I don’t know how to explain it

It started slow,
just a drip behind the eyes, like candle wax on the soft meat of my mind. I thought it was a headache at first. Just pressure. Maybe dehydration. But then I woke up and the pillow was soaked in thought. Not sweat. Not blood. Thought. I touched it and remembered things I never lived. A funeral on a planet that doesn’t exist. A name I’ve never heard, tattooed inside my eyelid.

It’s leaking, oozing, sloshing around like soup in a broken thermos. I think it’s eating me. Not just memories.
My self. My shape is fading. I look in the mirror and it blinks before I do. I hear whispers when I chew. My tongue tastes numbers.

And there’s this thing now. It lives in my ceiling. It doesn’t speak, it vibrates. I’ve started calling it Dr. Bruel. I don’t know why. I think it told me that’s its name. Last night, it fed me a dream where I was a jellyfish stapled to a chalkboard, screaming math problems until my tendrils bled. I woke up with symbols drawn on my chest in something that smells like sulfur and wet dog.

Every time I think, it gets worse. The thoughts boil. I see steam when I exhale. My skull pulses like a rotten fruit full of wasps. Dr. Bruel says the melting is part of the unfolding. I don’t know what that means but it’s coming. Soon I’ll be liquid. A puddle of memory and panic. And when I’m finally gone, something else will stand up in my place. Something slick. Something hungry.

Please. Don’t think about this too hard. That’s how it starts.
That’s how he finds you.