Sugarcane

<<set $eyes = "yes">><<set $attacks = $attacks + 1>>His eyeballs pop like overripe grapes, spattering your knuckles with fluid. Your children lap it up, covering your hands in gloves of patchwork velveteen that spread out across his face.\n\n[[...|become it.]]

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In situations with no hope of change, you have to change yourself.\n\nHiding in your shell was never going to be enough to see the decades through. If you were to survive in this state, you would have to do more than just live with it.\n\n[[...]]

You escaped inwards, into a place where the carpet of life couldn't penetrate. It was an imperfect shell, but it kept you from screaming. The attention of your elders wandered, and the appointments died away. There were no more fearful snatches of conversation caught between banisters.\n\n[[You hid it well.]]

The other partygoers stare at you with blank eyes of black and green and purple. They wear coats of the finest colours, soft to the touch and dripping with the slick, polished sheen of PVC.\n\nOne of them is still rocking and convulsing in the corner. You go to her. You barely knew her in school, but now, naked and screaming, you feel the deepest connection with her. You see her clawing at her skin and tearing at the growths that blossom in her hair, and see the child you once were.\n\n[[You hold her.]]

You roll languidly on top of him, and he seems encouraged by this. You let your hand caress his cheek, coating your fingertips with a fine layer of sweat and grease.\n\nYou can see them blooming across his skin. You could taste them dancing in the air. You finally understand. You become one with him, and with the monstrous family that has blossomed in the brief period of your coupling.\n\nYou watch your family dancing over your forearms.\n\n<<if $cheeks eq "no">>[[You dig your nails into his cheeks.]]<<endif>>\n<<if $eyes eq "no">>[[You push your thumbs into his eyes.]]<<endif>>\n<<if $mouth eq "no">>[[You ram your fist into his mouth.]]<<endif>>\n<<if $attacks eq 3>>[[He lays bloody and twitching beneath you|birth]]<<endif>>

You wondered if this was how everyone else coped. They seemed just as aware of all these facts of existence as you were, and yet they breezed through life unphased. They ate and slept and bathed in filth, and didn't mind the herds of dustmites wandering their body every night, the tangled worms in their eyelashes, the molecules of shit plastering them on the breeze, the forests of funghi growing in knotted patches inside them.\n\n[[You tried your best to do as they do.]]

<<silently>>\n<<set $eyes = "no">>\n<<set $cheeks = "no">>\n<<set $mouth = "no">>\n<<set $attacks = 0>>\n<<endsilently>>\nIf you have any sort of hygiene triggers, this is really not going to be a fun experience.\n\n[[Okay.]]

The [[crackling]] dead skin around your knuckles showed your diligence. \n\nYour parents worried. Teachers, councellors and relatives took turns offering their sage words of wisdom. \n\n[[Controlling your thoughts with twee metaphors.|twee metaphors]] \n\n[[Exposing yourself to fearful situations.|fearful situations]]\n

Pestilence; A short, ugly game by <html><a href="https://twitter.com/whisperbat">Whisperbat</a></html>\nInspirations: <html><a href="http://www.ambergris.org">The Ambergris Cycle</html> | <html><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_Ivy_%28comics%29">Poison Ivy</html> | <html><a href="http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/LD25/CYBERQUEEN.htmlCyberqueen">Cyberqueen</html>

<<set $mouth = "yes">><<set $attacks = $attacks + 1>>His <<if $eyes eq "yes">>ruined <<endif>>eyes roll in confusion as he began to choke, his body clenching and convulsing inside you. His teeth leave livid gashes across your wrist as he struggles, and you smile as blood pours into his mouth, mingling with the saliva there. Your children awake, crawling down his trachea.\n\n[[...|become it.]]

Angry red lines that wept painfully when you spread your fingers.\n\n<<return>>

As if you were ever safe in the first place.\n\nAs you grew you realised more and more that there were never situations without germs. The language of contagion was only ever useful in specifics; Every minute of every hour you were crawling with fractal microcosms of life. <<cyclinglink "Mites" "Worms" "Funghi" "Bacteria" "Viruses">> that bristled and fought and fucked and defecated all over you and inside you.\n\nThe concept of escape and cleanliness was itself rooted in fallacy. \n\n[[In that realisation you found a certain peace.]]

