This all happened like five years ago I was around sixteen it had been a rough 2 years my dad had died of cancer a few months before, I was 6 months clean from burning myself, and had been super paranoid.
It was a night pretty early in the school year and I was at a scout camp it was the middle of the night and I woke up needing to pee I opened my tent and walked to the latrine. We had done a long hike that day 15-20 miles I don’t remember specifics my legs were still tired so I sat on the toilet
Having been in scouts since 11 so I’d become accustomed to seeing weird things carved into latrine walls but this night o saw something I’d never seen before and hope to never see again there was a sort of poem it’s a little hazy but I do remember the first line “First he was gassed, then he was asked, and when he said yes, they made him the best.”
A shiver ran down my spine I came out of the latrine and saw a silhouette of a man in the tree line and blinked and it was gone I guessed my eyes were playing tricks on me I walked back to my tent and tried to go to bed I couldn’t for a long time until I passed out of exhaustion
A few weeks later I was up late upset about my dad I grabbed some weed and snuck out I walked up to the elementary school near my house there was a forest in the back that I would smoke in I rolled a joint and lit up I sat and smoked for a bit then started to walk home when I saw a man wearing an old raggedy trench coat with a gas mask hanging from his neck his face somehow looked wrong I ran inside I didn’t sleep that night
The Next week I was at school my high school had those weird panel celling things and they were old and often being replaced due to leaks as I walked by I looked up at one of these missing panels I saw him holding an ice pick I walked away as I started having a panic attack the next thing I remember was being in my room at night pressing a lit match to my shoulder
Five months passed and while I was still scared I had begun to take more risks I had walked back into the forest to smoke a blunt when I saw him wearing his gas mask I felt tired when I walk up I was in what looked to be in some sort of abandoned hospital strapped to a bed I think it was a asylum as there were straight jackets lying on the ground he walked in still wearing the gas mask holding an ice pick in one hand and a hammer in the other a yellow bad smelling gas filled the room he walked up to me and whispered in a distorted voice “you become like me” I passed out
I woke up in a hospital bed they told me I was in a car accident my car had caught fire and the smoke had damaged my lungs no one will tell me how long I was gone no one I know will admit anything other than what the doctors told me
Sometimes late at night in the corner of my eye I still see the gassed man