body horror | Unsettling Stories

A hard-learned lesson about body hair removal.

My trouble started when I realized I was out of razorblades and waxing supplies and my crotch looked like the Amazon rainforest before the mechanization of the logging industry. My date was due to arrive in half an hour. So, I resorted something unconventional. Something, I now realize, was not the best idea.

I’m going to give a little backstory first. I’m not ashamed to say I enjoy sex. The widespread belief that a woman should suppress her sex drive because society finds it “improper” has always disgusted me. Sex is great. Safe sex is wonderful. I respect myself and I respect the men I sleep with. All I ask is that I receive the same respect in return. It’s just two people making each other happy.

Now, I’ve known this since I was fifteen. Two decades of positive experiences have only strengthened my feelings on the subject. That said, there are a few personal responsibilities I feel I have, such as keeping current with the shaving trends. I’m not a huge fan of the concept behind shaving myself, to be honest. If you think about it, it’s actually kind of creepy, but I’ll still admit I enjoy the sensation of hairlessness. I guess it’s a tradeoff.

I prefer to shave, but I’ve waxed myself a lot, too. I have to be careful, though, because I’m allergic to some of the waxes on the market. I don’t know what particular chemical or fragrance it is that causes the irritation, but the itchy rash it produces keeps the downstairs out of business for over a week while it clears up. No one wants to pull off a thong and see that staring them in the face.

So, back to the other day. I found something in the apartment I thought would work like wax, so I tried it out. It hurt like hell and was an absolute bitch to wash off, but it did the job. My date arrived when he said he would. We hit it off at dinner and we ended up back at my apartment, where we both managed to achieve orgasm despite being so full from our meals that we were like two beached whales slapping against one another. Since we both had to get up early the next morning, we said our goodnights and he went home.

The itching woke me up before dawn. It started with my armpits, but then moved to my, if I may use the medical terms, box and asshole. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. The mirror confirmed my assumption: that damn allergic reaction again. Welts were forming in extremely sensitive areas and it looked like I was already getting a bunch of ingrown hairs. I braced myself and doused the affected areas in rubbing alcohol, hoping none of the ingrowns would get infected. I showered and scrubbed, then went back to bed. I still itched.

When I got up to shower, the swelling looked pretty nasty and the ingrowns, despite my best efforts, were starting to get whiteheads. I got up and left for work. I sat in my cubicle feeling utterly miserable. The itching was way worse than any of the reactions I’d had before. When I got up to use the bathroom, I checked the damage.

I almost threw up. A nearly perfect triangle of densely-clustered whiteheads occupied the entire area I’d waxed. Even worse, and this is going to be gross but there’s no real way to talk around it, they’d been popping the whole time I was sitting at my desk. My underwear was soaked.

After cleaning myself up as best I could, I talked to my boss and told her I needed to leave early. She said it was no problem, so I left and headed straight to the walk-in clinic.

I lucked out and got seen right away. The doctor raised her eyebrows to the ceiling when she saw the reaction I was having, but quickly reassured me that she sees people who get skin irritation from hair removal all the time. She gave me some kind of ointment to rub on it twice a day and said if it doesn’t improve in a week, she’d give me something stronger.

I cancelled the date I had with the nice guy from the other night. I felt pretty bad, but he was understanding. He said was that he had to go on a business trip the next day and would be gone for a week. I told him that I looked forward to his return, assuming a week from then I’d be in the clear.

Spoiler: I wasn’t.

I applied the ointment diligently for a few days and most of the whiteheads stopped appearing. The swelling, though, persisted. Same with the itching. My armpits weren’t particularly bad, but my, well, perineum, and the surrounding area, was a disaster area. It was super swollen and it hurt to walk and use the bathroom.

The other night, six days after I’d seen the doctor, the itching turned to flat-out pain. It wasn’t unbearable, and if it had been, I would’ve gone to the emergency room right away, but it was enough to keep me tossing and turning in bed. The clinic started seeing patients at 6am and I was planning to be the first person there when the doors opened.

As the night dragged on, I felt steadily-intensifying pressure on the affected area. It got bad. I scratched through my pajamas and felt small pops under my fingernails. When I pulled my hand away, my fingers were wet. I gagged. Off to the shower I went.

Because I like you guys, I’m not going to be as graphic as I could be. However, I can assure you this will be extraordinarily unpleasant to read. Before I jumped in the shower, I used my phone to take a quick picture of my perineal area. No, I won’t share it with you. But my God, I wish I hadn’t seen it. The small whiteheads in the area had clustered into a few very large ones. They bulged out of the skin almost half an inch and I knew right away that they were the cause of the pressure I was feeling.

I deleted the picture, got in the shower, and squeezed the biggest one as hard as I could. Its contents splattered on the floor of the bathtub like a pasty spitball. I watched as the water washed away the gooey parts. I bent down to look at what remained, screamed at the top of my lungs, threw on my clothes, and drove myself to the hospital.

