Stephen Biro's "Hellucination" Preview

 

The following is a rough draft of the first chapter from Hellucination, a memoir by Stephen Biro (of Unearthed Films). Enjoy.

 

CHAPTER 1

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I let my breath out and the nitrous oxide soon depleted out of my lungs. I looked around the small cramped apartment as I sat on the couch. Horror movie posters and bootleg videotapes surrounded me on all sides, in every crevice and between the furniture.  I didn’t want to see them but they were standing there in front of me. Waiting for my next move. I didn’t know what to do so I began speaking to the strongest of them.

I said, “What the fuck are you doing? I can’t live like this. I can’t even carry on a normal conversation with you screaming at me all the time!”

He looks at me and says, “You have to understand. No one is going to care about what your experiencing now. Their too busy with the X-boxes and what TV shows their going to watch and whether or not, their going to get laid tonight or even just be happy for a few moments and not think about their miserable lives. You do understand that right? Everybody’s lives are miserable to some degree or in some sense that they can never truly be happy without some sort of madness creeping into themselves.”

I wanted to stand up and shout at him but I just gave up while looking at him. How can you compete with the devil? Your own personal Id and the part of you that just wants to destroy you? I sat there; smoking my cigarette like a chimney flew and turned to the part of myself who is supposed to give me guidance. He was standing there, in the corner, not looking at me but looking off into space. He looked just like me, in fact, both of them did but they were wearing better clothes and a little more clean shaven but still me.

My Superego and my Id was made flesh. I’ve been screaming at them for longer then I want to admit but they never changed. My Superego or should I say, my personal angel didn’t know what to say at this time. Usually I would beg for guidance and sometimes I would get it. Other times I wouldn’t but my Id, or should I say, my personal demon knew exactly what to say. It knew how to manipulate me to the point of extremism. It even knew how to pretend it was me. Masquerading as myself in my own fucking head but this time, they weren’t in my mind. This time, they were external and they were both, standing in front of me.

I began to scream at my personal angel and yelled, “What the Hell! Say something you piece of shit! I’m counting on you to be my better half. How can I live when I am dealing with manipulations from him over there who just wants to trick me and fuck with me; sending me down the wrong path!”

My better self finally looked at me. I looked into his brown eyes, exactly like my eyes. I looked up and down his features, looking at myself but in a better light. He really was me. I quickly moved back to its eyes as it spoke.

It said, “You’re doing what is right. You’re doing what you need to do to find God and if you keep knocking, he will have to answer you. Even the most horrendous sinners of this world will be answered if they knock long enough and never stop until someone answers the door.”

I let out a sigh when my demon walked closer to me and said, “Do you even know what this asshole is telling you? Keep trying to find God and just maybe, maybe he might answer you.  What the fuck kind of shit is that. I know who you are. You’re nobody, a piece of shit that should never have been born. You don’t give anything to this world. You just rape, steal, lie and fuck others over. What makes you think… you’re good enough to even find God and make him… You’re going to make God answer you?”

A flash of evil spreads across the demons face as he leans closer to me. I could see the hatred flare behind his pupils as my spine began to tremble. I’ve never been able to see them before so this was another reality I wasn’t prepared for.

He said, “Many men and women have tried to find God and everyone fails. You are nobody and your nothing and you’re not what God wants.”

I turned to my personal angel and said, “Is what he is saying true?”

I looked at my self in both aspects. My Superego or angel or whatever you want to call him just turned to me and said, “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.”

Goosebumps flowed all over my body as I became pissed. I began to yell, “How long am I supposed to knock? How long am I supposed to search? I’ve ripped my mind apart, creating both of you or unleashing both of you. I don’t fucking know and I don’t fucking care anymore but I have to deal with you both now.”

My cigarette was out and I reached for another. I snubbed the filter into the ashtray and began lighting another in a second before I could even breathe. I looked at them both but not in their eyes, only their feet because I didn’t want to see into them anymore. I just didn’t care any longer. I put the cigarette in the ashtray and let it smolder while I argued with versions of myself or entities that pretended to be me from the other side.

I said, “Fuck you both. Neither of you are helping me. You!!!”

I turned to the Id and pointed at him, as if I could kill him with a look.

