Madness

I.

“He is life's liberating force.

He is release of limbs and communion through dance.

He is laughter, and music in flutes.

He is repose from all cares— he is sleep!

When his blood bursts from the grape

and flows across tables laid in his honor

to fuse with our blood,

he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows

of ivy-cool sleep.”

― Euripides, The Bacchae

***

They called it Morgellons disease. When I told the doctors about the vines that had begun their march through my veins. The grapes that had begun to swell under my skin, creating bulges and ulcers that stretched my skin, pulled at my joints. My pimples began oozing wine instead of pus. It hurt to walk, for my toes had been swollen with grape-sized bunions. It began about a month ago.

I was twenty-two.

My finals were next week. It was my senior year. All I had to do was make it through the next month, and then I’d be free. Free to pursue my insanity. So instead of being institutionalized, I left the doctors office, holed up in my dorm, and studied.

I looked over my classical literature. I was a Classics major. It had always been a point of contention with my parents. A useless major, they said. A silly fantasy, chasing after childhood dreams, rejecting common sense in favor of a beautiful but shallow dream.

Some people wrote. Some people drew. Some people sculpted clay. My art form was consumption: The Odyssey. The Iliad. The Bacchae.

The Bacchae.

Something about that story resonated with me, a deep, sacred sensation that wove its way through my soul. It was a feeling I had never felt before, a sense of belonging, of place. An identity. Where did it come from? And why, only now, was I feeling it?

I had found myself in the pages. Purpose. Life. Meaning. Love. Joy.

I gave up on studying and instead read and reread Euripides’s tragedy until I could practically recite it from memory.

And thus began my Madness.

II.

“Prepare yourselves

for the roaring voice of the God of Joy!”

― Euripides, The Bacchae

***

After failing my exams (an expected result, but still a painful one, especially my most cataclysmic failure: 13% in English, in what had previously been my best subject.) I resolved to dedicate the remainder of my life to madness. Contrary to popular belief, Madness, like any other skill, can be learned. Practiced. Mastered.

I freed the grapes from underneath my skin. Plucked them out and ate them. The wine that ran from my veins stained the carpet of my apartment, just like it stained my teeth. Red. Red wine.

My bed began smelling strongly of vinegar. Or perhaps it was piss. Piss and vinegar, ha, ha. I would wake up in the night clutching wet sheets, my body throbbing, the grapes growing larger and larger until my whole body was simply a mass of deformed flesh, and then shrinking back down again. Returning to normal. Except my skin was looser now. I was a vessel. A vessel for more grapes. More wine. More vines. My body was a vineyard, a winery. I was merely a field waiting to be tilled, a harvest of grapes waiting to be fermented into something greater.

No more college. No more job. I was a full-time Madman.

Of course, after three months of no rent and a foul smelling odor coming from my apartment, I was evicted. The rest of my savings went to paying for damages. Something about stained carpets. Alas, an unfortunate side-effect of my condition.

Madness, I have discovered, is a comfort. Insanity has freed me from those daily tediums. ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’ right? I am no longer a dull boy. Now I’m sharp. Like a knife. Or a broken wine bottle, with deep red-hued pieces that get lost in the carpet and stick into your bare feet.

It’s funny, I’d always thought a psychotic break would be terrifying. No idea what is real or what isn’t. But I know exactly what’s real: the vines. The wine.

I drank a lot of it, the wine. More than before. I’d always enjoyed liquid courage on the weekends, but now, with no obligations, every day was a weekend. More time to devote to my new god, Dionysus. He had chosen me as his apostle, his servant, his protege. A new Pentheus, Man of Sorrow, except I will not make the same mistakes. I will remain reverent. I have been chosen. Of all the Madmen, every person with the dark seed within them, I have been chosen to let it flourish, let it sprout, let it grow, let my dark fruit give birth to the finest wine: Madness.

I wandered the vine-encrusted undersides of bridges, cut my feet on the broken glass and stones that lined my path. Follow the vines. Follow the vines. Follow the vines.

Once a boy holding a shining smartphone dumped wine on my head as I slept. It awoke me, cold, sticky, sweet. He laughed as he stuffed his phone into my face.

“Look at this loser,” he said with a cackle. “I bet you’re addicted to crack, aren’t you? Ain’t ya? Ancha? Ancha?”

Ancha. Ancha. Ancha.

His voice distorts, becomes a chant. Like a prayer to some ancient god.

Without thinking, my hand closes around his wrist. He drops the phone. The screen shatters. I see my wild eyes reflected in it, twin pits, deep, bottomless, empty.

