Psychosis

Prologue: Define Me

Definition: A severe cognitive disorder in which a person's personality is scrambled, causing any and all contact with reality and its inhabitants to be strained and impaired.

Yes. That was the gist of Zelo's disorder. His personality was timid, meek, frightened... until you pushed him, taunted him, tormented him, that is. Oh, yes, once he was pushed, the voices came, changing him into a desperate fugitive, prisoner of his own mind. Oh, and how they came. First one, just one nasty voice, whispering, whispering, whispering...

Then another one, harsher than the first, abrasive to his tormentors. Two voices, one nasty voice, whispering, whispering, whispering, and one second hard voice, cursing, cursing, cursing...

And yet another voice would come, abusive and cruel to everyone, even Zelo. Ah, yes, this was the voice that he hated. That voice came, blurring and slurring the other two together, screaming, screaming, screaming. And it was never alone. It always brought with it a multitude of upheaval.

For after the third, another voice would come, then another, another, another until Zelo's head was so full of noise... so assaulted and violated with shrieks and howls that his hands would climb his face, the sharp tips digging into his scarred ears.

He would plead, his fingers trembling against his ears, begging for release, for sanctuary from the SOUND. When, and I do mean when, this failed, for the voices never seemed to hear Zelo's pleas above their own savage dialogue, he would tear into his ears. Clawing, scratching, shrieking, sobbing, to tear his ears from the nerves that bound the sounds to his brain. For if he could destroy the device that channeled sounds, the voices would stop. Yes.

But it never worked, someone always found him. Someone always helped him, someone always saved him. They did not know though, they did not understand that they were just as much his tormentors as anyone else. His own mind was a prison, one from which he needed escape. His siblings, Loyal Daehyun, Loving Himchan, would sit with him, hold him, soothe him... and try to cure him.

In desperation to save him from himself, they would give him pill, after pill, after pill. So many a capsule had passed his lips that he had lost count. A rainbow of medicine, rotting in his innards, doing no good.

And when that failed, it often did, the voices would start again, bringing with them, his savior. The entity, the personality that he had confided in since childhood, Yongguk. And he would be okay. He would be able to face the next day. And the next, the next, the next...

But not humanity.

He was truly misanthropic. How could you not be after what he had witnessed? The brutal murder of his mother at the hands of his father, and the ceaseless attacks from the same man, more insane than Zelo had ever been, bruising lovely Himchan's face, breaking loyal Daehyun's spirits, scarring impressionable, dysfuntional, defective Zelo.

He held a certain amount of loathing for himself, being the bane of his classroom, while living in the slums of Seoul didn't help either. Gangnam’s very own shantytown, called Guryeong-dong was known as the poorest, dirtiest, slimiest, most defective part of the city. And he knew it. Yes, Zelo knew that he was the poor, insane, freak who dared to befoul the Earth by breathing its air, touching the ground, and overall existing.

But he was okay, as long as Loyal Daehyun and Lovely Himchan would accept him, he would go on living. Living for them. Living to suit the definition he had carved into his wall, the hand that cold, cynical fate had dealt him:

Pyschosis

A severe cognitive disorder in which a person's personality is scrambled, causing any and all contact with reality and its inhabitants to be strained and impaired.