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.
Granted. Virtual reality and augmented reality technology quickly becomes extremely cheap to buy and easy to acquire. Soon, cybernetic implants become available so that a person doesn't even need a headset to experience virtual reality.
Within a few years, the implants are commonplace and easy to acquire all over the world. Children are implanted from a young age.
Because virtual reality provides such a strong dopamine hit, people stop trying to live their lives in the real world. Every single person starts to live fantasy worlds in virtual reality. And everyone is very happy.
The birth rate plummets, and within a couple generations no new humans are born.
Granted. From now on, everything you decide to do turns out to be a monumentally bad idea, which you execute flawlessly before even having time to think through the ramifications.
Granted. Anyone else that ever reads your post title (even if they just scroll past) has something bad happen to them for as long as this post exists. You’re aware of it everytime it happens and instantly know the full extent of the damage you’ve caused in other people’s lives.
The Monkey's Paw
Newest