“You’re gonna pay for that, you crackhead bitch!” he screams.

I stare at him with cold, dead eyes.

“ΘΥΜΑΣΑΙ?”

The voice was not my own, the words, a language I did not recognize. The question was as much directed at me as it was at the boy. If only I knew what I was asking. What I was being asked.

I let go of his wrist. White marks on his skin turning red. He ran. I ran. Opposite directions. I just knew I could not stay here anymore.

He left the broken phone on the sidewalk.

I was aware after minutes (Hours? Days? Years?) of running that I was being followed. My shadow was in front of me, illuminated by approaching red and blue lights, the rhythm of my heavy breathing obscured by the pulsating rhythm of sirens.

I stopped running, surrendered. A deep feeling in my stomach, somewhere between dread and peace, told me it was time.

III.

“O Dionysus, Son of God,

do you see our sufferings?

Do you see your faithful

in helpless agony before the oppressor?

O Lord, come down from Olympus,

shake your golden thyrsus

and stifle the murderer's insolent fury.”

― Euripides, The Bacchae

***

I was twenty-four, and the padded cell made it hard to breathe.

Not in the literal sense, simply in the metaphorical. Here there was no wine, no vines to follow. Only white walls, too soft for me to crush the grapes upon it.

It was still hard to breathe. In and Out. In was easy. Getting out, much harder.

I have to get out.

I had been there, in the place they call Harvest Hospital, for two months before I resolved to end my life.

I thought extensively of how I would do it, confined to four padded walls and two pills a day. Antipsychotics, they told me. I learned it was in my best interest to lie when they asked about my “persistent delusions.”

The vines were still here. The grapes were still here. The only thing missing was the sweet sweet wine.

I found myself picking at hangnails until they bled, comforting myself on the miniscule droplets of wine that shed from my fingers. When I could, I smeared it on the walls— the padded walls may have resisted my flesh, but the wine it absorbed hungrily, a stain— in words I did not recognize, but that thrilled me with some infernal meaning.

ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ.

One of the therapists (one of many, an every rotating cast of professionals whose names and faces blurred together, psychiatrists and specialists and doctors and soothsayers and mindfulness coaches and every manner of well-educated quacks who claimed to understand what I was feeling, what I was.) inadvertently translated this phrase for me in a session.

“So what does Dionysus mean to you?” she asked.

I was startled into speaking.

“What?”

“Dionysus. The word on your walls.”

I was silent, mulling over this new significance. She continued to prod, but I ignored her. Dionysus. He was here, within me, exerting his influence. Closer than I’d ever imagined. It was a thrilling, almost sensual, realization.

It only strengthened my resolve.

I knew I needed to die. To kill myself. It was the final step in a two-year journey. The ultimate climax of Madness. I began my search. On the rare moments when I left my room, I was scouring the floors, looking for anything I could use. A screw. A broken bit of plastic. A discarded paper clip. Anything.

Nothing.

I scratched an itch. A particularly annoying pimple— a grape— I picked at until it oozed sweet wine. I sucked it away. A red ring left on the flesh of my arm where it used to be. An abscess. An absence.

I wondered if I could tear out my veins— the vines, ΦΛΕΒΕΣ— with my teeth. Perhaps I could. But probably not. I’m not crazy enough yet, I suppose. I must push myself further.

Once alone, I bite my shoulders, easily hidden underneath the cream white hospital gown. Deep red marks. No blood.

Not Mad enough. Never Mad enough. Get better. Get stronger. Rip and tear and bite and swallow the wine and the grapes and write His name on the walls. Dionysus. ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ.

I am close. So close. Very close. I can taste the wine, smell the vines, lose myself in the sickly sweet sensation of Madness.

I bite again. This time there is blood. A small bead of it, like a dew drop on a spider’s web, crimson. Red wine.

Closer. Closer still.

I surrender for the night.

Perhaps tomorrow.

IV.

“His blood, the blood of the grape,

lightens the burden of our mortal misery.

Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out

to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.”

― Euripides, The Bacchae

***

Blood. Wine.

Blood. Wine. Grapes. Flesh.

ΑΙΜΑ. ΚΡΑΣΙ.

He is trying to tell me something. It is written on the walls. I cannot read it. Yet. I have tried to decipher the letters, and nearly succeeded, but I cannot decipher the words they spell. Meaningless collections of consonants and vowels. Letters without words. Words without meaning. A lost language.

