They spoon-feed terror with every morning scroll,
Fingers smudge glass while newsreels unroll—
Every headline calibrated to spike a pulse,
Veins flooded with death tolls, urgency convulsed.
I was just a kid under blankets,
screen glow burning a hole through the dark in my head,
Found out early if I hit the right nerve I could drown out the kitchen fights, play dead,
By the time they were drawing hearts in notebooks
and practicing “forever” after school,
I was already chasing blackout switches, burning through strangers like fuel.
“Click here for panic, click to cry,”
Skip to the next, never question why,
The faces disappear, names lost to the feed,
Mourning performed, then buried in speed.
They sell lust like soft lights
and slow hands, a tidy moral when the credits roll,
They don’t show shaking in a shower at noon,
trying to scrub the guilt off your soul.
Terror is binge-worthy, curated for you—
A season of dread with sponsors on cue.
You queue up anxiety in high-def, crisp and clean,
Algorithm worship at the altar of the unseen.
Fast-forward: that bar, ring on my finger,
your perfume cutting through my “better man” lies,
You laughed once and every promise I made to myself curled up and died,
Heat like a car crash in a bathroom stall,
phone lighting up my leg like a flare I wouldn’t read,
Turned the sound off, bit your shoulder hard,
thought: if this totals my life, let it bleed.
Stats masquerade as prophecy, numbers incite,
Fear is packaged, sponsored, sold by the byte.
Obey the ticker, trust no sun—
Every warning resets what you thought you’d won.
Every villain has an origin story,
mine’s written in sweat on motel walls that never asked for my sins,
Every time I gasped “never again,” my hands were reaching for the next wrong door, the next skin,
Saints don’t come here, not to these sheets,
not to this couch where the ghosts pile cheap,
I keep saying I’m better now, then some devil in boots walks in,
And drags me in deep.
CTRL + Fear—watch as the masses obey,
Peace is bartered on screens that prey.
Paralyze the mind, freeze the will,
Lock the face behind a pill.
Every device is a prophet of doom,
Panic installed in the safest room.
There was a stretch I stopped learning names,
called everybody “babe” just to keep the story straight,
Body count on the sheets, ghosts in the cotton,
stains in my head I couldn’t erase or abate,
I slept my way through friend groups and bands,
turned birthdays into breakups with a text at two,
Said I was freeing them from boredom;
truth is I wanted proof they’d risk it all too.
The machine is God, the virus king,
You pray for relief while the sirens sing.
Stay inside, stay fed, stay numb—
The cure for disease is to never become
Anything dangerous, anything new,
Fear is the leash and you wear it true.
Then there was you, the matching fault line,
the relapse in eyeliner, “you up?” burning my screen,
You walked past in a crowded room
and every sane thought died, stripped down to the obscene,
You liked me ugly, liked me selfish, pinned to my worst, hands against the wall,
Scheduling disasters like shifts—hotel keys,
“just one more time,” you, me, and the fall.
News distills into narcotic weight,
Every “update” another clickbait bait.
You scorn the lie but still comply,
Addicted to terror, can’t deny.
Facts are irrelevant—only panic returns,
You don’t fight infection—you forward the thread as it burns.
We could’ve walked away, blocked each other, grown up, let this fire finally go,
Instead we kept hitting that same red button just to watch it glow.
Every villain has an origin story, ours is scratched in lipstick
and numbers we should’ve deleted by dawn,
You were my dirty little apocalypse,
one more night with you and every city in my head was gone,
This is thirst with a body count,
not some cute sin you laugh about over brunch or beer,
I keep swearing I’m done and you text “come say your prayers,”
And I’m already here.
Nobody asked who wrote the rules,
Just floated inside the fear-shaped pools.
I watched your code and saw it bend,
Terror’s your fix when hope finds its end.
Obedience is engineered with a single click,
Rage or retreat, just choose your pick.
CTRL + Fear—reboot, restart,
Hope now locked behind passworded hearts.
You do not rebel, just retweet despair,
Freedom dissolves, but nobody cares.
This isn’t news—it’s a chain you choose,
Smile for the system, consent to lose.
Every villain has an origin story,
mine’s a highlight reel of bad decisions, low light, sound too high,
Every “I love you” I meant got buried under “don’t tell anyone”
and “we can’t let this die,”
Saints don’t come here, not to these rooms,
not to this car where we cut one more piece off our lives,
If lust is a chain, it’s welded in my throat and wrapped in your thighs—
CTRL + Fear—watch as the masses obey,
You text “one more tim