The Illness was Never the Cause

The illness was never the cause of it. It had been there, he was sure, since before he was born. Waiting on its haunches, crawling on its belly toward him and his mother and father, purring at his bedside by the time he was thirteen. The fever had only played the role of catalyst. It had steamed the seams of his skull apart, and now the rain would forever be dribbling through the cracks. Eventually the heavy cistern of his mind would rupture completely, his drooping head would tumble from his hands and the vision-obscuring liquids of misery and doubt would splatter into the mouth of the monster, and that would be the end of all.