Vanity.

I thought I was free from it. Or, at the very least, I thought I fought hard against succumbing to it. But I’m not so sure about that anymore. It’s like acid burning through armor. It’s like horse blinders that keep me infatuated with one thing: my own fortune.

And what a miserable fortune it is!

It stares back at me with a sly grin, knowing its effects on me. It feeds on itself every single time I look down at the phone to check for the signal — for that validation in zeros and ones. It taunts me, knowing I revile it, yet beg it to stay close by.

It destroys what it loves most, just so that I can call on it some more. It loves pain. But it doesn’t feel it; it just lives it. Completely unbeknownst to its host. But it’s there: Feeding on the last few memories that come across the cables of information and life.

And it’s there because it knows we tried to escape. Because we grew our wings before they were given to us. So now it attacks us at every moment it gets, and it tries to drown us whenever we try to forget.

What’s left to do….but fight The Beast.

Though I know while I do, I’ll feed it, too.