Horror story

There are people in everyone's life who ended up there because we knew someone who knew someone. Hybrid people. People whose life and lore are the stuff of legends.

If life were a comic book these people would be the super heroes or arch villains.

They fly into our lives with tales that make our hair stand on end, our hearts bleed with the rapture of goodness run amok, and we are awed.

Our imaginations wrap themselves around the idea of such friends. Our egos are pleased to be associated with these free spirits, and for one short moment in time life is amazing.

Life in the realm of caricatures and fantasy, falling over into real life is exciting until the shadow gloms onto us and there is a tug of realization. We have attached ourselves to a virus!

It shows up at our door when least expected. It spreads into our family life and friends. Its zeal and imagination spread like an ink blot over every part of our life and what was once fresh and exciting is now the stuff of nightmares.

Still the same affable, but pernicious, thrill monger it always was, we are loathe to hurt it in any way, but now instead of trying to figure out ways to be together, we try to think of ways to avoid it.

Once revealed, the loneliness and desperation that drove the hybrid to act out, makes them so much less appealing and so much more in need of us that the need to escape them feels almost unthinkable.

And that is a true horror story.