“Let me stop you there, Mr. Monroe, we already know the rest of that story.”
“We’ve heard of the condition before, and it is understandable for someone to freak out, to think that they were infected given the horrible experience they were subjected to. Couple that with the stress of your situation, à la the Third War, and no wonder you developed such a strong case of phantom itch.”
“We can assure you, Mr. Monroe, that the condition is not contagious, and everything you’ve experienced so far is merely psychological.”
“We have, however, develop medicines for exactly this phenomenon. To use your terms, we can put those “fairies” latching onto your brains to sleep.”
“Thank you for your service, Mr. Monroe. For the country, and for fighting against your “condition” for so long. But you’re in good hands now, soldier. Let us ease your struggle.”
end of tape 2. Tape 1 is currently located at coordinates XX-XXXX, file marked under Year 2035.
“He came close, I gave him that.”
“He was going to break sooner or later. Look at those hands, tranquilizers enough to subdue an elephant and they are still moving.”
“You got to give it to the guy, no one has been “cursed” for that long. Just imagine the size of the hive inside him.”
We couldn’t pronounce their name, but we called them Fred, the Writhing Hivemind. We learned of their existence around the First War, when a hive of fairies bursted out of a marine. We didn’t lie to Monroe, the “condition” isn’t contagious. He was just unlucky to have been chosen as the next host. Fred claimed to be an Ancient One, and “they have awakened to quiet the Earth once again.” We have heard that before. In fact, Fred sits at the bottom of a long list of Ancient Ones, bickering days in days out to see who would get the honour to wipe out humanity. We often bring those that has been affected by Fred here, breaking them open like a pinata as an offering to Fred. A self-proclaim strategist, this Ancient One is content with sitting back and waiting for his “army” to grow sizable enough to infect every man and woman in one fell swoop.
Two issues with the plan: by the time the new patch of fairies grow inside Fred’s chosen one, the last patch would have already died out without their host. Second, Fred knew he wasn’t the most powerful. So, there he stewed in the cottage we assigned for him, sleeping, pulsating, groaning. Now about Monroe. The dedicated soldier Monroe, the strong-willed, physically fit, has been alive for at least 3000 years Monroe.
We found Fred in Australia, after a mining company dug straight into his lair. Pictures showed a giant, black honeycomb system, where the walls would flake off revealing millions of those fairies. Even now, teams are mapping the structure out as best as they could, knowing full well those fairies could decide to change move an inch to the left and everything would change. In the pile is a picture of my grandfather, or at least his face, poking out of the wall of miniscule creatures, smiling. A few flips of the photos, and grandpa wasn’t smiling anymore. He couldn’t, with his stomach split in the middle and a black cloud spewing out of it. The artistic integrity is not loss on me. You find entertainment in this job whenever you can.
I remember meeting Fred for the first time, long after he was brought into the cottage, but before Monroe. Fred sent someone for me, specifically (or as I was told by my supervisor), and I was to come with two “feeds.” Feed A was a young man of about 15 years old with 20 murders under his belt, and another was a bodyguard for a drug lord. Healthy, despicable men, whose suffering were swift in comparison to Fred’s usual methods. They were hungry, I was informed, after a long nap, and the results were two human… sheets, flat and punctured and bloodless, as if squeezed by a hydraulic press.
After the meal, Fred got to talking, his thoughts pierced directly into my brain. They wanted a deal. A simple, yet effective way for him to grow their power and followings: a name. Not to him, but his curse. Normalize it, let his power runs deep into the lexicon of mankind, give hope with pills and creams and herbs and alternative treatments, allow some to think they can overcome the condition with willpower, fund groups of sufferers, and help those groups grow. Of course, Fred could easily make his curse contagious, but that would enrage the Ancient Ones far stronger than he was, not to mention we could easily quarantine and deal with plague-adjacent diseases (after all, we have survived the black plague, corona, the Z outbreak…). No, Fred’s aim was our genes, to put his fairies inside our DNA, and eventually, as they envisioned, men’s sense of community will bring about its downfall.
And thus, eczema was created.