Rotten petals fall to the ground below you, accompanied by a ceaseless dripping. You try to lose yourself in it — the repeating pattern of sounds, coming at equal intervals, as a perpetual cycle and a reminder that you are in a space apart — it helps ground you into the unreality you find yourself in. You tilt your head downwards and the dripping intensifies, decaying flowers fall over your eyes. Behind them, you see the apparition. It flickers in and out of existence, its movements are disrupted and uneven. You keep drifting elsewhere but the steady reverberations of droplets bring you back to the present moment, and the apparition stood before you — light emanating from its see-through limbs — doesn’t let you slip back into the void. You unfold your hand forward to touch it, but it passes right through. The corners of your unreality bend and shatter into debris of your undying dreams. 

Strange liquid continues oozing from your mind, a ringing builds up in your ears, behind your eyes, inside your skull. You bring your hand to where your hair should be and the skin covering your scalp. Thorns pierce into it, yet you continue moving deeper. Stems of decomposed flowers, their thorns still sharp enough to etch a tapestry of scars onto your hands and arms as you plunge them further into your open skull. You touch the soft tissue of your brain. The ringing becomes excruciating. 

You look for solace in the apparition as it approaches. Light radiating all around it, it brings its hands towards you like sun’s rays upon your fallen and decayed leaves. For mere moments, it lets you forget that you are rotting; whatever parts of you had not withered away are reminded of what it’s like to be alive. The apparition moves closer, its light gently touches on your skin, pushing your hand further down into the opening in your skull. Your fingers touch on something moist and warm — a wormlike being brushes past you, spirals between your fingers and vanishes deeper into your psyche. Your worldview drowns in the ringing, the edges of your unreality crack, forming bruises that reach all the way to the center of your vision. Panicked, you glance at the apparition, finding its face in front of yours, its eyes glimmering with a certain menace. You feel it carve its body into your mind. It draws its own form. Faint whispers materialise in the periphery of your vision and grow louder with the apparition’s approach. It is hard to tell what they are a product of. The graveyard of flowers growing from the rot inside of you — you used to hear their dying cries as they wilted before ever seeing the sun. The voices of the inhabitants of your mind, their echoes resound inside of you and get so muddled up together you can’t tell who’s speaking and if anyone is anymore; or if their voices are no different than light of long dead stars. 

The apparition looks you in the eyes, waiting for a sign of recognition. You know full well who it is and what it wants from you. You don’t know why it came for you or why it took that form. You don’t know if it's saving you or only sending you further in your descent into insanity. It’s not supposed to be real, you whisper to yourself. You watch as the apparition leans in front of your face; all you see is sunlight behind the wilted petals. It reaches for the rotten flowers, its light cut by the thorns as it lifts the flowers from your face. You look right into it, you drown in it, you forget all that you are and have ever been. It feels like a drug, but the low hits you way before the high has the opportunity to dissipate.

Pressure builds up behind your eye as the parasite crawls out of your eye socket. It slithers down your cheek leaving a blood trail behind itself, having devoured whatever was left of you. The apparition wipes away your tears of blood. You want to pull the parasite out, but you get too lost in the apparition’s presence. Light illuminating your face, the gentle warmth of its fingertips on your decaying skin. You wonder if it notices that you are no longer fully living.

And still, you keep reminding yourself that it is not real. You must not lose yourself in its unreal, nonexistent love. You grab onto the parasite and begin pulling it out of your brain. The ringing grows louder, long beyond unbearable, and yet, it doesn’t stop you. The apparition quivers vehemently in and out of reality, its light hurting you more and more each time it comes back. You almost consider letting the parasite find its way back into your brain, make a home inside of there and never leave. Maybe then you will feel its unreal love for you again. You watch the apparition’s face contort into a strange expression of anger and contempt. The ringing sends you spiralling and your mind feels like it will collapse in on itself. You notice yourself wondering if the parasite loves you, as you keep pulling its long body out of your mind, feeling it glide past each crevice of your brain, feeling reality crack wide open and contort in every direction, the ringing almost blinding you now, drowning out the dripping from your skull and all the remnants of voices that have inhabited your mind since you were a child. You pull the parasite’s body back into your eye socket and out through your brain. 

It lays in your hands like a red string. You wonder if it connects you and the apparition in some way. A real presence of an imaginary being. Reality bends in unnatural ways and the pain spreads beyond your body. The apparition steps away, its blinking light hushes, making its flames appear faded. Your body feels like it’s dying. You try to bring yourself back, focusing on the repeating noise of the trickling fluid coming out of your own mind. You cry tears of blood and stare at the apparition, trying to catch its glances, begging for it to look your way, as you are crouched on the floor, blood trailing down your cheeks, cerebrospinal fluid oozing out of your skull, decaying flowers sprouting from your mind — a demonstration of your rot and an endless reminder that you cannot hide your decay. They see it, they look into your eyes and see that you are all rotten. The apparition sees it too, that’s why it looks at you with such contempt. 

You reach your arms towards the apparition, how a child would reach for its mother and you beg for saving. It looks back at you absently, as if it doesn’t even recognise who you are, and in its stare you catch a glimpse of that same hatred you saw before. Its flames extend into the cracks of your unreality and seep into a place beyond yourself. You watch the apparition as it abandons you and wish for the return of that unreality in which you felt it lift the wilted petals away from your face, in which you looked at each other and saw each other, in which you thought its light might un-wilt your rotten flowers and turn your decaying flesh to life again. 

…and you??