The Beach Scene Page 3

I might now. Viruses spread through contact. And minds brush against each other in so many ways. I am afraid.

  My fingers are tired. Will write more later.

  She wanted me to kill it. But it is not alive. Not really. It is an idea, an aberration, that lives only in my mind. Where did it come from? How does it work? Why did it affect me and not Sylvia? I do not know. It doesn't much matter at this point.

  Sylvia is dead. I killed her. It killed her. But it is part of me know. The blood is real this time. It will not disappear when the policemen break open the door to the apartment. It doesn't matter. I'll be dead by then. The mind worm has finished with me, but when I am dead it will claim another mind.

  The painting is gone. I burned it, just like she said. But it doesn't matter. Only now do I understand, that the painting itself wasn't important. It was just a tool, a medium, a way for the mind worm to spread. And just as it embedded itself in the painting, so now it is weaving itself into the very fabric of the words I write.

  Yes, I think I can almost see the understanding dawning on your face, you who will read this journal after my death. You who wish discover my motives, to try to catch a glimpse into my deranged mind, you will soon know more of my story than you bargained for. It is in you now, already taking control of your consciousness, only allowing you to see what it wants you to see, only allowing you to think what it wants you to think. I wish I could feel sympathy for you, but that part of me is dead, consumed by the mind worm. I am resigned to my fate. And to yours.

  You may try to destroy these words, to burn the pages of this journal, but it will be too late. It won't let you. You'll feel it growing inside you, invading your dreams, filling your mind with an inexplicable horror, and you'll want to escape, but you'll find that you can't.

  Because you can never escape from yourself. You too will experience the lapses of memory, the headaches that no pill can cure. You too will share in the path that I have trod. The path that leads through the woods of madness and emerges on the other side onto the plains of an undiscovered country. And in the end...well...you should already know what happens in the end.