It would have been less frightening if she had said I had been unconscious for months or years. In that time things would have changed drastically, beyond my control, and well-wishing friends would have kept my bedside table supplied with fragrant flowers and colorful get well soon cards. I could have started life anew.
As it was just more than a week would mean that the paperwork at the office would have built up until I would have to put in hours of overtime to catch up, I would have to deal with the insurance company, and many of my friends and family would probably still be unaware of what happened to me, meaning I would have to contact each of them personally and tell the story over and over. Just a week unconscious would be exhausting.
The nurse took readings off the machines and from my broken body. “The doctor will be in soon to talk to you,” she said and closed the curtain behind her as she left.
The definition of “soon” seemed to have changed in the short time that I was out. I lay in my bed, staring at the wall and its digital clock. Time moved agonizingly slow. The only thing to break the silence and monotony was the rhythmic beeping of the hospital’s machines.
And, strangely, the chirruping of a single insect on the wall opposite my bed. Two long chirrups, and then a pause, then two more, all with a regularity that was nearly mechanical. It appeared in my audible perception suddenly—as if I had been hearing it for some time but had only just became aware of it.
Scratch, scratch.
I thought it was strange that a bug could make it into such a starkly white and sterile room. That it just clung to the wall without moving only added to the eerie sense that grew the longer I stared at it.
Just when I began to think it would never move, a sudden buzzing flutter of wings brought it to the cast on my leg. Closer up, I could see it in greater detail. It was a dark khaki color with burnt orange blotches on its back that were themselves speckled with black. The wings were large, transparent and lined, sweeping down over and beyond the length of its body. It sat there, making its drawn-out chirruping, and seemed to stare at me through its red, bulbous eyes. Somehow it seemed as if it was considering me, sizing me up. I realized that after the fact, having experienced what I have now.
It began to scratch at my cast with spindly, delicate-looking legs. I tried to shake it off but I couldn’t move my leg enough to startle it. It scratched with a concentrated intensity until it had scraped away a thin layer of the cast, throwing up white dust in a small cloud around it.
It was starting to become scared—there was no telling why it was doing what it was doing or how far it would burrow into my cast. Its small body dug feverishly and started to disappear beneath the surface of the cast. I called out for a nurse again and again, and in increasing desperation, but none came.
Now completely obscured by a mound of shifting white dust, I could feel it touch the skin of my leg. It used its preternatural strength to start tearing through my flesh.
The pain was like ripping needles; its movements were tiny but relentless. I screamed, again and again, until my room echoed, but still no one came to save me. Blood and pieces of skin flew out of the hole that it had made in the cast in wild, almost celebratory throws, turning the white dust and the bed sheets red. I soon had no more voice to scream with—it felt as if I tore something in my throat—but still I tried anyway, thrashing in the traction but no more able to move than before.
I felt it meet the bone in my leg. That’s when it stopped. Over my cracked and strangled voice still feebly calling out for help, I could hear it chirruping again.
Scratch, scratch.
Suddenly the curtain around my bed was open and an older man in a white coat stood there, looking down at me and calling out my name. I looked back at him and tried to point to my leg with a bound hand, nodding toward it with my head. He looked down and looked at me, confused.
“Do you have an itch?” he said, “Casts do that sometimes.”
I looked down at my leg and the cast was whole and unblemished, not stained with blood and ripped pieces of my flesh. I stammered and found that I could talk.
“There was a bug . . .,” was all that I could get out. My voice was shaking too badly. The doctor smiled reassuringly.
“It’s just a bad dream,” he said, “I don’t want to alarm you but you’ve been out of it for more than a week.”
He explained the severe extent of my injuries, how lucky I was to be alive, and the amount of physical therapy that I would have to endure. I tried to listen to him but my eyes were drawn back to my leg, as if I was expecting the insect to reappear at any moment. What happened didn’t feel like a dream; I felt the pain in my leg as it ripped pieces away; I felt the spindly legs and bullet-shaped body squirming inside me. Now it didn’t even twinge.
After he finished talking the doctor gave me a fatherly pat on my shoulder and left through the curtain. I looked around the room, as if I would see another insect flying around now that I was alone, waiting to repeat the process, but the air was as empty and sterile as the rest of the room.
The walls and machines were unblemished and unoccupied as if, moments ago, diligent sanitation staff had just left.
I began to relax but as I did I thought I heard a muffled but nonetheless unmistakable, chirruping noise.
Scratch, scratch.
Before I go on, I have to thank you for staying through the story this long. Most people make an excuse and leave by now. That’s if they’re polite. If not, then they just leave. Just to warn you, from this point on my story becomes even stranger and farfetched. It’s almost certainly going to test your mental endurance. If you’re up for it then I’ll continue.
Physical therapy was long and painful, but that pain was nothing compared to what I experienced the first day I woke up. I had almost convinced myself that it had been a dream like the doctor said—it wasn’t as if there was any evidence of what I thought had happened nor had I had any incident, no more chirruping, since then. My body strengthened and healed as much as would have been possible.
The day came that I was to be discharged. I called a friend of mine and they brought a bag of clothes for me to change into, after which he would drive me back to my apartment. Poor Aaron. If I had known what would happen to him, what I would do to him, just later that night, I would have walked home.
