The Thing EP

This is my first EP, out on May 23rd 2025

This is the first full EP I have made while having made music for a large part of my life. It's very personal to me and I wrote a short story to go along with it:

The thing

He used to be happy once. Free. That was before the thing entered his life. Since then it’s been navigating, surviving, just getting by. He’s learned to live with the thing over the years. It’s always there anyways, what else was he supposed to do? Now he just lives with this vile thing in the corner of his eyes all the time. He’s okay with it, most of the time. Until he’s not. But he shouldn’t think about that too much. So he goes on with his life. He goes through the motions just like everybody else. Nobody else can see the thing he lives with. Nobody else can see how much it hurts him. How it eats him alive more and more every day. That’s okay, he doesn’t want to bother anyone. He can get through it on his own. Sometimes he feels lost though. Lost and alone. It’s devastating in those moments. It completely immobilises him. Some days it’s worse than others. The thing feels heavier, looks worse, gets meaner. Other days it’s just present, never fully gone.
Life before the thing was good. He went to school, had friends, he could just be a kid. He had hobbies, he loved going to the forest and climbing trees. Being active, he was in all kinds of sports. He was smart, school was easy for him. He misses that time, the person he was back then. He wishes he could still be so carefree, still able to find joy in things. This sadly isn’t reality for him anymore. It can’t be. He doesn’t tell people about the thing, afraid of being judged, being seen as crazy or getting told he’s faking it. People wouldn’t understand, they don’t see the thing. Better to keep quiet. He tried telling people long ago, some of them abandoned him for it, others sent him away. “This is for your own good, the people there will help you.” they told him. He was taken away. It was the worst month of his life, the thing didn’t go away, it’s like the people were feeding into it there. The thing grew. He felt worse. He was alone, except for the thing, it never left him. He wasn’t allowed to leave. If he said too much or did too much they’d drug him. Completely sedate him, he doesn’t know how long he was out for, all of it feels like a blur. He escaped one day, he’d had enough. He had to try to figure it out himself from now on.
It got even worse after that month in confinement. The thing seemed more aggressive. Whenever he tried to have fun, take care of himself, the thing attacked. When he tried to open up to people it’s like the thing got in his throat and ripped the words away from him. He still tried to do normal things, he had friends, sort of. He just can’t let them get too close, afraid they’d notice something off about him. He tried to go to college, so he could become a normal person, a functioning member of society. It’s just hard, the thing weighed him down. Sometimes so much he can’t get out of bed, when he tried to it hurt him. He’s tried so many times, it just wasn’t worth it. It would hurt him too much. so better to just stay in bed.
Every day, he felt himself slipping away. Losing more and more of himself to the thing. He felt scared. Alone, though he could never fully be alone. When he looked in the mirror, he sometimes couldn’t recognise himself. The thing was taking over more of him. He doesn’t know anymore where it begins and he ends, if he was even still there. He was in pain, so much pain. The thing was getting louder, screaming. Not words, just always there. Constant screams of rage, despair? He wasn’t sure, he just knew he was tired. Tired of trying to be normal. His friends stopped checking in on him, he stopped going to school. He just couldn’t anymore. The pain was too much. It all was too much.
One day he woke up, or well, the thing woke up. He was gone. It had completely overtaken him, he was gone. He remembers it happening. He just gave in, it was just getting worse every day anyways. He hopes the people who once cared for him will remember him. He hopes people will remember the carefree child he once was, not this dark, lonely being. He’s still in there, deep down. Some part of him is still there, but he can’t control anything. He can’t see anything, all he hears is static, he can’t talk, the only noise that comes out are the screams of the thing. He isn’t really there anymore. He was gone.

Thank you for reading.