The Bug

Feel the bug writhe within.
Feel it tickle and pester and demand attention.
It boils my blood this very evening.

I had thought it was dead. I had thought I had killed it. I had thought I had starved it into submission. But it was merely dormant, like reptiles in winter, opening its evil eyes in the best of seasons and casting its shadowy gloom over any sunny feeling.

A plague rides upon disturbed minds' bloodstreams. It tickles them with their antennae. And we laugh, and we cry, and we rage in response.

Oh vulgar reality, the bug feeds on your body! It is a flesh that purifies and strengthens the need to escape. The exit signs flare up when the bug is active, and it is up to us to choose which path to take. There is only one correct path. The rest are simple and rotten and reek of decay. The smell of inebriation wafts forth from them, but it is a beacon to the hopeless.

The bug is older than humanity, is more vibrant than a newborn, is more persistent than death.

To exorcise it is folly,
To cultivate it is vice,
To ignore it is futile.