing would sneak up behind him. Something was always just on the outside of his vision, or just leaving the hallway he was entering. At night he would feel tiny bugs crawling on his skin, and it would take ten minutes of fighting with himself to try to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, afraid something would grab his leg and pull him under the bed. But, his biggest fear was the sac opening and losing his muse.

Those months after his wife left and the fear got worse he was churning out great horror stories that he posted on his website. And as those stories got popular the sac on the wall got bigger. He can’t understand how the sac is gone now. It was such a part of his life, taking those fears and pouring them out in his stories. He can now admit that the paranoia and terror he felt was what he needed to make his stories better. Sweating on his bed, scared to move, he knew that he couldn’t write like that anymore. The only fear he has now is what happened to the sac. It ruined his marriage, and any friendship he had. His only focus was the horror stories, and it’s all gone now.

Slowly, he puts his legs on the ground and walks toward the wall. There is no trace that the sac was ever there. He touches the wall and is truly afraid. Was it ever there? Running to his bedside table he turns on his laptop and opens up the story he was working on. Staring at the text on the screen he sees the rambling of a mad man. It’s just gibberish, a crazy rant on murder and monsters. He doesn’t remember writing any of it. He logs on to his blog and sees that it’s full of the same. Some of his first stories on the blog make sense and are decent, but the later stories are incoherent and are just scenes of senseless violence. No plot, no character development, no conclusion, just a journal of a lunatic. The comments on the stories are either people offering phone numbers to get help or saying they are going to call the police.

Sitting down next to the wall he starts to cry. After what seems like days he feels the caress of a large insectoid creature cradling him and telling him everything will be okay. The creature stings him in the neck and he falls back to sleep to dream about a life he wish he had.