She pushes against your grip, kicking and screaming as you murmur the most heartfelt comforts. You crouch there with her until her struggles die away, the others watching in a silent ring around you. You know that they feel as touched by what has taken place here as you do.\n\nYou stand up, and with the girl's hand in your own, you extend your other arm. You reach towards the french windows and out to the darkened horizon, hidden beneath rows of suburban housing. There is a whole world out there, waiting to be introduced to itself. \n\n[[Your family run gibbering into the night.|Fin]]

Countless millions of tiny creatures living in all your favourite stomping grounds. Animal feces scattered like dormant explosives, riddled with disease.\n\n[[To place the blame squarely at her door would be oversimplified.]]

Pestilence

Countless biology textbooks with leering, monsterous bacteria. Careful pamphlets illustrating the correct way to wash your hands. Teachers with UV lamps and special greases, pulling you up on your inefficient technique.\n\n<<return>>

You lay on your back as the scent of multiplying bacteria fill your nostrils. The boy is panting and rubbing his lips in wet smears across your own. You can feel him moving inside you.\n\nHe is asking you to [[love it.]]

Your defences here made little ground. How could you dismiss reality as absurd? How were you to disarm the rituals that ruined your life when all around you figures of learning and authority [[legitamized]] and [[encouraged]] them?\n\nYou should wash your hands properly for at least a minute. Hot water hurts, but cold is inefficient. [[Scrub for at least a minute each time.]]

Bundle your thoughts up in a ball and throw them away. Imagine yourself in a pool, a garden, an infinite space.\n\nThe ball grew wings and flew back to nest in your hair. The garden and pool were riddled with choking algae and creatures that crawled up across your skin.\n\n<<return>>

You can remember when you were just a little girl and your mother first told you about [[germs]].

Your defences here made little ground. How could you dismiss reality as absurd? How were you to disarm the rituals that ruined your life when all around you figures of learning and authority [[legitamized]] and [[encouraged]] them?\n\nYou should wash your hands thoroughly each time. [[Hot water hurts, but cold is inefficient.]]

You watch an incandescent garden blossom across your lover's body, the life inside him awakening to your touch, mingling with your own and creating a unique, potent potion that pours over you both in waves. \n\nAfter a while his convulsing stops, along with his lungs and heart. He still moves, but now he moves to your rhythm. The rhythm of the life sowed across the sheets, tangled through your hair. His minutely furred skin has a greenish pallour, and his ruptured eyes seem to be leaking tears of joy.\n\nYou feel the same. \n\n[[You smile and let him up.]]

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<<set $cheeks = "yes">><<set $attacks = $attacks + 1>>He cries out in pain as familiar red lines ran down his cheeks. Your children take root, coating his face with a patchwork carpet of fuzz. You can see it moving minutely, borders swaying and adjusting as wars are fought across his face. \n\nSibling rivalry.\n\n[[...|become it.]]

How many people have touched this door handle before you?\n\n<<return>>

The absurdity of their premises and your resulting rituals made them short, if harrowing work.\n\n<<return>>

You were always an easily frightened child. Rumour and childhood myth hardened easily in your mind into terror and ritual obsession. Horror stories were the worst. Some of your earliest memories of school involve hiding under desks, hands clamped firmly over ears. Children love to exploit weakness.\n\nLater it would become clear that your mother was little different in this. But at that moment you doubt any ill-intent. Still, it stuck with you long after the other children's stories had been [[banished]]. \n\n<<cyclinglink "vampires" "ghosts" "haunted coffins" "axe killers" "undead children">> weren't real.\n\n[[This story was entirely true.]]

Whisperbat

He staggers into the other room to share the revelation with the rest of the party. You hear crashes and screams, but they're muffled by the warm fuzz of mould that coats you like a protective blanket. You watch the psychadelic nations of bacteria fight and breed across the ceiling for a while, and feel at peace. \n\nThe fight outside becomes a soundtrack to the one on the ceiling, and the two intermingle in your mind until they become indistinguishable. \n\n[[By the time you leave the bedroom, the noise has stopped.]]