The Vanishers [antikvár]

story I'm about to tell could be judged preposterous. Fine. Judge how you must. Protect yourself by scare-quoting me as the so-called psychic, the so-called victim of a psychic attack. Quarantine this account however you must so that you can safely hear it. What happened to me could never happen to you. Tell yourself that. Even though what happened to me happens to people like you all the time. In the beginning, an attack can look just like regular life. You wake to discover eyelashes on your pillow, bruises on your skin where you've never been touched. You smell a stranger on your bedsheets and that stranger is you. As the weeks pass, you notice other humiliations. An unceasing bout of acid reflux and an irritable bowel. Gums that bleed when you sip hot tea. Fingernails that snap when you push your hands through the sleeves of a sweater. The ghostly withdrawal of pigmentation from your cheeks. A rash on your torso. A rash on your hands. A rash on your scalp. And so it goes, your body's hurtle along a failure trajectory that no doctor can explain. There is only the numb leg, the searing esophagus, the face—its frostbit complexion, its vinegar stare—you no longer recognize as your own.