cynoworldmusic

I've worked as a lunch lady/cafeteria worker for close to a year now and it's the best job I've ever had.

I do not know this man. I do not know this man in the mirror. The one staring right back at me, moving his eyes to reflect wherever I look. He does every single thing I do. Makes every single face, pokes back at fingers aimed against the glass, and turns his back when I turn mine. To the untrained eye, it looks as any normal reflection does; behaves as any mirror is designed to do. There is nothing obviously out of the ordinary that would arouse suspicions otherwise.

I hate snow. Not in the way most people hate the inconvenience of shoveling their driveways or the sting of icy wind slicing through their scarves. Not in the way someone groans when their morning commute is slowed to a crawl or when their favorite shoes soak through, leaving their socks clammy and cold. No, my hatred runs deeper than that—bone-deep, marrow-deep, settling into the cracks of my ribs like frost that never thaws.

You take the pills to keep them away. That’s what we were told when we were first brought down here--down through the sterile white halls with their flickering fluorescent lights, and our small, Spartan cells. Down into the nightmare. Why would we agree to this?

The term “synthetic drug” refers to a new type of drug on the market that has been created to skirt existing laws on illicit drugs. Thousands of psychoactive compounds are regulated by the law of the Federal Controlled Substances Act. However, in creating synthetic drugs, manufacturers alter the chemical structure of an illegal drug, modifying it to create an “analog” or derivative of that drug, to, essentially, make it quote unquote legal.

It started about a year and a half ago. I was on the internet reading about Libya, Gaddafi and the Arab Spring when I felt a sensation on the back of the neck. At first it was just a slight itch but it progressively became more and more intense. It felt as if a little itty bitty ant was crawling up and down the back of my neck. The only way to stop it was to slap the back of my neck. Sometimes it felt like it was burrowing into my skin. Once it burrowed in, I had to itch it away or else it…

((The following passage was found on an abandoned jump-drive two miles outside of Philadelphia. Though a somewhat longer passage, it has been passed on to, edited, and submitted by K.B. Miller. Original sources refused to disclose the exact location where such jump-drive was found. Therefore, certain names and events have been changed or redacted.)) **** I can't believe I'm doing this.

Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn’t kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running…