Blood. Wine. Flesh. Drinking. Hunting. Darkness. Heat. Shattered. Broken fragments of memory. Memories that don’t exist.

What does it mean?

ΚΑΤΑΝΑΛΩΣΑΤΕ ΤΟΥΣ ΥΠΗΡΈΤΕΣ ΜΟΥ, ΑΝΕΞΑΡΤΗΤΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΙΣ ΣΥΝΕΠΕΙΕΣ. ΤΩΡΑ ΚΑΤΑΝΑΛΩΝΩ ΤΟ ΜΥΑΛΟ ΣΟΥ.

It was a voice without form, without sound, without substance. An echo from within.

“I don’t understand you! What are you saying to me?”

Now I am swarmed with doctors. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. I’m still screaming.

“What do you want, my lord? I’ll do it! I’ll do anything!”

One of the doctors, or nurses, or therapists, or just some random person, shoves a needle into my neck. The pain is short lived. But the darkness approaches. Perhaps I will meet him. Perhaps I will receive the answers I seek. In dreams. The sweet nectar of the subconscious rises in my throat like vomit.

I swallow. And then I am gone.

***

A black hole of memory. Dreams of parasitic grapes fermenting in my stomach. Innards turned to wine. A great black hole reaches for me, consumes the wine and flesh. A gaping hole. There is nothing. Nothing left. It has all been taken. Something sacred has been stolen. I cry out, my voice echoes, falling on deaf ears. Red spots dance in my vision, like mirages of grapes. A mouth stretches towards me, oddly familiar lips. Stained teeth. It sucks at my stomach, tongue licking my intestines, sucking away the wine. I am unraveling, eviscerated.

Then I am awake. Cold. Sweating. Afraid.

The mouth was mine.

V.

“The gods appear in many forms,

carrying with them unwelcome things.

What people thought would happen never did.

What they did not expect, the gods made happen.”

― Euripides, The Bacchae

***

The room is smaller now. Tighter. They give me three pills instead of one, and check on me at the top of every hour. I never leave. I have lost that privilege. I am “dangerous” now, unpredictable. There’s a red label at the top of my chart— I saw it when the nurse came in to check on me. She was afraid when she looked at me. Like she expected me to lunge, attack her.

She was pretty. Almost excessively so. It was hard to look at her, knowing that to her, I was an animal. A monster. This hospital was a zoo for her, full of degenerate monkeys. She’s forced to feed us, and every time she prays she does not get bit.

I found myself thinking about her long after she left. My food had grown cold. There were no shadows outside my door.

I wondered what it would feel like if we had met another way. Another time. Another place. She looked familiar.

But that is not what Dionysus wants for me. It is not what I am meant for.

But still…

I can so easily imagine soft blonde hair in my hands, kissing soft lips…

ΟΧΙ.

No.

There is a brief fleeting moment where I remember something. Understand something. Know everything.

The moment passes. I am gone.

***

Today is the day.

For twenty years I have been waiting in this gods-forsaken hospital. Scrounging what I could. Bargaining for what I couldn’t. ​​An unholy cocktail of substances has both kept me alive and doomed me to a premature death. I could feel it. The vines grew fat and wide in my veins. The grapes began to swell into my throat. But the premature death was, of course, inevitable. It was always supposed to happen this way. Every day I awaited the day I could sink my teeth into my flesh and tear free the vines, taste the grapes, sink into the dark pool of the afterlife.

My teeth feel sharp. My flesh willing. Knives and fruit. Scissors and paper. Corkscrews and corks. Teeth and flesh.

I am watching the door. It is midnight. They will be coming to check on me, and then it will be a whole hour before they come back. If all goes well.

All will go well. This is all part of Dionysus’s plan.

Door opens. Face peeks in. I am pretending to be asleep. Door closes. I could hear the footsteps as they walked away. Maybe it was the nurse again.

One-two, three-four, five-six. Right-left, right-left, right-left.

Gone.

A wine-hued haze descends over my vision. I am frantic, manic, devoted, motivated.

Teeth ripping into flesh. Staining the clothes, the sheets, the floor. Running down my lips, my neck, my hands. Sweet wine. Sweet death. Liquid death. I am coming, Dionysus.

ΠΑΡΑΔΙΝΟΜΑΙ ΣΕ ΣΟΥ. I surrender. To you, Dionysus. My Lord.

Vision blinking in and out. No. Not yet. I need to bite more, rip and tear, bleed, die.

Oh Gods it hurts, it fucking hurts, deep red agony, ripping, tearing agony. ΑΓΩΝΙΑ.

