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As it grows closer to Halloween, you find your sleep to be practically non-existent. If you’re lucky, you manage to get 1-3 hours of rest at best and the nightmares grow worse, almost to the point where the memories of them haunt you during your waking hours. You can’t seem to satisfy your ever-growing hunger and any meat you manage to scarf down ends up being more raw than not. Your skin starts to itch, any scratching causes sores over your body or hair loss at your scalp. What skin hasn't been scratched is turning a sickly pale, almost green shade. Maybe you've caught some sort of virus or bug that's going around?




He could not sleep.

Steele slept angelically for the most part; he was not a man who held too much guilt over anything, and sleep was something that came naturally to him on almost all days. He was the type of person who could sleep for hours and wake up feeling entirely refreshed; and, for that matter, he was exceedingly cranky if he did not get enough sleep, which did not actually happen that often, as odd as that was, because Steele was surprisingly rigid in his sleeping habits. He was an early to bed, early to rise sort of person.

Not anymore.

The nightmares ate away at him, grasping at his throat, so that he kept waking up half gasping, half screaming, sometimes choking as though there were actual hands around his neck to hold him down, squeezing the air out of him. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the deadened faces and blackened hands reaching for him - and now, after days of this, it had started plaguing him when his eyes were open as well, sitting on his couch, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

He called out of work from sheer exhaustion and paranoia. He could not get his mind to work properly. The lack of any sort of proper, fulfilling sleep was giving him headaches so bad that sometimes Steele felt as though his head was going to explode, dizziness and nausea accompanying them. He lurched around his apartment feeling unsteady on his feet, his throat dry no matter how much water he guzzled, and he was so ******** hungry that it didn't seem to make a difference what he ate, as long as he just ate, in spite of Steele's meticulous diet (at least in public).

He hated rare stakes, loathed the scent of blood and the feeling of almost raw meat in his mouth, but he ate two for dinner on a Thursday night and still felt as though he hadn't eaten a damn thing. Dragging himself from his bed meant wandering aimlessly around his apartment, and there was nowhere to go in a place that had only a few hundred square feet. Video games made him feel almost nauseated with all of the movement involved in them, and Steele gave up trying to play Mario Kart for the third time that evening, instead lying on his back on the floor of his living room.

He was hungry again.

He was so damn tired.

His skin was itching, cheeks pale and wan. Steele did not even want to look at himself in the mirror, because he knew what he would see - something gaunt and sickly and unhealthy, and he did not want to hate himself more than he already did. Whatever it was that he had caught - whatever virus this must be, he could not stand it. He wanted to drown himself in his bathtub, wanted to sink away into nothingness.

He tried alcohol. That didn't work either. The booze just made him more thirsty, more hungry, more sick.

He tried texting someone - anyone - the first name that came to mind, in a drunken stupor and a haze of pure misery.

Pixie Nyxie
Text to Ashley:

you ******** suck why are you like this


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Text to Ashley:

why am i like this


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Text to Ashley:

i hate this i hate myself


He did not even recall picking up his phone.

Steele tried to remember the last time he had felt this badly and could not recall anything beyond the day previous. His mind seemed to be full of nothing but bloody hands and hollowed out, blank eyes and grasping claws on his skin, shuddering over his body. Nothing he did seemed to work; he was an empty shell just staying alive for the sheer hell of it.

Why did he exist?

He didn't want to be here anymore. He didn't want to do this anymore.

He wanted it to be over.

He was so unbelievably, so ******** unbelievably tired.