Inside the skull: a poisonous bug with millions of legs, each made to stab, each altering the oscillations of your brainwaves despite the protections put in place to keep it away, to get it out get it out GET IT OUT GET IT OUT

Those are the echoes in the hallway, you walk down south and walk down to hell and there’s the echo, there’s the echo of the, “GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET IT OUT.”

The skull is quite large, the beast to which it belongs is human but not quite. The hell you’re walking towards is certainly a hell, but also not quite. You don’t know what you’re doing, do you? Neither do I. Neither does anyone else. The skull has screaming inside it and you can hear it get louder as you walk. Sometimes it gets louder. Is the hallway straight or is it curving at such a slow rate that you can’t tell it’s curving, and does it keep bringing you farther then closer then farther then closer to the skull?

As it turns out it is your own skull, but not quite. Is that getting annoying? The yes-but-no nature of it all? You can leave if you want. It’s your choice. You can turn back. You choose not to so it’s completely your fault. You’re descending, descending, descending. Is it a flat hallway or is it curving? Is it going straight ahead or is it going down? Is it a hallway or a tunnel? Where is it going? Where are you going? Where am I going? You tell me, you’re the one deciding the path.

The screaming does not ever end. Sometimes it grows faint and so you keep walking in the hopes it’ll go away completely. You’re ignoring the doors, by the way. I decided not to mention them before because you didn’t say anything about them but there are doors here, and you’re just ignoring them. Afraid you’ll see the skull in there? Afraid there might be something more complex? Afraid you might be able to actually do something about the screams? GET IT OUT.

Stolen novel; please report.

Grow a spine. I’ve been in the clutches of the bug before. It’s nothing too bad. You just pluck it out. See, we all have some bugs from time to time, they’re normal. Look at me right now. No. Stop. Stop walking (it’s pointless anyway), look at me. I am opening my skull. The top half of my forehead, you can see the bug crawl out. Many legs, it’s poisonous too, and now look. I take it out, I crush it beneath my foot.

And there you go, now you’re walking again. Too scared to confront the truth, that you could just open a door and do exactly what I did and make the screaming stop. Just crush the bug! Just crush–

Ah. Silent and sulky you are, but you listened. There’s the door. Open, wide open. The scene inside is… a wide wide arena, the skull half-cracked on its side and the bug is… the bug is… but it’s far away? But it’s small and close, but it’s big and far away, it’s throbbing and growing and shrinking and mangling the gray matter that rests inside the skull, and the poison seems to leak out of the skull. The bug’s body is integrated into the brain, the poison made a paste which makes the bug a native of the brain, one with the brain, it’s part of the brain. There’s the screaming but it’s hard to say if it’s from the brain or the spider, if there’s a difference, if it’s just… it’s just screaming. It’s just a skull, and it’s a cage, and there’s just screaming. I don’t know from where.

…

Okay. Okay. Stop looking at me like that. Stop.

Let’s just go back into the hallway. We can walk forever and forget this ever happened.

Let the screams turn into white noise.