I am shaking. Sobbing. Suddenly afraid.

It’s not wine. It is blood. My blood. Death. My death.

I am not ready.

Please, don’t…

Too late.

I’m

…

VI.

“You who are so desperately eager

to see those things you should not look upon,

so keen to chase what you should not pursue.”

― Euripides, The Bacchae

***

ΕΣΕΙΣ. Ο ΔΟΛΟΦΟΝΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΙΕΡΩΝ ΤΕΛΕΤΩΝ.

I feel the words. They pulse like hot blood at my wrists, through my vine-veins, oozing from each pimple and scab.

Then I understand them. Hear them. As if spoken, although I cannot see their source.

“You. The Killer of Sacred Ceremonies.”

“Who is there?”

There is a deep, rumbling laugh. No. Not a laugh. Laughter is too human. This was some unholy expression of Eldritch amusement. A horrifying sound, a sensation too powerful to comprehend.

“You know who I am, boy. As I know you.”

It seemed too good to be true.

“D-Dionysus?”

“Indeed.”

The darkness around me swelled with purple light, undulating, vibrant.

I looked upon the face of my God.

I expected a bearded man, a crown of vines, deep black eyes. I expected the Dionysus that I had seen in statues, in myths. Strong, powerful.

What I got was an abomination, an incomprehensible mass of flesh and vines, thousands of blinking eyes, a nonexistent mouth that formed Ancient Greek words that I could only half understand. The stench of decay mixed with sickly sweet fermenting grapes. Dripping with wine in all shades and varieties, wines as old as time itself. Aged. Sweet. Sour. Wine that by sight and smell alone made you want to lean in, take a long, endless drink… Ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, the taste of paradise itself, if only I could just…

I screamed with the raw terror that only a dead Madman can produce. The sound seemed to feed him, to stabilize the roiling mass of flesh into something distantly resembling a face, if you squinted.

His many eyes watched, and waited.

Finally, I could no longer scream. The terror had abated into a kind of distant, manageable dread.

I looked down at my body, suspended in the void, and I saw… nothing. No vines pulsing under my flesh. No grapes swelling at the edges of my bones, bursting at my skin. Just the loose skin of an addict. Wrinkled, yellowed, scarred.

I smiled.

“Lord Dionysus.”

Now I could finally have the answers. Why I was chosen, why he sent me down this path.

He shifted the roiling mass of his body. As if he was cocking his head to the side. Amused.

“You have a question, I see. Ask, child.”

“Why?”

He stops moving. His malformed face surges towards me.

“Why what?” he spit. His sudden malice rendered me speechless for a moment. But only for a moment.

“Why was I chosen? To be here? To follow this path?” I only seemed to make him even angrier, so I continued, hurriedly. “I mean, was it boredom? Obsession? A random impulse? You must’ve chosen me for something.”

Some of Dionysus’s anger abated. His laughter was dark, cold. It tingled in my ears. Like wine in the brain.

“As if I’d ever ‘choose’ the likes of you,” he sneered in a garbled version of English. It sounded as if he was mocking me.

Suddenly I wanted to cry.

“Punishment, then?” My voice shook. “For… for what?” I was afraid to ask, but as I spoke Dionysus seemed more amused than annoyed. The twisted face he’d formed grinned, impossibly wide, with teeth stained wine red. His many eyes rolled in disdain. Then he fell still, his eyes almost seeming to mist over with a gloss of tears… if such a thing was even possible.

“I see… so you truly do not remember.”

“Remember what?”

Η ΑΜΑΡΤΙΑ ΣΟΥ.

ΤΟ ΕΓΚΛΗΜΑ ΣΟΥ.

Ο ΒΙΑΣΜΟΣ ΣΟΥ.

“I don’t understand.”

Dionysus smiles, that twisted, inhuman expression. Like he wanted to swallow me whole. Pop me between his teeth like a fat, fresh grape. Plucked from the vine.

“You used to be quite the partier, Everett.”

Saying my name stirred a memory that I didn't recognize. Tried to taste the memory of parties. Tried to remember the last time someone, myself included, had used my name. Found that I could not. All I knew, all I could remember, was madness. At 22, my life began. Everything before that had been consumed into a darkness that I could not understand. I didn't remember my parents. My friends. Only the Madness. There was only ever Madness. What everyone saw as a fantasy was my one and only reality.

“What?”

“Everett Sterling. That is your name, isn’t it?”

His grin was cruel. I couldn’t remember, and he knew it.

