Invader

You insidious, hateful monster, how I loathe you.

Slowly, slyly, you spread your tendrils and coils through her brain, taking from her first this small memory, then that one. Then you steal her sense of recent things, making her ask for reassurance in a small, frightened voice every few minutes that she is indeed who she is, she is where she is, and inquire timidly who all these people are.

Stealthily, you stretch out your fog-filled hands, taking more and more in greater and greater portions until she sits, silent, tiny in her favorite chair, eyes dark with the shadows you've cast over her mind and spirit. I see the child you've left behind in her eyes, without even the comfort of knowing she will soon understand how it all works, because from moment to moment she forgets even that she would like to understand.

And then your friend attrition joins in, adding first one small problem, then another, then piling on still more, until her frail little body can't handle either the causes or the cures.

Meanwhile, we all watch, and mourn, and wait for the moment when we will be sorrowing and rejoicing at the same time; sorrowing because we have lost a beloved and beautiful being from our lives, rejoicing because she has won free of your filthy, vile fingers.

Oh, yes, I loathe you. I hope they find the way to destroy you very soon. We aren't alone in our vigil, not by a long way, and the fact that so many others know exactly how this feels just enrages me more, fuels my hatred. The only consolation I have is in knowing that you will die when your host does, and so you taint even a clean grief.

Someday we will find a way to bar you out, you invading filth, and I hope I am alive to witness it.

I will be waiting and hoping for just that very thing.