“You are an atrocity! You fuck me over, do everything you can to destroy me. Manipulating me as if you’re my actual thought processes and ripping me apart by flipping every good idea I have into something selfish and screwed up. I know when you say something to me but your guile and influence is beyond what a normal human being can withstand.”

The Id tried to say something and that’s when I ripped into the Superego and screamed, “ You… you asshole. What the Hell are you doing. You speak in whispers, I can barely fucking hear you because my demons are always screaming at me. Always… screaming and you can’t ever bother to tell me, the other side of the story. You only usually talk to me after I’ve been screwed over by my personal demons! What the Hell good are you, if your not trying to protect me and you only talk to me after he manipulates me into something I don’t want to do because it masquerades as me. When it talks to me in my head, I think it is myself.  Hey… it masquerades as me, why don’t you do the same? You feel shit coming on, then tell me what to do that is right, don’t let me hear what is wrong first.”

I stand up to get in both of their faces but mostly my Supego and scream, “Don’t tell me that Satan has the first round in everything! Don’t tell me that you have to sit on your ass and let the devil tempt and then you can say something or should I say whisper something afterwards because that’s lame. That sucks and is messed up. I’m a human being and if I’m in the middle of a war that is actually giving first volley to Satan or the Devil or whatever the Hell you want to call him because God only wants to save certain people on some criteria, then you’re both fucked up.”

I flop down back onto the couch and both aspects of me stand their, not knowing what to do. My cigarette is out and I reach over to light another one.  I grab a cigarette and look for my lighter, waiting for either of them to say anything.

We know who is going to speak first and he does, “Do whatever you want Stephen. No one really cares about you. Not even God. Your nothing and can never make a difference in anyone’s life. Just give up, better men have given up before you.”

That’s when my personal angel walks up to me and falls on his knees before me, clutching onto my legs and says, “Just don’t stop. Find what you need in your life. You are noticed more then you know. Keep doing what is in your heart. It’s a noble pursuit that many don’t have. Who knows, you might be able to help some of the people in this world.”

I turned away from him because I didn’t want to hear it anymore. The subtle mechanizations of the Hell spawn or the delicate subterfuge of the Holy; I couldn’t handle it any longer.

My Angel stood back up and walked away when I said, “ I don’t even know what the fuck you two are? You both ripped out of my mind at the same time, battling for dominance inside my head, telling me your God and the Devil and then that turned into my personal angel and demon and that’s not enough because then you both show up and you both look exactly me. I’ve already met entities besides myself to get to this place where I am in now. So I don’t know if your aspects of my mind, my real personal angels and demons or maybe your both demons masquerading as myself. I don’t know… maybe you are God and the Devil and this is the game you play so someone wins a soul. Maybe I just went insane since all of this shit is bleeding over into my normal reality now… Hell, I might have even died and this is Hell, Purgatory or whatever. “

I take deep breath and say, “This is fucking not normal. Something is going on that I don’t know and I am going to keep searching because that is all that I can do now.”

I reach for the nitrous cracker and began filling it up with nitrous while both of them, were standing there in front of me. I was already on four hits of acid and my mind spilt a long time ago and I didn’t care. I couldn’t take this. I needed an escape from this deluge of horror and reached for another one.

I finally heard my angel tell me, “You don’t need to do this.” My demons tell me this exactly what I needed to do but I didn’t care, what any of them said anymore. I just needed to escape, maybe search for God a little bit but maybe not. Lets see where this takes me. After four cartridges where in the balloon, I began to hit the balloon like a joint.

I didn’t notice what was on the TV but it was in the back of my mind. It was the Sand Lot Kings, a stupid Twilight Zone Episode about alien eggs that was brought down to earth and an ex astronaut hatched the eggs in his garage. The eggs gave birth to alien spiders and of coarse, there were two separate species. I didn’t know which side was good or which side was evil. Sort of like what I was going thru at this very moment. I didn’t know anything and I was more confused with the answer I’ve received and that’s when it happened.

My selves were no longer there when eight inch long, multi hued creatures began crawling out of the TV and into my living room. At first I was amazed while inviting them in but then it took hold as they kept crawling out of the TV set.  Five turned into ten and ten into twenty and twenty turned into hundreds. It didn’t dawn on me until I had hundreds of flesh eating spiders from another planet consuming their way into my household.

