Part One - The Warning.

Today was the day when I realized that I was crazy.

I just wanted to get out of here, away from all of this. That's all I wanted to do.

I was walking through the usual afternoon crowd when the insanity suddenly struck me like a bolt of lightning and I froze in my track. I wasn't able to move, I just stood there like a moron. People kept passing me by, brushing against my shoulders like I was some kind of rag doll, just standing there, in the middle of the big city.

My gaze was locked to some invisible object right in front of me and every time I tried to move my feet or even make the slightest movement with my fingertips, I found myself unable to do it. It was taunting. I wanted to scream, to pull myself out of this cataclysmic system crash I was experiencing, but I couldn't.

"I've finally done it," I thought. "I've cracked the code. I've passed through the portal. I've... finally gone mad."

I don't know for how long I stood there. Maybe a couple of minutes or hours, I have no idea. My sense of time was completely lost to the great black void of unconsciousness I had fallen into.

Then someone finally knocked me over and broke the spell. I fell down on my four, my hands and knees touching the muddy wet asphalt. I stared down and began to choke, feeling the sour liquid crawling up my throat. Seconds later my lunch was lying on the street in front of me and I was grasping for air.

"Sir, are you okay?" said a boy who was passing by and gave me a concerned look, carefully avoiding stepping into my not very pleasant looking lunch. He helped me get up. The world was spinning around me.

"Yes. Yes I'm just fine," I replied in a croaked voice, still clinging onto his sleeve. I let it go once I had found the balance for my feet again. "Thank you."

The helpful teenager disappeared into the nameless crowd of suits. I wiped my mouth with a handkerchief and proceeded walking, like in a dream. I tried to look at the faces of the people passing me by, I looked at the buildings and the cars that drove by. It felt like I was saying goodbye to something because I didn't feel a part of it anymore.

"Maybe this is a relevation everyone gets shortly before they die," I thought without the least bit of worry. My right hand slid into my pocket and I threw a few coins in the hat of a beggar who was resting against the wall of another nameless building.

"Thank you kind sir, thank you," his lips formed an almost unbearable whisper as he looked into my eyes. I nodded, sudden pain shooting through my chest.

More nameless faces, buildings, cars. The road home had never seemed this long before. While in the subway, graffiti caught my attention. By the time I saw it I was already too numb to think with logic and just let everything sip into my mind like disease. I repeated the line again and again as I was sitting on the train, staring out the window, watching the world flash by. "Reality doesn't exist my friend, I'm living like a pirate using my sixth sense."

I just wanted to get out of here, away from all of this. That's all I wanted to do. I never expected to go crazy.

With a sigh of relief, I threw the keys down on the table, on top of today's Wall Street Journal. I hung my jacket in the closet and began to undress in front of the mirror, beginning with the tie. A man with bright blue eyes, brown hair and distinguished face features stared back at me. There were almost no signs of the terrifying loss of sanity I had experienced today, none except for the paleness of my face and the first lines of rings under my eyes. It had been a long day.

The face didn't lie. I had not slept much lately. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I was suffering from a serious case of insomnia, which nothing seemed to cure. I had tried it all - sleeping pills, alcohol, Enigma, TCM until the late hours of the evening. But no - something was keeping me awake, night after night.

Was it my restless mind and the growing pile of problems and hurtful incidents that had happened to me lately? It very well might be.

Maybe my unconscious was trying to tell me something? Perhaps even warn me?

I didn't want to think it could have anything to do with the last dream I could remember having. The dream about the wires.

I remember it very clearly, maybe because there was not much to remember. I remember several thick black wires spreading, growing, and reaching for something. Black liquid was dropping from them, black drops of liquid. My inner eye followed along their length and it saw them moving, like the tentacles of a squid. Darkness was everywhere around them. And then, suddenly, I was wrapped in among them and they were suffocating me. They wanted me. They called for me.

The man in the mirror followed my every move as I touched the mirror with my fingertips. They slid against the cool surface.

"Mad or not, this man needs a drink," my reflection said and I agreed with it.

The distant sound of applause and cheers reached my ears.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," a voice said once the noise had settled down. "Tonight is a very special night for us. This is the moment WE ALL have been waiting for and I know that the wait has been long to the point where it has become unbearable."

Despite the words, there was a pause and the crowd whistled and cheered, as expected.

The voice laughed. "Alright, I won't keep you waiting no more! The people of the world, may I present the one who managed to crack the code, the only one who has passed through the portal... Theeee... MADMAN!"

The curtains parted and I wasn't the least bit surprised when I saw myself standing in the middle of the stage. As expected, the other me on the stage was completely unable to move. He stood there, frozen, and I saw horror and fear in his eyes. The crowd whistled angrily.

Then it began.

The other me slowly began to dissolve and the sight wasn't pretty. The face of my skin started to fall apart, break down, layer after layer, and I still stood there, frozen.

Frozen.

My lips began to form a word when they detached from the rest of my face and fell down to the ground, followed by layers of nose and cheeks. The crowd laughed as the process became quicker and thick strays of hair began to fill the scene and now my bones were beginning to show as one of my eyes popped out and rolled over across the scene into the audience. Applause and laughter filled the theatre as the horror scene was played out in front of them, the chanting only getting louder and louder.

"Bravo, bravissimo! Encore, encore! ENCORE!!"

The loud thud of my own bones breaking down and falling down to the floor filled my head as I opened my eyes and leaped back into reality.

I would never sleep again.