“What is this?”

I was seeing things. Things with dim house lights and bitter liquid. Not wine. Stronger.

“You found yourself in the wrong frat party. One populated with the wrong kind of Greek Life.”

“I… I don’t… I don’t understand.”

Dionysus’s voice became static, burning into my eardrums, slicing into my brain, ripping me apart.

“YOU DISTURBED THE SACRED RITES,” he roars. “YOU DARED TO LAY HANDS UPON MY MOST DEVOTED FOLLOWERS.”

The force of his voice is enough to blow the greasy strands of hair out of my face.

“I don’t… I don’t understand.”

“Of course,” Dionysus says, his voice suddenly cold and calm again. “To you, it was just another house party. Your friend Marty invited you, yes?”

I did not remember a Marty. But I was beginning to feel sick.

“He was killed after what happened, of course. He couldn’t be left alive. He was one of my own. A satyr, trained to seek and find those with the seed of Madness within them. He saw potential in you, Everett. The potential for Madness. The good kind. The kind of Madness that makes artists great, that makes men into immortals.” His smile was rueful, bitterness and sorrow. Not regret. Merely tainted with the knowledge of what could have been. “Everett, you were, in fact, chosen… in a way. Marty was trying to save you by taking you to that house party. I mean, seriously. A business major? You would’ve been miserable in a nine-to-five, and you know it. It’s why you gave in to me so easily.”

“So… what changed? What happened? What did Marty do?”

“Marty did nothing beyond extending the invitation. His punishment was by proxy. A relatively painless death. But you… you did the real crime. You entered into MY TEMPLE, invited to one of the finest revels in all of human history, and you decide to do what you humans are always so fond of doing: drinking. And taking. Except this time you went too far. You found one of my Maenads. My most vicious warriors. This time you decided you needed her. You wouldn’t take no. This time you were the vicious one. This is the one event where my Maenads are not allowed to attack, where gods and mortals can come together as one. And you used that against her.”

“No…” I pressed my knuckles into my neck. They are red, raw, thin. “No. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You DARE accuse me of lying, boy?”

“No. No, no. I just… I couldn’t… I don’t remember…”

“FOOLISH. You know what you did. You’re just afraid to admit it. Afraid to admit that you are capable of such a thing. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: Alcohol doesn’t change one’s character. It merely intensifies it, reveals that which might otherwise be hidden. You are, deep inside, nothing more than an abuser. A user. A predator. ΥΒΡΙΣΤΗΣ.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Please, there must be some mistake… I would never defy you, Lord Dionysus. I devoted my whole life to you. To Madness. Please.”

“You merely served the punishment you were given. You think you are more noble than any other madman? The woman who drowned her kids in the bathtub because she thought that was the only way to save their souls? The men who devoured the flesh of their brethren to survive in the harshest mountains, bargaining with God to excuse their sin? Better yet, do you think you are any better than the women who fight back against their abuser, who live a life of pills and therapy just to come to terms with someone else’s senseless violence?”

“No. No. I just… I just…”

“You just refuse to accept that it is over. You wasted your life thinking you were better than everyone else, believing yourself to be chosen, the heir to my eternal rewards. Even before you fell victim to my curse, you thought you could do no wrong. Women were merely objects to you. Even holy women.”

I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Silence now. I grow tired of this talk,” Dionysus says. “We are going in circles.” Vines separate themselves from the mass, creeping towards me.

“Wait!” I yell, my voice finally coming. “What… What will happen to me now?”

“The same thing that happens to every other man like you. Just another shade tied down in the Fields of Punishment for eternity.”

“But…”

“But what, fool? You think yourself deserving of some special new punishment? Nay, boy. I do not dare lump you in with the myths of Sisyphus or Tantalus. Your tale will not be immortalized. You will not be remembered. Already, my Maenad has forgotten you exist, lost in a manic slurry of more joyful memories. She will recover. You will not.”

“But… It’s not… It’s not fair…” I was gasping now, the words coming out of me in desperate bursts.

Each and every one of Dionysus’s eyes lit up with fury.

“What do you know of fairness, ΑΝΟΗΤΟΣ? You dare to face your sin with indignity? This is your burden. You must bear the consequences of your actions.”

The dread was intensified into terror again, but this time the terror cut too deeply to formulate a scream.

“Di… o… nysus… My… Lo… ord…” My voice is disappearing. My already pale skin is growing paler, translucent. Transparent. Fading. “No-o-o…”

“Goodbye, Everett.”

And thus ended my madness.