[Egekrusher]

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As I survey this hellhole, I wonder how I can survive like this. Not just this piece of shit house, but also my sexual perversion, my social anxieties, and my bitter hatred for my fellow humans. I have isolated myself for so long that I just can’t relate to people anymore. I find them repulsively primitive, unable to control their emotions and instincts. They hear no reason unless you beat it into them, which I have never been very good at. A slightly modified line from a country song says it best; “When it comes to brains they got the short end of the stick”. I know that this is a horrible attitude, but it is one that is being reinforced every day that I’m on this God-forsaken planet. Road rage, riots, parents killing their children, children killing their parents, even children shooting other children- all of it has proven to me how utterly hopeless this world is. This attitude is what has isolated me. Yet I don’t feel any remorse or regrets for it. Why should I when I know that I’m right?

I take off my shoes and lay down in my small single bed, leaving my clothes on so I don’t feel quite so bad about the cockroaches that I know will inevitably find their way into my bed. I fall into an uneasy sleep, eyes twitching, and sweat gleaming on my forehead. As I lay there sleeping, I start to dream about unimaginable horrors, the same dreams I have every night. In these dreams, I am constantly confronting zombies or demons, or some other supernatural phenomenon, and always winning. There are some nights like tonight, however, where I just can’t seem to defeat the evil.

“AHHHHHHHHH!!!!” I wake up screaming. I look around the room and realize that I am safe, at home, in my own bedroom, and not being devoured by zombies. It takes a couple more minutes before I can stop looking out the dark windows, looking for someone or something that I know can’t be there, but my imagination insists is there. Eventually I stop shivering as well. I make my way into the kitchen, raiding the fridge in the hope that there will magically be a beer or at least something edible in there. Nope. Just the same moldy leftovers that have been lurking in the dark corners of the fridge for God knows how long. From there, I move on to the bathroom to release my bladder.

There is a mirror directly above the toilet, a medicine cabinet. As I’m staring down at the toilet doing my business, I hear something behind me. I can feel a presence as well. I slowly shift my gaze to the mirror. When my eyes finally find their way there, I see what looks like a man about my size holding a butcher’s knife in his hand. He is dressed in all black, with a mask over one half of his face. The other half of his face looks as if it has been burned beyond recognition. The eye on this side is dangling from its socket, held on only by a sliver of sinew. His flesh looks as if it was ran through a garbage disposal and then boiled on the stove, red goop running down his cheek and little pieces of flesh decomposing rapidly. I grabbed the plunger sitting next to the toilet, member still in hand, and turned around as fast as I could, spraying urine in every direction. Of course, no one was there. How could there be? I had locked his door with a deadbolt and I couldn’t get the windows open even when they were unlocked because they were so old.

I cleaned up the urine, cursing myself the entire time for being so stupid, yet keeping one eye open for any sign of the imagined intruder. After completing this demeaning task, I washed my hands and shuffled my way back to bed. I was already starting to get tired again. This time, when I lay down to sleep, there were no disturbances, not even a single dream.

That is the end of Chapter 1.