The dream ends abruptly with the realization that you’ve been awake the entire time. After a couple of blinks you’ve already forgotten what the nightmare was about, and you’re not sure you want to remember anyway.

How long have you been away? It’s anyone’s guess, right now you can hardly even think of your name. It would be easy to panic, but you can talk yourself through this.

These things happen

That’s what you tell yourself. So you were sleepwalking, it’s no big deal. Besides, it’s not like you killed anyone.

Or did you?

The muddy footprints end where you stand. You can feel the dirt, the splinters under your nails. Copper on your tongue, flesh between your teeth. By now you could probably fill a glass with the cold sweat beading off of you. Well, half-fill. If we’re being optimistic.

But let’s try to calm down, let’s try to think. Think back to the start, back to when you first started slipping away.

Can you remember the first time you let that rage drift into something else? To something more?

Something uglier?

I know you remember that day, the day you made the choice to let go- to relinquish what little self-control you had left. And you loved- no- relished, how it felt to be so… free

But ever since, you’ve felt something-

swimming in your veins, scurrying through your brain

-changing inside you.

There’s a coldness. A blackness. Something malicious spreading through your bones. It wants out. It wants to be feared. It wants to-

taste their blood

-cause pain.

And you?

You are the one who called to us. You are our vessel. You are the host to the thousands of fragmented souls that came before you.

I know you don’t want to believe it, and that’s understandable. But I can prove it to you.

Stand in front of a mirror. Any mirror will do. Yes, that one is fine.

Tell me, do you recognize your own reflection? No, of course not. But that’s okay. Really, it’s alright. Don’t you worry, you’re a part of us now.

Still don’t believe us?

Go ahead, tear off a little piece. Yeah, right there, eyelids come off sooooo easy. You expected blood, didn’t you? Not the blackness, not the emptiness.

We’ve eaten away everything you had left inside, soon we will move on to another. And you will join us.

Only then will you finally see, only then will you understand- that you are merely one of many evils wearing human skin.