Aaron waited outside of my room while I dressed. As I stiffly put on my jeans I couldn’t resist another look at my leg—the one that I thought the insect had bored into—and, truthfully, I inspected my leg each chance I got since the cast was taken off.
The incident was so real to me that I could still remember the pain that the bug had caused; the sensation of a foreign body beneath my flesh and muscle; how it had nestled against my shin bone.
I finished pulling on my pants, zipped and buttoned them, and made to stand up. That’s when it happened again: a faint chirruping, only this time it was muffled. I looked around desperately, hopefully, for another insect, an innocent and mundane one, which had somehow managed to find its way into my room.
There were none.
I almost ripped my pants to pieces in an effort to get them off. When I did I looked at the skin of my leg, the place where I had seen, or thought I saw, the insect enter me. It was still smooth and unblemished but the noise was certainly coming from that spot.
Fear and panic gripped me. It had happened after all, it was real, and that thing was still inside my leg. I scratched and beat at my skin in an effort to get to the bug inside, to make it stop its maddening noise. I must have shouted out because Aaron came running into my room. He asked me what was happening but in my panic I could only point at my leg and whimper. He pushed me back down onto the bed where I thrashed to get at my leg. He quickly pressed the button by my bed and summoned a nurse.
One came rushing into my room and made the natural assumption that I had somehow re-injured myself. She injected a pain killer into my arm and I calmed down, but became too woozy to tell anyone about the insect. I
t didn’t matter at that moment, though, as the chirruping had stopped.
I was given another X-ray and Aaron and I waited for the results. It showed, as I knew it would, that I had healed completely. I stayed quiet about what had really happened. It sounded ridiculous, even to me, now that all was silent. I was cleared to leave again long after night had fallen, the waning drug-induced stupor was still strong enough to help me along to sleep.
I don’t remember the journey home, or Aaron putting me into my bed, but that’s where I woke up. I looked at the digital clock beside the bed. The bright red numbers told me that I had only been asleep for a few hours. I was thankful I was awake, though—I felt that I had slept enough for one lifetime.
A shadow moving across the light that shined beneath my closed bedroom door told me that Aaron was still there. We had taken care of one another while drunk many times, and he didn’t seem to be treating this incident any different. No doubt he had found the pillow and quilt in the hallway closet I kept for those occasions and was preparing to stay all night.
My thoughts turned to all the people I had to notify of my return. My phone was lost, destroyed in the accident, so I lazily rolled over to find the little black address book that I kept in my bedside table. I got as far as opening the drawer and wondering if Aaron would let me borrow his phone in the morning when I heard it again: the muffled, drawn-out chirruping.
I froze in my rummaging. Chemical-induced sleep had blissfully allowed me to forget about the insect and its residence in my leg, but the last shreds of morphine were chased away when I heard the noise yet again. This time I didn’t bother to look around my room—I could recognize the sound well enough now.
I struggled out of my jeans and looked down at my leg, but again there wasn’t even a lump to tell me where the insect was. It was then I felt it move—a tickling, itchy scrabble against my bone. In my mind I saw tiny, frail legs pressed down by red strips of muscle trying to find a purchase on my shin bone in order to move. And move it did, slowly climbing toward my knee; the tickling, itching sensation marked its progress.
Scratch, scratch.
I scrambled in the drawer of my bedside table for something to help me scratch the maddening itch. I soon found what I was looking for: the box that my parents had given me for Christmas several years ago. I opened it and took out the ornate gold-colored letter opener within. The blade was dull, but it was at least four inches long and the tip was more than sharp enough.
I scratched at my shin. The chirruping became more frantic, the insect began to move faster toward my knee. I broke the skin with the tip and blood dribbled in a thin line down my leg. There was no effect, so I scratched harder. Skin peeled away in small strips. Pain blossomed and wilted in a red pulse with each drag across my flesh. I shouted out, tears streaked my face, but still I had to scratch.
Aaron came rushing in just as I felt the insect reach my knee. I tried to dig the tip into my knee cap, trying to pry it off. To Aaron, the scene must have looked like madness: me, lying on my bed in my underwear, blood and strings of skin covering my leg.
He ran over to try and wrestle the letter open away from me. I’m not entirely sure, even to this day, what happened in those tense few seconds—him desperately struggling to take the opener away and me struggling just as desperately to hold onto it. I know I was shouting about the insect beneath my skin, now moving toward my thigh in a trail of itching and long chirrups, but that’s all I could be certain of. He was deaf to anything but his attempt to, as he saw it, save me from myself.
During the struggle, somehow, Aaron was stabbed. I immediately smelled the foul scent of feces and urine as his bowls were perforated by the dull blade. I looked down and saw that it had slid in to the faux ivory hilt. I let it go, Aaron’s blood covering my hand. The insect had fallen silent again.
Aaron fell backward and hit the floor with a hard thud. He made no noise but only clutched at the letter opener protruding from his stomach with a terrified expression, blood and other fluids pouring down over his groin and across his legs.
