I can't stop itching.

The irony of it is that despite my desperate struggle to maintain normalcy amidst my frantic and constant desire to scrape the epidermis away and let the mite-chewed flesh beneath breathe, nobody is aware of my plight.

I might be more concerned, but I'm in a madhouse. This sort of thing is to be expected. But I'm not saying anything. The meds they've got me on now, I get cottonmouth if I talk too much and I get the shakes if I get too excited. The migraines... or whatever, those are gone. But now I've got this itch.

And when they get really bad, like, when it feels like I'm breathing iron filaments and there are razors dancing on the other side of my skin and everything is serrated, I just sit and be thankful that the jagged teeth lining the inside of my skull are just short enough that, if I keep my head perfectly still, they wont puncture the protective membrane around my skull.

But I'm worried, because if feels like they're growing. I swear, out of the corner of my eye, I can see little writhing movements, like something is burrowing out from behind my eye socket, but when I turn, it's just more blank stares and white walls. The mandibles are getting sharper, and I'm pretty sure I almost trapped one of those things, caught under my palm when it was trying to distract me from my crossword puzzle, I think the word was "mitochondria", but when I slapped my hand over the stinging, I could feel it pulsing under my palm, and then it started to chew through my hospital gown and into my thigh. I wanted to pull my hand away and let it escape so it would stop hurting me, but... but then it would see me, and...

It's inside now, with the rest of them. One of them moved into my spinal column yesterday, some kind of worm, I think it's feeding on the cathode rays from the TV, and it keeps moving around, keeping me awake at night.

But thank god they're over, the... the fugues, they called them? Said it was an early onset of Alzheimer's.

I didn't want to tell them about the thing on the other side of the darkness, looking back at me, because they told me they would give me something to fix it, and they did, and now I don't have to worry about accidentally hurting anyone. I just wish-

...oh, God, they broke through. Stop it, stop it, it's going to-


The light suddenly flickers and goes out. Shrieking and yelling and some pathetic whimpering ensues. Tables are overturned, walkers seized, chairs knocked over in the scuffle. They never made it to the door. He opened one huge mouth and then the static came out and the screaming started as the real soul finally revealed itself to them all, exiting the fleshy host of the converted with all the grace of a hammer surgery to the dental cavity, the human meat magically falling apart, as though it had all been held together tenuously with a bit of spare tape and gum.

Meanwhile, he finished his crossword. "Filistata".