Civilization collapses within hours as employers, employees, parents, and spouses provide long suppressed, at length honest answers of how it's going to their employees, employers, children, and spouses who asked as usual as an empty platitude.
Granted. You need to test it. Something difficult that you wouldn't normally be able to do, but nothing that could cause problems if it failed. Maybe drawing a realistic self portrait. You pick up a pen and the moment you touch it to paper it feels more the pen is moving your hand rather than the other way around. You are amazed at the speed and precision of each mark until your hand finally stops and you are left with a photo quality drawing. This is incredible. What next? The cute barista maybe? You open your mouth, not even sure what you are saying, but it works. You've got a new number in your phone and your coffee is on-the-house. What else? Surely there's a way to make some money off of this. The clerk at the corner store stands there with, mouth agape, amazed at your luck as you scratch off your 3rd winning ticket. What else? What about something impossible? You laugh at the faces of the drivers on the freeway as you pass them all, wining the foot race you attempted against their motorized vehicles. All of the possibilities swimming through your head. Your life had changed forever. You call that barista. It's no surprise to you when they agree to come over to your place. After a perfectly cooked diner, paired with just the right wine, you both move to the bedroom where you have the most amazing sex of your life. The barista lets out a satisfied sigh and is out for the night. You are feel tired yourself. It was a busy day after all. You lay down and try to go to sleep; which of course you do. You don't hear the panic cries of the barista the next morning. You don't feel the jostling. You aren't disturbed when you are loaded into the ambulance. You aren't bothered when the catheter is inserted. You are having the most successful sleep of your life. A sleep so sound that you never want to attempt to wake up.
Granted. A loud voice, only you can hear, starts to answer every question you have ever had. Questions you never really cared about. Questions you never really wanted answered. Questions you don't even remember having. All answered in maticulous details, often going so deep into historical or scientific details that new questions pop into your mind no matter how much you try to stop them. Not that it even matters. You no longer want the answers that relentlessly come, one after the other, with no context nor pause. It all becomes nonsensical noise that won't stop. The voice booms through your head, drowning out all other sounds. Preventing you from holding down a job, communicating with others, or even sleeping. All you want is a moment of silence, a chance to sleep. You wonder if there is any way to stop your slide further into insanity. But you don't have to wonder. You've already been told the answer. You know how to make it stop.
Every living creature, from the smallest protists to large elephants, grows lush facial hair. Creatures spend a large part of their days trying to trim it down only for it to grow again.
Since hair takes 1-2 years to decompose, discarded hair continues to build up. Some of it is burned, but that leads to other issues
Granted. Nobody else can see the creature, which usually appears as a spider crawling out of someone's face or somewhere on your body. You have to ask the questions outloud so everyone just thinks you're insane.
Granted. You know the outcome before you get involved, meaning before you even establish contact. Everyone you cross paths with is potentially a relationship with an outcome you now know, as a result you have a natural emotional response to each one without any of them actually happening in reality. Any exposure to people becomes unbearable, merely going outside carries the risk of having the worst possible outcomes imaginable become part of your headspace, constantly. This dumps you into a permanent state of neurosis and paranoia, you start isolating yourself from anyone and then become incapable of functioning mentally and emotionally. Of course no one believes you and after your family gets involved, you are forcibly committed to a mental institution where there's an unending stream of worst possible outcomes for you to know.
Granted. You now experience the death and loss of every relationship that would succeed or fail in your life. All relationships end, even successful ones, and you get to experience every ending, with every potential partner you ever meet.
Granted. You love the next year. We all do. Then, as the clock strikes midnight, and we welcome in 2025, we all feel a strange disturbance. We feel dread and fear, and we realize we’ll never be happy again. 2024 was the last time we’d ever experience happiness, and we wasted it by going to our jobs to pay for rent.
The Monkey's Paw
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