Mr. American

Chapter 1.

The city is no more, after the thing had taken every little thing down. The towers, the people. The sanity. Everything was gone. Crushed to bits and ruble. Melted rock and blistering bodies flattened along the horizon. Miles and miles of blood and glass and other known materials. And over some toppled buildings, past the disfigured and horribly vandalized corpses, you'd find the biggest building of them all. Still standing, because of the widened and butchered-looking fungus face, glued to the bricks and glass. Only there to think, imagine and wish.
That fungus man, was me. Stuck there. Forever.
Pain, there was none. There still is no pain till this very day. I was, and still am, stuck. Like a mold, spreading my skin over like a blanket. Over everyone. Killing everyone. Oh Christ, I smell. I smell the putrid stench from my laffy taffy remains, and I hate it so very much. But what's worse, is that the smell goes on and off. First: mmm I smell nothing, and just simple as all hell air. Then, ugh: shit fresh from a cow's asshole comes along. Forever and ever. Till the end of my days. I don't know when that is, exactly. I hope it comes soon.
I do not feel any pride in doing this, however, it's against my will. I don't know who had made this nightmare come true. And the question pushed me mad. Who was he? Was it even a he? Whoever the hell he or she was, it ruined everything. It ruined me. Took everything I had. I don't know how I'm still alive. I can't even speak. My vocal cords are stretched and tangled together like rubber. Oh god it hurts. It hurts so bad, and without a voice, I cannot express how much it hurts. Soon, up until now, the pain in my throat stopped, because I had no throat. It stretched out with the rest of the fungus.
I was, and still am, growing. I am a disease. I am not human, anymore. Because of it. I am surrounded in darkness, because I have no eyes to share light upon. I have no voice, to show my fear. And I have no body to run away with. Then again, where would I go? There was nowhere to flee to. It took everything I had. Maybe more than one it, what If it was a them. In the plural context. Multiple persons, taking sanity away from multiple people, putting them through what I had. Well, perhaps that's a less frightening thought. One being with so much power is terrifying, higher than a group. Something, either way, stole everything g from me. The city. The people. The money. The fame. The talk. The walk. The everything. Everything that made me, me. Alfred Gallor. I remember now. The richest man in the state. New York City's, main man. The man that was living the real shit American Dream. Yes, that was me.
They'd chase me on the streets, and call me complimenting names like, "Mr. American!" referring again to how I was living the imagination of an American Dream. I'd smile at them, cigar between my lips, puffing smoke at them to make a get away. Sometimes—most of the time—I hated the attention. I needed none of it.
The attention was useless to me.
"Mr. Gallor," people from the paper would come up to me at interviews. "How did you get so famously wealthy?" was their most asked question. I always assumed they wanted the truth, but the truth they never got. I gave them a little reply. Made up, entirely, but those assholes believed it.
"Hard work, is all it takes, Sir. Hard work n' sweat n' tears, is enough to make a man throw greens into a lake without worries. There's your answer." is what I told them. Still, cigar between rosy, puffy lips. I'd wave it am them, drawing a scribble of smoke in the air while doing so.
They would write something in their little pads, and rush away to the print. Just to repeat my response again and again.
A small boy took me out of that thought. He looked up at me. Now, not then, it is now. His lip wobbled and shook, until tears bursted from his eyes. He was crying about me. What I had become. A fungus. A monster. Hideous to look at. An insult to god, if there even exists a god. If, out there, there was a god with enough balls to take away everything, from me. To turn me into this hideous abomination. To fix and remake my bones in gelatin slush. Wobbling around in my sightless, motionless, lack of feelings or touch, corpse. To allow random people who somehow survived what my body did to their homes to look up at what I had become. Did it think it was funny? Or was there an actual purpose. I'm sure there was, but I didn't care much for it. I just wanted to become normal again.
I wasn't human.
That was certain.
I wonder what I look like. Going from a rich, fat old man with a weak leg, to what? I couldn't tell. I could just hear the boy's voice. "Oh, oh my..." his worlds trailed off into tears. I must've scared the hell out of him, because after, there were these fast footsteps. So fast, they came in milliseconds, and then the crying disappeared into silence. Like how it always was. Silent. Dead silent. It scared me from how terrifying silence was. To not hear anything. My ears worked, but there was no point. I'd rather see than hear. But I had my eyes taken a long, long time ago.
The gift of a pair of working ears was enough to keep my hopes up for a little while. They were taken away at first, then rewarded for some reason. I don't know. I don't need to know. It doesn't really matter much. Because now, they're back. Maybe they'll be taken away again. I'll never know until it happens or not.
I imagine myself to look like a stretch of skin, peeking slowly against some sort of metal block. Wrapping around like a bow. The bricks that rub against the back of my skull seem to be bound by some alien-like architects. I at least don't feel the immense pain from it, since all my nerves have been pulled outwards to the horizon. Never to been seen till the end. I don't even know if I have a mouth to speak from. Or a face to be recognized by. As the great Gallor, turned to mush. A mesh of skin and the remains of a once rich man, brought up to a pillar of painful metal and bricks. Glued together and stabbing the fungus I've been turned into eternally.
I sometimes dream. At least that wasn't taken away. But they weren't good dreams. They're nightmares. And when I describe them, they don't sound scary. But when I'm in one, it's terrifying. Every second of the nightmares fill me with a ghoulish discomfort. One dream that I've been having for a while, now, is of a bare naked man, discolored and mangled, barely being recognized as a human silhouette, slowly creeping up to a beautiful woman. The background is grey, and has an abundance of ruble and tipped buildings and towers. All on their sides. Fog surrounded them. Thick and cloudy smoke, drifting casually at their ankles. What happens after is blackness, then screaming. Never ending cries, for what feels like hours. Just shouting in high pitched vocalized bellows. Never ending. Millions of eyes appear at the scene. All glaring at the naked man. Insulting him. Hurting him. Taking all he had left. Ruining his body even worse than it already was.
And I don't know how to wake up.
Sometimes I mistake a dream for something real. I can't tell if I have my sight back or not when I dream. I'm stuck with these nightmares of screaming. Eternal terror and darkness. Gothic visions, and horrid dreams. The screaming never stops.