I cling to the mind with hooked talons. I dig in and guide their lives backwards, hindered and miserable. They know I am in complete control. They know they shouldn’t be so totally under my thumb, they know it’s irrational, and yet I win again and again. They think it is fear, but I am so much more. There is a sickness inside each one of them and I feed on their suffering. I manifest in different ways for each of them, sometimes similar but sometimes disturbingly unique. It’s almost funny how they rationalize me, almost as if they need me, or I make sense in their lives. I am a corrupted version of a natural emotion. And they feed me well, my gluttony knows no bounds however. I need more, I affect more while they try to “cure” me. But there is never really a cure, just learn to cope but continue to quietly feed me. They create interesting names for each fear I embrace within them; Acrophobia, Aracnophobia, Triscadecaphobia, the list feels endless. Endless just as I am, I evolve to embrace hate, feeding off other emotions and corrupting their minds. They may avoid whatever I so choose them to, starve themselves, hurt themselves. All for my enjoyment. I revel in their suffering and terror. Some have the pleasure of seeing my true face in their sleep. They awake unable to move, forced to gaze upon my forms. I am eternal. I am feeding off of someone you know, someone you love, and there is nothing you can do for them. They see and think exactly what I want them to. They are my puppets until I grow bored of them and throw them out with the trash. Disposable insects, existing to feed me. Pray you never experience my embrace, pray you never see my form. For you will know endless horrors, you will belong to me until I end you. Rejoice you don’t know me yet. But you all that do, those that know me. That have met me. Thanks for the meal.