Don’t worry, I’m going to be fine. I got to speak to a lot of specialists, though; lots of smart doctors whose curiosity was obvious. They kept me there for a few hours and cleaned up my crotch and armpits pretty thoroughly. Then I was discharged with a bunch of medications and tasked to share a bit of hard-learned advice. So here it is!

Always make sure the skin you’re about to remove hair from is clean. Be mindful of the sharpness of your razor when shaving, and if waxing, do your best to avoid any chemicals you might be sensitive to. Stay away from depilatory products that haven’t been evaluated by the FDA. This includes, but is not limited to, creams, lasers, and waxes.

Further, homemade depilatory products are discouraged. That was my mistake. Well, one of two. No one should ever, ever use flypaper for hair removal, especially flypaper that’s not right out of the box. This is because no matter how clean it looks or how meticulously you picked the flies out of their sticky confines, they may leave pieces behind. In my case, those pieces were eggs.

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The reason why I don’t pick up hitchhikers anymore is also the reason why I need a new car.

Keep in mind, I’d never even considered giving a ride to a stranger before. All my life, I’d been told that’s how you get killed. “Only crazies hitchhike,” they’d say. “They’ll cut your throat and steal your car and you’ll be dead in a ditch.”

I didn’t want to die in a ditch. And I liked my car. But after I’d left the gas station and I saw the poor guy sitting in the gutter on the I-95 onramp, feebly holding out his thumb, I made my choice. I’d be a good samaritan.

The storm in the distance looked pretty threatening. If I let that guy sit there, he’d have to bear the brunt of it. From the looks of him, he didn’t appear to be able to bear much at all. I pulled over to the side and rolled down the window.

“Where you looking to go?,” I asked him.

“Baltimore,” he replied. His voice was stronger than his sickly body had suggested, and that gave me pause. I looked him over again. Dirty jeans, baggy red t-shirt. No bag, no bulges in his pockets. I sighed.

“I can get you as far as Philly.” He nodded. “Hop in,” I told him, unlocking the door.

In he hopped.

“I’m Colin,” I said.

“Frank.”

We didn’t talk much for the first few miles, aside from me asking if he wanted some of the Fritos I had left from my lunch stop in Rhode Island. He took them and crunched away as I drove. He caught me studying him out of the corner of my eye a few times, but he didn’t say anything.

As the miles ticked away and rain started hitting the windshield, Frank fell asleep. The open bag of Fritos was on his lap. I wanted a couple, but didn’t want him to wake up thinking I was trying to grab his dick. I had absolutely no interest in his dick.

Frank snored like an orgasming Pratt and Whitney jet engine. In the confines of the car, since I had to close the windows once the rain had started, I noticed Frank had an unpleasant odor. Nothing overwhelming, but still obvious.

Over his snore, his stomach growled and burbled. “Gross,” I thought. Lightning flashed and wind buffeted the side of the car. The traffic ahead of us slowed to a crawl.

One of the annoying things about my car is the climate control only works properly when the car is moving. God knows why. The air conditioning we were enjoying up to that point cut out, and hot air started to blow out of the vents. The windshield began to fog up.

I cracked my window, hoping the outside air might clear the windshield. It did a bit, but visibility was terrible. The rain was heavy and my wipers weren’t doing a good job. All I could see was fog and the brake lights of the cars stopped in front of me. Frank’s stomach kept gurgling. I looked over. He was awake, staring straight ahead.

“You okay buddy,?” I asked. No response. He just stared at the fog-shrouded glass of the windshield. The smell I’d noticed before had intensified.

“Hey, Frank, what’s going on? You sick?”

Still nothing. Thick, humid air poured from the car’s vents despite the AC being set to max. Rain and small chunks of hail pelted the choked highway.

Frank retched. “Shit,” I said, and I frantically reached in the backseat for a bag or bucket or anything that might catch what I thought was about to come blasting out of my companion. My hand settled on one of the canvas shopping bags I used at Whole Foods. “God damn it,” I mumbled, as I placed my favorite shopping bag on Frank’s lap.

He moaned and turned to look at me, his eyes swimming back and forth with what I knew had to be intense nausea.

“Frank, please open the door and puke on the road or at least use the bag. I’m begging you.”

More silence punctuated by gurgling and retching. A boom of thunder caused us both to jump. For Frank, that was all it took. He didn’t open the door. And he didn’t aim for the bag.

A heavy wave of yellow vomit exploded out of his mouth and splashed against the windshield. I screamed. Another projectile torrent erupted from the man, dousing the ceiling, the dashboard, and the center console.

“Get out!,” I shrieked, the smell of the stomach contents invading my nose and threatening to force my own contribution to the mess. Frank sat back with his head down, pasty slime drooling from his mouth into the Fritos bag in his lap.

Cars behind me were leaning on their horns. The traffic in front of us had cleared. I poked at the hideousness on the console to turn on my emergency blinkers, then steered onto the median. On my right, I heard Frank choking. I got out of the car and stood in the rain, watching him. If you told me the following 30 seconds actually lasted 3 hours, I would’ve told you you were way off. It felt like a day.

