A Delusional Disease

You say I am insane, but why, when I am the epitome of reasonableness, my capability I will prove by relating my story.

It wasn't long ago, though the exact date matters little, when I experienced a sudden onslaught of symptoms, similar in manner to the common flu. Though I recovered in due time, I grasped the truth, I was a victim of a singular virus. Mutated, it threatened to decimate mankind, with myself as the epicenter of a deadly, apocalyptic disease, fated to usher me to a mutilated end.

A scientific, professional opinion, was useless. Any witness would detect nothing unusual in my condition, and contaminate themselves in the process. Outwardly, I appeared as fit as an Olympic athletic, but inside I was like a piece of ancient cheese, rotten in the center, oozing and befouled with mold.

Only one treatment presented itself to my mind. Though no one would observe my martyrous end, I would wall myself off from all human contact, trapping myself under the floorboards if need be. With no caretaker, no medical assistance, and only the food I'd purchased the day before, my expiration didn't seem distant.

Curious readers will ask, if I saw my end as imminent, why I didn't perform some humane escape from my inevitable condition, but the answer is as obvious as my affliction. As the great suffers, Oedipus, Odysseus, and Jude I experienced a prideful desire to demonstrate my bravery. Though I'd enjoy no applause for my sacrifice, humanity'd belatedly recognize my dedication to suffer for their survival. Paradoxically, how few would sleep the eternal sleep peremptorily, even with full knowledge of the other option: extended distress and decline?

This enforced retreat offered me the opportunity to reflect and my mind fixated on the relevant topic: the body and its inhabitants. For we, are like the office buildings, the factories, the schools, the hospitals, and the homes of these abominable minions who thrive in multitudes upon our epidermis and in our innards, crawling upon that you and I view as vile, hidden from the light.

Aside from my condition and the thoughts it provoked, my societal withdrawal was painless, and even relaxing. I ate well at first, cooking feasts with my free time. I read the books that line my walls which I'd always intended to read before the end, and prepared this letter, though I've been forced to amend and expand it as the further events will attest.

The tranquility couldn't last, and sadly, it wasn't sickness which initiated the suffering. Without societal conflict, my inhibitions toward an occasional afternoon nap lapsed, and one day I was surprised to discover my dearest friend touching my on the shoulder as I reclined on the couch. Within the space of a breath, I'd recollected my position, and lamented internally at my friend's calamitous stumble into my sphere.

How and why had he entered my home and tomb? Simple. I'd given him a key a year or two ago, and having failed to return any messages from my seclusion, he'd come to investigate my condition. Though I knew he wouldn't understand our mutual situation I tried to explain. I did, and zealously offered him a place by my side until the end.

It wasn't his rejection which brought our conversation to an abrupt end, it was his laughter which drove me to sudden inspiration, (not madness as others will call it), and the most solid object I could see, collided solidly with his temple.

I must clarify, for I won't do either of us a disservice: it wasn't his laughter which occasioned my action, but what it implied. He'd rejected my selfless suffering, my heroism, and my certain faith, my lonely death. And I, hero of humanity that I am, would rather suffer the guilt of his passing, than allow him to pollute the world.

But I didn't brood about any insult as I bashed the fractured tumbler against his temple until the work was completed.

With this event, I could see a series of further investigations which would necessarily terminate with professional inquiry, and I didn't cower from the consequence, but dedicated further study to the martyrs of history, Socrates, Thomas Moore, Guru Bahadur, and Malcolm to prepare myself for the scorn of society, undoubtedly preparing retribution upon myself even though I sought only to serve.

Though an outsider observe might view my friend's visit as a curse, it transformed into a blessing: it led society's enforcers to my abode before I subsided from starvation. By the time I heard a banging at my door, the flesh had fled from my fingers, and crept from my chest, leaving a sunken cavity.

“Come out,” they called, but receiving no answer they began to break door down with such blows, that my poor, contaminated, hungry head shook and ached, as if itself was the splintering wood.

Exhausted and unable to move, I shrieked, “I can't.” Yet needed to inform them of the doom if they entered, my effort discarded like a spent needle. I reclined upon the floor, but the bacteria, those billions of bodies, forced me to rise, and I stumbled to the stairs, pistol clutched in appendages more like a skeleton's, than a man's.

Are these bodily invaders, these essential operators, as singled minded as we make them to be? Or are we the fools, driven by forces beyond our control, bound by genetics, germs, and governmental agencies? These men at my door pursued me as stubbornly, as ants ordered on by their queen, or as unthinkingly as a virus desperate to breach the cellular barrier and replicated itself at the expense of the host.

And when they eventually entered, I treated them as the automaton they were, unworthy of the revelation I'd tried to relate to their unresponsive senses.

I fired, and they tried to speak to me, but the disease constricted me in a delirium. I might kill six, sixty, or six hundred, but it would be preferable to apprehension, enabling the virus to escape this room. So I fired again, until I'd exhausted my abundant arsenal.

Body and weapon spent, they captured me, but their psyches flailed feebly at the sight of the living room. They'd discovered my dedication, a pile of bodies, friends, family, and acquaintances who'd I'd been forced to entrap in my effort to contain my illness.

As they carry me out into the sunlight, I scream, warning them of apocalypse, but already, in sunlight, a month since, I question whether this is a disease which never will come.