Cackling

Enough was enough.

For years I had listened silently to the doctors squawking out their meaningless latin gibberish, toying with my body as they tested one radical new treatment after another. They said this last one was the best, that my condition was finally "improving"...why, then, did I feel like I was dying inside? Why were my thoughts growing so dim? My joints so numb? Today was to be one more round of their disgusting concoction, but I knew it would only be the death of me. I knew by now that they were trying to destroy me all along, that I was just another guinea pig in their sick little experiments.

They weren't going to take me.

I could feel one more "attack" coming on as I flung myself from bed, and I wasn't going to lose this one. I crumpled to the floor, flailing and twitching as I already had hundreds of times, fighting for control. I fought harder than ever before. Writhing. Screaming. Cackling. Always the mad cackling, echoing from deep within even through the screams. At long last, I realized what I needed to do. A part of me had always known, but had always stomped out the notion before it could even finish. This time, I embraced it. I fought for it. I squirmed, shrieked and gibbered until finally I felt something new, a rush of euphoric freedom I had never before experienced. I had it. I had the control.

Despite the agonizing screams flying from my body, I felt no pain - no sensation at all - as I peeled away the strips of flesh. The screams quickly faded as a crimson mosaic flooded the tile floor, but my work continued...and my shrill laughter echoed through the empty house. I scooped out dripping handfuls of meat and slick, gelatinous entrails. I stripped the tissue from my fingers to better scrape the gunk from my bones long into the night.

As I finally stood up in the heap of discarded flesh, I realized that my memories had never really been mine; I was only an observer to them, imprisoned in a loathsome cocoon of meat and viscera. It was finally time to create memories of my own. I knew there must be others like myself, and that they just might need a little help breaking free. The cackling began anew, and this time, it would never stop. Nobody would silence my joy.

They had tried to kill me. Those fucking quacks called it a disease.

They had called it Bonus eruptus.

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Written by Johnathan Wojicik.