I wanted to help him, I did, but it was then I felt the insect inside me reach my thigh. It started chirruping again. I furiously scratched at it, but my fingernails were not enough. I dashed past Aaron lying pale on the floor. He reached out a pleading hand to me but I couldn’t stop—I had to help myself first or I wouldn’t be able to do anything for him with the distraction.
Scratch, scratch.
I stumbled into my kitchen and opened a drawer at random. Inside, digging through large spoons and other currently useless instruments, I found a cheese grater. I took it and rubbed it hard against the skin of my thigh, where the subdermal itching was now intense. It shredded my skin; blood dripping onto the floor in a patter of thick red drops.
The itching and the chirruping stopped just as suddenly as it had started and clear thought became possible once again. Recent memory rushed back in a tide of black horror. It felt as though my stomach contracted into a small wrinkled ball. I dashed back into my room.
Aaron was lying on the floor where he fell in an expanding puddle of his own blood. It had soaked into the carpet and turned it almost black. He wasn’t moving; his skin was ghostly pale.
I panicked. My friend was dead on the floor of my bedroom and potentially at my hand. I grabbed my jeans and frantically pulled them on. The blood of my self-inflicted injuries soaked them immediately, turning them purple in large patches. And, to my eternal shame, I ran.
It’s not something that I will ever forgive myself for, leaving Aaron to bleed to death on my own floor. If I had only been able to get the insect out of my leg, he might have been alive. But I could not allow the police to arrest me. I doubt they would believe me, and I would be thrown in jail or worse: a mental hospital. I’m not insane, I know it. Something that feels this real cannot be in my mind.
Scratch, scratch.
At first, a few weeks after the incident in my bedroom, I tried to talk to people, to get help. I hoped that I could find a solution to my problem while still avoiding the police. A life of poverty and homelessness would be bearable if only I could get rid of the bug that still remained resolutely inside me. People would only hear the first few sentences of my story before rushing off—I still wore my blood-soaked jeans, now crusted in a deep brown. They drove most people away.
Life, of a sort, continued on the street. I took shelter where I could—beneath overpasses or in deep doorways—and rummaged food where I could find it—from dumpsters outside restaurants or trash cans on the sidewalk.
I begged for money, but that only took a small part of my time. Most of my time was taken up trying to find things that would help me remove the insect inside my body. I quickly wore my fingernails down scratching myself, but dumpsters and abandoned lots were full of things to use instead: rusty food can lids, broken knives and corkscrews, the sharp edges of chain link fences, and many other impromptu instruments.
The bug remained elusive, moving all over my body seemingly at random. Nothing worked to force it out, or take it out. If you’ll look at my arm here—let me pull up my sleeve—I tried to do a rudimentary surgery to remove it once and for all. I waited until there was a cloudless, sunny day and peeled my skin back to find the thing that was blighting me. My screams echoed down the alley and off the buildings around me as I cut open my flesh with a piece of broken glass.
It was all for nothing, though: I passed out from blood loss before I got too deep into my arm. But, on the plus side, it was the longest sleep I’ve had—most times the bug starts its incessant chirruping and itching when I try to sleep.
Scratch, scratch.
I’ve given up trying to get it out now. I’m resigned to it staying in my body until it determines that it’s time for it to leave on its own—bursting out of my skin like . . . like a cicada, I suppose. I’m sure it will hurt enormously but I’ll take it if I can be free of the blight of its occupation. Still, I cannot resist scratching at it when it acts up. It’s a
n unconscious reaction now. Most often I’m not even aware that I’m doing it.
Scratch, scratch.
Thank you for listening to me this whole time. It helps more than you think to talk to people. Here, let me get you another drink before I leave; I’ve saved up enough money from begging to buy one at least. I don’t need it for myself: I’m used to cold, half eaten hamburgers and the like now. What are you drinking?
Oh, before I get it, I have a question: are you using your fork?
Scratch, scratch.
TETANUS
By Chris Vander Kaay
You sit in an examination room in the emergency room, shifting back and forth on the crinkling paper unspooled from a roll at the top of the exam table across the soft Naugahyde underneath you.
You rub your jaw, pressing at the joint, massaging the muscle, trying to make your mouth open, but it still won’t. You take deep breaths through your nose, try to remain calm. The doctor will know what it is.
You stare at the wall chart across the room from you that says, “Warning Signs You’re Having a Heart Attack.” You glance through the symptoms portrayed in tiny cartoon images. Whatever is wrong with you, it looks like it’s not that.
You hear the click of the door and turn to see a doctor walk in the room. He smiles, but not at you, as he walks in the room. His eyes are on the file in his hands. His nametag reads Dr. Lync.
“Well, we can cross tetanus off the list of culprits that caused your lockjaw, Mack,” Lync says to you, still not looking at you. “No fever, your blood pressure and heart rate are fine.”
Lync sets the file down on the counter nearby, then finally looks up at you. The faux-friendly smile fades away, replaced with the sober, furrowed brow of a professional. He reaches over, sliding his fingers gently across your throat, the muscles in your neck, your shoulders. “The surrounding muscles aren’t stiff to the touch. Hmm. Can you take your shirt off? I want to check some other things.”
Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology Page 21