The Disturbing Transformation of Richard Rococi

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The story you're about to hear is disturbing, but not as disturbing as the man.
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It's about A man that was born with the social graces of a basement-dwelling loner with gonorrhea.
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Richard Rakoczi, a man whose existence is as beige as the Coney Island Ohio landscape he hailed from, was, to put it mildly, a walking shrug emoji.
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His friends, which were few, call him Rick, a very fitting, bland name for a very bland man.
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But his really good friends, which were even fewer due to his hygiene, called him Nugget, most likely due to the fact that he's like that floater in the toilet that you just can't get rid of.
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He eventually drifted southward to some other Ohio mecca of dullness, maybe Niles Girard or, worst of all, youngstown, a delightful tapestry of half-Jewish and half-Italian DNA.
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Rick expressed this rich heritage through an equally rich consumption of deli fare.
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Pastrami piled high one day, a grease-slicked Italian sub the next.
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The man was a culinary crossroads of cholesterol and substantial Gravity seemed to have a slightly stronger pull in his vicinity.
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His collegiate academic aspirations, some vague medical pursuit that fizzled out faster than a cheap firework, was as memorable as elevator music.
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Cunyod, it seemed, hadn't equipped him for the rigors of dissecting anything more complex than a meatball.
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Thus he'd join the digital hordes, finding solace in the pixelated glow of a monitor.
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Riveting Rick is a collection of oddities wrapped in perpetually distressed clothing.
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Weeks would pass and he'd still be sporting the same ripped jeans and stained shirt, radiating an aura of advanced dishevelment.
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The Walmart incident where a genuinely concerned manager inquired about his access to food and shelter was less an insult and more an accurate observation.
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Then there was the time a homeless guy saw Rick and felt so bad for him he gave Rick his money and a half-eaten tuna sub.
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Rick, of course, ate the sub.
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Then there were the tics.
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The casual finger sniff was a frequent punctuation mark in his otherwise monotone existence.
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And the hat, oh the hat.
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A ritualistic lowering of the grubby baseball cap followed by a deep, almost reverent inhalation of its interior, a bouquet of stale sweat and forgotten pizza crusts.
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Apparently His Tourette's also manifested in occasional, spectacularly inappropriate outbursts, both in private and to the mortification of anyone nearby in public, coupled with a certain social awkwardness.
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Some whispered he might also reside somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but it was the hat-sniffing that would be his undoing.
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What was likely a bizarre sensory-seeking behavior, perhaps amplified by his neurological quirks, was about to become a horror beyond comprehension.
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One unremarkable Tuesday, during his midday hat-sniffing ritual, something shifted.
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As Rick lowered the brim and inhaled deeply, a sharp, stinging sensation shot up his nostril.
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It felt like a tiny splinter, followed by a faint earthy odor.
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That was decidedly new.
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He sneezed violently, dismissing it as dust or some errant fiber.
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Over the next few weeks, subtle changes began to creep into Rick's demeanor.
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His already limited vocabulary became even more stilted, punctuated by odd pauses and vacant stares.
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The inappropriate comments, once sporadic bursts, became more frequent, more alien.
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They weren't just socially inept, they were nonsensical strings of syllables that sounded vaguely organic.
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His hat sniffing intensified.
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He'd clutch the cap to his face, inhaling with a desperate fervor, as if trying to recapture that initial stinging sensation.
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He started neglecting his hygiene even further, his already questionable attire becoming truly biohazardous.
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The smell emanating from him was no longer just stale deli.
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There was an undertone of damp soil and something vaguely ferrous.
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Then came the headaches, throbbing, relentless migraines that made him clutch his skull and groan.
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He'd stare into the mirror, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused, noticing a subtle swelling beneath his hairline, just above his forehead.
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He'd press it, feeling a soft, spongy resistance.
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Unbeknownst to Rick, a tiny fragment of something that had been slowly gestating within the damp confines of his beloved hat, had found its way into his nasal cavity.
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It was a spore, a minuscule piece of a fungal organism unlike anything known.
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The constant warmth and moisture of his sweaty scalp had provided the perfect breeding ground, and rick's obsessive sniffing had been the unwitting delivery mechanism.
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The spore had burrowed its way through his olfactory bulb, latching onto the rich neural network of his brain.
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It began to grow its tendrils, snaking through his grey matter, feeding on his thoughts, his memories, his very consciousness.
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His brain started to expand, pushing against the confines of his skull.
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He should have been incapacitated, comatose, a vegetable, but something perverse was happening.
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Perhaps it was the sheer amount of preservatives and nitrates in his deli meats diet, a bizarre synergy with the industrial runoff that permeated the Ohio air?
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Or maybe just a cruel twist of fate?
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Whatever the reason, rick's warped system was somehow accommodating the alien growth.
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His head grew visibly larger, his features becoming distorted.
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His eyes, now bulging and yellowed, seemed to track unseen movements.
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His speech devolved into guttural clicks and wet, sucking sounds.
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Yet he still moved, albeit in jerky, unnatural ways.
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And his appetite it was monstrous.
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He'd tear into pastrami sandwiches with his bare hands, hunks of meat disappearing into his maw.
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With wet tearing sounds He'd devour entire salamis, the greasy casings dangling from his drooling lips.
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He'd mix Jewish and Italian delicacies with reckless abandon, a grotesque fusion of corned beef and capicola smeared across his swollen face.
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The deli owners, initially bewildered, grew increasingly disturbed by his ravenous, inhuman consumption.
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Nothing got in the way of Rick and his deli meats.
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The growth continued, relentless and horrifying.
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His skull stretched and cracked, revealing pulsatingating gray matter interwoven with glistening fungal threads.
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Patches of a sickly green mold began to bloom on his scalp and face.
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His ears oozed a viscous brown fluid.
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One evening alone in his squalled office, rick's head reached a critical mass.
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The pressure inside his skull became unbearable, with a wet tearing sound, his cranium split open along the seams like a bloated roadkill.
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What spilled forth was not just brain matter.
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It was a grotesque tapestry of grey tissue intertwined with thick, pulsating fungal filaments, glistening with a viscous slime.
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Eyeless, fleshy bulbs sprouted from the mass, twitching and probing the air.
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The earthy metallic stench intensified, thick and suffocating.
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Rick's body spasmed violently, his limbs flailing.
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A final wet gurgle escaped his ruined throat, then silence.
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The grotesque mass that was once his brain continued to writhe and expand.
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Tendrils reaching out, coating the furniture, the walls, the discarded deli containers.
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The office became a fungal terrarium, a testament to a hat-sniffing habit gone unimaginably wrong.
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Days later, when a concerned neighbor finally called the authorities due to the overwhelming stench, they were met with a scene of unimaginable horror A room coated in a pulsating fungal growth, with the vaguely human-shaped remains of Rick embedded within it, like a fly caught in a particularly disgusting spider web.
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His split skull lay open, revealing a cavity now filled with writhing tendrils and glistening spores, ready to find a new unsuspecting host.
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And in the middle of the room lay a lone baseball hat, looking like a belly button on a humongous gland.