My friend tried a rotting water curse and something went very wrong

This happened about 5 years ago when I was still in high school.

My friend M (we'd been close since middle school) got really into occult stuff around that time. Like obsessively. I didn't really care about curses personally but I thought UFOs and psychic phenomena were kinda interesting, so I'd half-listen whenever he went on about it. Didn't take it seriously though.

Then M started fixating specifically on curses. He was pulling info from everywhere, getting more intense about it. And then one day he asked if I'd come watch him actually do one.

The curse went like this: cut paper into a human silhouette, poke holes where the heart and throat would be. Fill a bucket with water and leave it out until it ROTS. Like fully stagnant and gross. Then weigh the paper figure down with a rock and sink it in the water.

And then, M said this part was the most important, you mix in sweat, blood, semen, and saliva into the water.

I looked into that bucket. The water was murky, covered in algae, and it smelled absolutely AWFUL. Like genuinely I almost gagged just standing near it.

M explained that the rotting water was supposed to act as a kind of foundation for wandering spirits nearby, and adding the bodily fluids would trigger some kind of supernatural phenomenon. We decided to document it with a camera first. Took dozens of photos. Nothing. Not a single orb or shadow or anything weird in any of them.

M looked pretty deflated honestly.

I watched him pour the fluid mixture into the bucket and then I went home. Figured that was the end of it.

But a few days later M just... changed. The bright energy he always had was gone. I got worried and went to his place.

M: "I think that curse actually was dangerous."

Me: "Wait, the thing we did?"

M: "Yeah. At my house."

Me: "Hold on, that was real?? That's terrifying."

M: "Since that day my back has been itching like crazy. And I can't get rid of that smell. The one from the water."

Me: "Have you seen a dermatologist?? You really should get that checked."

M: "I don't really want other people knowing about it but... yeah I should go."

I asked him to lift his shirt so I could see his back.

Boils. All over it. Scattered everywhere across his back.

And the smell hit me the second he lifted his shirt. That exact same rotting water smell. I almost threw up on the spot, not even joking.

M went to the doctor, kept putting medicine on it, but the itching and pain just wouldn't stop. He'd be scratching his back in the middle of class and people started looking at him weird. And at night he said it felt like someone was screaming directly into his ear, right up close, so he couldn't sleep.

I watched the light slowly leave his eyes and genuinely started worrying he was losing his mind.

Kids started avoiding him because of the smell. In the last 3 months before graduation, he basically disappeared completely.

I'm in college now. Every once in a while I catch a glimpse of M around town.

He walks kind of unsteady, still scratching at his back.

I can never bring myself to say anything to him.

I just want him to go back to normal. That's literally all I want.