Madness

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.

I was twenty-two.

They wanted to institutionalize me, but I had finals the next week. I didn't have time to be hospitalized. I had so much to do.

I took my finals. And I bombed them.

And it was only after my English teacher handed back my 13% grade— in what had previously been my best subject— that I finally admitted I was losing my fucking mind.

I devoted my life to my madness. Worked hard to fulfill the role that had been set out before me: the crazy bum living in abject squalor. It became a goal: to be as much of a caricature as possible. I threw out every attempt at aid. I drowned in the wine that I knew was running through my veins. You could've cut me open and drank my blood like it was straight from Dionysus himself.

I was an english major, but my specialty had always been the ancient greek myths. Homer and Hesiod were my muses, my idols.

I knew all about Dionysus. How he'd turned sailors into dolphins, driven sane men to madness.

I knew it was him who had set out this path for me: the path of a madman. And I was determined to follow it.

Just maybe, at the end of the road, I'll gaze upon him. A reward for my toils. My life of madness will lead me, in my final moments, to divinity.

I'm 48 now. 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.

The end is near.

Now, I could finally have the answers: what prompted me down this path? Was it a curse? A blessing? A punishment for a sin I cannot remember?

These thoughts only intensified the swelling agony under my skin. A pain so complete it forced my eyes shut, clenched my hands into fists, sped up my heart of its own accord.

And then it stopped. My heart stopped. my hands loosened. My eyes were no longer squeezed shut with tears leaking like juice from an orange.

I was dead.

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.

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 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 wrinkled, yellowed skin of an addict.

"Tell me," I asked him. "Why?"

Dionysus rolled his millions of eyes and his malformed face surged towards me.

"Was it boredom? An impulse? An obsession?"

"As if I'd ever be obsessed with the likes of you," Dionysus sneered in twisted English.

"Punishment, then? for what?"

Dionysus cocked his head to the side, his eyes misting over .

"I see," he says. "You don't remember."

"Remember what?"

Dionysus smiles.

"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.

"You stumbled into the wrong party," Dionysus said. "One populated not by your typical Greek Life, but by actual Greek life."

He chuckles at his own joke.

"Of course, you were unaware. To you it was just another house party. Your best friend Marty invited you. Marty was one of my satyrs. He saw potential in you. Of course, after what happened, he was killed."

"What happened?"

"You found one of the Maenads. Vicious ones, they are. But you were the vicious one."

"I... was?"

"You dared to lay hands on one of my followers. Prompted by the wine, which I believe your friend Marty warned you not to drink. But you did. You humans always drink the wine."

"I... I wouldn't. I couldn't."

"Alas, you did. And this is your punishment."

"What now?"

"You'll go to Hades like the rest. Fields of Punishment for you, no doubt."

"B-But that's not fair."

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

"What do you know of fairness, Everett King? 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.

"I couldn't," I gasp. "I wouldn't. I don't remember."

"Your memory cannot change your actions, Everett. Goodbye."

His form began to dissolve, eyes shutting, flesh fading into the darkness. fading alongside me, alongside my body, alongside the vines that never really existed.

And thus ended my madness.