I jumped up, not expecting a ravenous horde of alien spiders about to engulf me but I began to deal with it all the same. I jumped off the couch and ran for the front door. I stomped on couple of them, squishing them as bluish blood spurted out of their crushed carcasses. I rammed myself at the front door and began pushing on it spastically as the spiders began to over run the house.

I slammed into the door and slammed some more but couldn’t get the door to open backwards. I kept pounding on it and didn’t notice when the spiders began to over run me. They began to crawl up my legs with a speed that produced a terror I have known once before. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened and I didn’t know if this was going to be my last.

Three of them were crawling up my neck. I could feel the legs, grip onto my face as I yanked them off in a desperate panic. My flesh begins to rip wherever they dug in. I could feel their fangs digging deep into me through my clothes. All I could think of in the back of my mind was venom… alien spider venom coursing thru my veins. I jumped back and didn’t know what to do as they began to eat me alive. I could feel the spiders crawl up my muscles and begin to burrow under my flesh; trying to get deeper into me and they were. Blood began pouring everywhere as wave after wave of atrocity burrowed, bite and slashed me.

The spiders continued to make their way from the TV and into my living room, I realized I had to escape in the only way I knew how. I had to jump through my window to get away.

The alien spiders began to fight with each other due to the intense hunger.  All of them were looking for flesh to consume and I was that flesh but I wasn’t enough to feed them all. I was still trying to rip them off of my body but there were too many of them. That’s when I ran for it! My foot caught the edge of my love seat and I flew towards the window with full momentum. I hit it with a resounding crash.

The window was made up with six mini windows with metal panes in between them all. I hit it hard and broke four of them but I never went through it. The metal partitions kept me from leaping though all of the glass. I slammed back into the love seat and jumped up and realized my mistake as the spiders began to overlap themselves in wave after wave.  I ran and slammed against the door again and somehow, opened it the right way and leapt outside, into the cold winter air.

Blood poured out of my body like a sieve and I was about to scream when I turned towards my open door, expecting hundreds if not thousands of alien spiders pouring out towards me but they didn’t. I could see them still pour out of the TV; crawling all over each other when I felt my mind spasm just a little. A fluctuation happened and a wave of energy erupted from me, dissolving the spiders as if they were ice melting under intense heat.

I tried to catch my breath but couldn’t. I could see them all liquefy and disperse into nothingness. My breath became more longwinded and I looked at my body; that used to be torn to shreds. Every slash, rip and gouge that happened to me was gone. I continued to look over myself and noticed that the blood was mostly gone but some of it was still there.

I looked all around me and I didn’t see a single alien spider in sight but I was still weary. I walked out, further onto my patio, hoping for some safety but not really finding it. I felt my flesh crawl and I looked at my arms, when I noticed a huge gash on my forearm. I began poking at it, to see if it was real and the skin spread apart, oozing blood. That’s when I knew it was real.

I looked towards the door to make sure nothing was coming at me again. Nothing was. So I stood their, thinking about what I should do. It was pretty easy to figure out. When alien spiders attack you the only thing you can do, is go to the hospital for stitches. Maybe even get an X-ray to make sure I didn’t have any alien mandibles left under my skin, just in case you know. So that is exactly what I did. I drove to the hospital and waited in the emergency room for stitches.

It’s okay, I know… I checked every inch of me and their wasn’t any traces of them left under my skin. Just the gash I cut myself with as I tried to jump through my window. I had my skin sewn up into a scar, forever reminding me of my alien spider attack. I knew something was different about this. It’s just another hallucinatory bump in the road while trying to find God. I want to jump ahead and tell you how this makes sense but it will come in due time but I will tell you this.

I began to believe in the limits of reality and how we could bend them. How our minds can turn fantasy into reality and how our minds can be shaped and manipulated by unforeseen forces we only read about and only dare touch; usually pulling away because the fire is too bright. This is my story and this is my reality or should I say it was and in my past now. I’m sure you want to understand how one person has faith and another, nothing. You need to know how I lost my faith or should I say belief. Either way, you should know because it will help you understand the psychology of the matter and that matter is my mind. So lets start off from the very beginning and I do mean, from the very beginning.

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