Every morning he looked at the donuts on the cart, and sometimes he’d pick one and gobble it down on his rush to work, but he’d hesitate, too, because once in a while, when he’d least expect it, there was black magic in his food supply.
He was always trying to “get away”, from whatever it was that was “on” him or “in” him. He lived in a plastic bubble when he was little, then as a compromise began living in households, but always up on a tactilly quiet sheet of metal, so that the little bugs couldn’t “plague” him.
“Getting away” was something he leveraged, fo rhe knew he could have an effect on the weather, or the people around him, by concentrating in a way that ust would not be possible if he were infested and always moving inside. Small birds, puppies, and women swarmed to his floridly psychotic tune.
The bugs were frustrated, for his karma called for vast demonic infestation, and they were there to do their job, but they couldn’t figure out how to mount the attack, with him always up on that metal sheet, and eating only fresh raw greens, staying away from anything the parasites could travel on. And so out of the frustration, they opened up their mind into the larger hive mind of the bug world to search for a solution.
the large, hive mind, all-knowing because it was part of just about every organism, and privy to all the internal thought of those organisms, had no shortage of methods of infestation, considering itself all-powerful; “resistance is futile”.
His mind was scanned and his behavior was narrated, with a push toward getting him closer to the bugs. the minds of those around him were scanned to appeal to him, to distract him, to concentrate on him.
So they’d plot his day, donut carts and pizza shops along his way, and though he was usually very self-controlled, the hive mind knew there’d be weaknesses, cravings, and so they were ready, when the moment of weakness came, to send a little darkness down his gullet.
And so when he got to work, donut devoured, only then did he start to realize what had happened. Thorns, itching, hives, then as the mind grows cloudy in the torture, rage. a rage that withers the others around him, and sets the tone of the nightmare.