#madness

The wind is cold. The late autumn night wind drilled through the battered glass window of the small eatery, scraping against faces with a dull, lingering ache. The diner's old incandescent bulb flickered erratically. Its light fell upon two bowls of steaming rice on the table, and also onto the bowed head of the student. No one knew that this seemingly silent high schooler, always wearing a washed-out school uniform, was already rotten to the core.

Mark Fischer was infamous in his hometown. Much to his own disdain, he was largely harmless. Even still, he had a notoriety similar to that of a local serial killer that violently forced their way into a place's history. The act that earned him his infamy was not violent, though it did have a certain aggressiveness to it. His act was that he walked every day. He made it his mission to be a one-man parade for the residents of his hometown. He didn’t want to go out every day but didn’t need to…

Howdy. You can call me "Jack." It's not my real name, but that's what I'll go by for now. I reckon the time to tell my story has come. Believe it or don't, but here it is. I suggest you take away the lessons it teaches, even if you dismiss it all as bullshit like 98% of the other stories on the internet. But there's more truth in this story than any one of you could know.

My name is Edward Polist, and for most of my life I was a detective. People used to say I had a gift for seeing things others missed, that I could notice patterns hidden in chaos, that I could follow the smallest detail until it led me somewhere real. I believed them, maybe more than I should have. My work became the only thing that made sense to me, the only place where the world followed rules. Evidence led to answers, actions had consequences, and nothing simply happened without a reason.…

About five years ago I lived downtown in a major city in the US. I've always been a night person, so I would often find myself bored after my roommate, who was decidedly not a night person, went to sleep. To pass the time, I used to go for long walks and spend the time thinking.

I was always afraid of the lunch lady when I was a kid.  I don't know why; maybe it was the toxic stench of her breath, or the dead look in her eyes, or the unkempt hairs dangling off her chin.  No matter what the reason was, my palms grew sweaty and my heart pounded every time I passed her in the lunch line.  I never felt quite at ease until I had left the cafeteria, and even then I still was worried I would catch sight of her in the hallway between classes.

Maybe it's late at night, but you can't sleep. You're bored, or you can't stop a bazillion thoughts from racing through your skull, or maybe you had too much coffee, or you're a little drunk. Whatever the case, I've been there, my friend. I know how it feels to sit there and realize that you're not really living right now. You're just existing. Surely there's something you can do, right?

Eric, my precious little boy. Just look at those precious eyes! They're big and bulging out of their sockets, staring in opposite directions. He has such a nice face—sure, he's missing a nose, but there's nothing wrong with that. Now, look at that wide smile and those white, clean teeth. I helped brush them yesterday; don’t they look nice? They look nice to me!

It was times like these, when I wished I could just run away and never look back. I wanted to scream, but I only could cry internally from all the stress that came from my family. My father and my stepmother always go at each other’s neck like a couple of lions fighting over a piece of meat. There is no peace, sometimes I wish, I could crawl into a hole and never come out of it. I desperately pray to God that every day would at least get a little better, but it never does. Nothing never gets…

The homunculus was a thin, flat, disproportionate thing that was too smooth, too round, and seemingly forever dissatisfied with its own ludicrous appearance. The first time I ever laid eyes on it, I had just arrived at my tech job, fresh from a stay of extended medical leave, mind already ablaze with the problems of yesterday’s virtual meetings. A semicircle of young and middle-aged colleagues surrounded and watched in hushed excitement as the thing changed. What I initially recognised as an…

Think about this for a second, when you delete a file, a video, an image, literally anything on the internet, where does it go? Is it technically still out there? Is it in the hands of someone else? Well, I sure as hell found out.

Sometime during the night of August 16, 1952, the small town of Ashley, Kansas ceased to exist. At 3:28am on August 17, 1952, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake was measured by the United States Geological Survey. The earthquake itself was felt throughout the state and most of the midwest. The epicenter was determined to be directly under Ashley, Kansas.

Behind the unsteady glow of a flickering candle, Gideon, a man of pallid skin and restless eyes, sat slumped in his painting chamber. He would spend his days withering away here as he grappled with the monstrous quiet of an unraveling mind. He was known to be a brilliant portraitist, capturing the essence of his subjects with confident, precise strokes. In his hands, even the smallest nuance became a revelation, bringing to light the hidden beauties within every visage.

November 1756 Quebec Canadian Wilderness

Tap, tap, tap… Tap, tap. Silence... tap.

My life seemed like it was going pretty well. I had just received my bachelor’s degree at the state college, and received the fairly well-paying job as an office manager. The thing is, something felt like it was missing from my life… I wanted love. I wanted to have a wife to keep me company, but the only women I knew worked at the office—and were drop-dead ugly.

A true (?) story.

It had been a long, tiring day at work. It was quiet as I waited alone for the train. It was a bit after midnight, and so dark that I could only see the square foot around me that the small light illuminated. Fortunately, I wasn’t stuck waiting long for the train. Eagerly, I ran in the second the doors opened.

Edgar raised his head up from his chest; back pressed firmly into his favorite recliner, his entire body drenched in cold sweat. He stared into shadows at the edge of the living room, eyes welling with tears as he lifted the revolver slowly and deliberately to his temple. “Seventeen”, he whispered to the darkness.

Everybody knows that if you surf the web long enough, you'll see some pretty sick shit. This is especially true if you intentionally dwell into the dark underbelly of the internet. I've seen quite a few things I don't care to admit to, but one thing that I'll always remember is a site called "normalpornfornormalpeople.com". The first strange thing about the site was that I didn't find it by actually looking for it. It was e-mailed to me by someone I didn't know. The e-mail was as follows: