Unfiltered

“No… where are you going? Don’t leave me, please, I’m your wife! Wait!!!”

I can’t believe it… My baby left me!

I never thought this day would come. I always thought we would grow old together

What did I do to make him run away like this?

He didn’t even look back

He just ran!

I chased after him, my voice breaking from screaming his name, and my feet barely touching the ground

“Noaaaaah!!”

He got into his car, slammed the door, and drove away

Just like that… As if I meant nothing

I didn’t understand, and I still don’t

I screamed. I cried. I broke everything I could reach

The world around me blurred into noise and fragments—glass shattering, my own voice echoing, something inside me cracking apart

Then I saw myself in the mirror

I froze

My face…

It was covered in blood

What is this…? How did this happen?

My hands were shaking…

I looked down at my hands

Blood

They were covered in it

And a knife!!

My breath caught in my throat as I felt a coldness creeping up my spine

Slowly… too slowly, I began to understand that something was terribly wrong

I turned around, and then I saw it

A body

“Aaaaaah!!”

The scream tore out of me as I ran towards it, my legs shaking beneath me

It was our neighbor

The man we had always hated. The one who beat his dogs, who never showed a trace of mercy. He was cruel… very cruel

My husband and I used to joke about it

One day, we’ll kill him

Just to stop him, just to make him pay

But this…

This wasn’t a joke

His body was torn apart, flesh scattered, bones exposed, as if something had ripped him to pieces without hesitation

And the dogs…

The same dogs he used to abuse daily…

They were tearing into him

I staggered back, my vision spinning

No… no, this can’t be real

That’s when it hit me

I’m infected!!

My chest tightened as panic rose inside me

I had been having blackouts

Moments I couldn’t remember

Gaps in time felt like missing pieces of my own life

The last thing I remember…

was Noah screaming my name, “Don’t, Mia… Don’t do it.”

There was blood

And then—nothing.

But the way Noah looked at me…

It wasn’t anger, it was fear

What had I done?

What did I do?

Everyone who got infected lost their minds

That’s what they said

Their sickness took over, twisted them, and turned them into something else—something violent, something uncontrollable

But not me

I’m a doctor

I treat patients every day

I understand disease

I fight it

I’m not one of them

I can’t be

So why did he run away from me?

Why did my husband look at me like I was something to fear and chose to leave me behind?

The truth is, this isn’t a virus

It never was

They called it an epidemic at first

Something spreading from one person to another, something you could catch

But they were wrong

It’s something else

Something buried deep inside every one of us

They say it begins with pressure,

Too much of it.

The kind that builds quietly over years until something inside finally breaks

And when it does, there’s no filter anymore

No control

People don’t just become someone else

They become what they’ve always tried to hide

Their darkest thoughts

Their buried desires

I remember the first case, Everyone does

A man grabbed his wife and threw her off a bridge

Then he tried to jump after her

They stopped him just in time

He was laughing, saying he was finally free

Finally rid of her

Later, he didn’t remember anything

He swore he loved her

That he had never hurt her

That he would never even think of it

Then he said something else quietly:

“I always wanted to kill her.”

They say the human brain is powerful

That we barely use a fraction of it

No one talks about the other possibility

What if it’s the brain that uses us?

What if all those decisions we think we make were never ours to begin with?

I used to laugh at theories like that

I’m an ER doctor, I deal with reality, not fantasies

I used to say it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be real

Until I became a patient myself

I can't remember what I did, not all of it

Just fragments, noise, screaming.

Then I heard the sound of police sirens outside

My heart started racing as I ran

I didn’t think, I just ran

I left the house, I left everything

Noah turned me in!

He betrayed me!!

I got into my car

Drove away before they could catch me

I didn’t even know where I was going, I just knew I had to disappear

They think it’s an illness when something inside you breaks under pressure

But they’re wrong, it’s not that

They always tell you to calm yourself

To stop worrying

Just stop

That doesn’t calm you, does it?

It doesn’t numb anything

It pressures you day after day until you lose the only thing that was holding you back—control.

Once it’s gone, it doesn’t come back

It doesn’t change who you are, it shows you who you’ve always been

Who you’ve been running away from your whole life

It brings everything into the light

I guess that’s why Noah ran, because for the first time he saw the real me

The unfortunate, unfiltered version of myself

The truth.

But the whole city has gone mad, The infection is everywhere now

No one understands, is this an epidemic?

How does it infect us? How can we stop it?

We can fight diseases, but how can we fight thoughts? Deep buried feelings?

Humans getting rid of their self-control

Killing, violence, hate crimes, people hurting each other without any reason and without mercy!

No one understands why

But I will

I must

There has to be a cure

I’ll find it, and I’ll fix this

I’ll be okay again

And Noah will come back

He won’t be able to live without me

He loves me

I know he does

He has to.

I sank into the corner of the room

My body was shaking as I cried so much that I could not catch my breath

My hands… they were still a mess

I just stared at them

Within saying a word.

Outside the room, my mother was crying and my father was standing next to her

He looked very pale and sad

The doctor was talking quietly, like he was trying not to hurt them with what he was saying

“She was under extreme stress,” the doctor said

“A psychotic break”

My mom hid her face with her hands while crying, shaking her head in denial.

“There was an argument that night between her husband and the neighbor”

“She tried to intervene”

He hesitated

“She had a knife”

“She attacked the neighbor first”

“Her husband tried to stop her”

Silence filled the room

“He didn’t survive”

“She lost touch with reality”

“Her mind created another reality, one where he’s still alive… where she can still reach him”

“She’s not aware of what really happened”

“Everything she’s describing… it’s part of her delusion”

“She doesn’t remember what she did, so her mind created a different version”

“In her reality, he left her”

He paused

“The violence… the infection… the cure…”

“It’s her mind trying to explain what she can’t accept”

A loud bang kept interrupting him as he spoke

It was me hitting the door.

“Open it! Please—open the door!!”

My voice cracked as I screamed, desperate, breathless—

“I’m better now! I found it!”

“I took the cure!”

“Don’t leave me… please!”

The doctor closed his eyes

“She still thinks he’s alive”

My hands slammed against the door again and again and again.

“Noah!”

Silence

Then—

one last scream tore through the walls:

“DON’T LEAVE ME, NOAAAH!”