Darkness took me. The world disappeared right before my eyes and then there was nothing. Not even myself. I tried lifting my hand and bringing it close to my eyes, but there was nothing. I tried grabbing my face, but I felt nothing. I realized, then, that I couldn't sense anything, not even my own body. In that darkness, I could only think.

"Where am I?", I thought, "How did I get here?"

I had gone walking. A disappointing morning had turned into an insufferable afternoon. My body had stretched and twisted every time I had tried to focus.

"I need air.", I had thought.

As I walked through the streets I had seen a man approaching me, his face known to me, a famous face. A face I hated with all my being. A face I had dreamed of ruining, of changing so it could never be seen without a reminder of the pain that man had caused. He had approached me to ask me a question, a cameraman behind him. Oh, that voice, how I hated that voice. He sounded just like every invading thought I had ever had.

That's the last thing I remembered. After that, the world had zoomed out, my senses disappearing, my body no longer mine.

I felt the wetness before I saw the blood or heard the crying. Something man-shaped lay under me, its 'torso' between my legs. It couldn't be a person, though, for people had heads and this... thing didn't. Where one would expect a face, there was a red mess, bits of white hard stuff protruding from a crimson pulp. I zoomed back into the world and I felt a kick at the back of my mind, the sound of room full of tubes turning on the electricity filling my ears. Around me, a cameraman had put his camera on the ground and was pulling me away from what used to be a man, probably his friend. I saw the mess of blood and bones I had unequivocally created and sunk. All my hatred had left me, all my anger spent. I had done something unforgivable, but I didn't feel sad. I had been excluded from the experience, a deeper self taking over for the act itself. I realized It had been brewing, churning, growing, and waiting for years. From the moment I had first hated until that act of relief, another me had lived alongside myself within my body. It had ceased the opportunity to be free and left without concerns or consequences.

We stop ourselves from engendering the Entity of Festering so we may be in control of our lives.

Book of Nightmares, 1, 2

The Book of Nightmares is a collection of short stories used to describe my biggest recurring fears and nightmares. One of those is the idea of losing control of my actions, which sometimes happens just as I wake up. I've often felt my body is inhabited by another in those moments between fully waking up and being asleep. I've made terrible decisions in that state, often regretting them as I wake up and become conscious of those actions.