Frank’s throat bulged as something was forced upward and into his mouth. I saw the something a second later. A colossal, writhing centipede as thick as my wrist began sliding out, its passage eased by the vile lubrication from minutes before. Inch after inch, foot after foot crawled out until it was free. It skittered under the passenger seat.

I’d already dialed the “9” in “911” when the solid matter entombed in his vomit began to move. Frank groaned and I distinctly heard him mutter, “not again.” As the rain soaked me, I watched as small centipedes crawled through the sludge all over the car, leaving trails as they went.

My dialing complete, I waited through seven rings before a dispatcher answered. As I told her about the medical emergency and tried to estimate where we were on the interstate, Frank abruptly opened the passenger-side door and stood on the side of the highway. He was gripping another massive centipede and pulling it out of his throat. I watched it bite his hand over and over until its two-foot length was exposed. Frank flung it into the dirt.

“Sorry about your car, man,” Frank called over the sound of rain and traffic. “I haven’t had an episode since I was a kid.”

I was speechless. I just looked at him as he walked down the side of the median, the torrential rain washing his clothes of the filth and bugs. And as centipedes crawled throughout my car and ropes of stomach contents dripped from its ceiling, Frank stuck out his thumb to flag down another potential ride to Baltimore.

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There’s something alien at the cemetery in Norwalk, CT.

grave2

I bought a house across the street over the summer, and now that the leaves have started to fall, I have a clear view of the graveyard from my living-room window. A week and a half ago, I saw something tall and white moving among the headstones. Something that glowed with dim light, even when it was pitch black out.

I told Denise, who said, and I quote, “well that’s pretty fuckin’ cool.” We started staying up late to see if it would come back. On Thursday night, it did. Through the binoculars, I could see it was shaped more-or-less like an upside-down tree. It didn’t have feet, but rather hundreds of small tendrils that shuffled it through the rows of headstones. Its body was erect and unremarkable, save for an opening at the top where different, longer tendrils hung.

It moved silently and ceaselessly for almost 20 minutes before disappearing into thin air.

When I got to work on Friday, I told a couple guys about it. They said I was full of shit, so I invited them over to see it for themselves. Dan was the only one who took me up on my offer, so I told him to come for dinner. We could eat and wait for the thing to show up.

Around 1am on Saturday morning, it came back. Dan was speechless. He took out his phone and started recording. I told him there was no point; it hadn’t shown up on anything Denise and I had tried to record with, but he insisted on trying anyway.

We were out on the front porch, so the thing was about 100 feet away. Maybe more. Dan wasn’t having much luck getting it in focus, so he crossed the street and stood on the edge of the cemetery property.

“I wouldn’t go near it, Dan,” Denise advised. Part of me agreed with her, but another part wanted to join him and get a better look.

“It’s cool,” Dan replied over his shoulder. He kept walking in its direction.

I stayed on the porch with Denise and watched Dan get closer.

“Can you hear that?,” Dan called. “It sounds like it’s singing or something.”

Neither of us could hear what Dan heard, but I was growing increasingly uneasy at his cavalier attitude in the face of something completely unknown.

Before any of us could react, one of the tendrils from the top of the creature shot across the cemetery and whipped Dan in the face. He stumbled and fell on his back. Denise gasped and I started running toward my friend. The thing evaporated. I reached Dan, who’d already gotten up. He looked no worse for wear.

As we headed back for the house, Dan began to limp. He started to complain about a weird feeling in his feet. I helped him across the street and back into the house. He immediately took off his shoes and started to rub his heels and arches and toes. It was obvious he was in pain.

Without warning, with a series of sickening, wet cracks, Dan’s feet split in half. He and Denise screamed. They split again. And again. Denise fumbled with her phone to call 911 and I could just watch, horrified, as Dan’s feet continue to bifurcate until there was nothing left but bleeding tendrils that jerked and twitched, flinging blood across the living room.

Dan passed out as further bifurcations turned his feet into noodle-thin, then hair-thin, filaments. I heard an ambulance approaching. We live only a quarter-mile away from the hospital. The filaments knotted and unknotted as the EMTs entered the house. They gazed, wide-eyed, at Dan’s injuries.

As they loaded him onto the gurney and began exiting the house, two cracks like gunshots rang out, making everyone jump. His shins, knees, and femurs had split. Blood poured down the sides of the gurney and cascaded down our front steps. Denise and I heard more cracks after the ambulance doors had closed. Then, with sirens blaring, they were gone.

Dan died not long after. I attended his funeral this morning. There’s no explanation for what had happened to him, and the news report on his death simply called it an “accident.” I want to come forward and tell the police what’s going on in the cemetery, but the thing hasn’t shown up at all since that night. If anyone else lives in Norwalk and can claim they’d seen something like what I described, please do so. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. Dan didn’t deserve what happened to him.

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Teeny Tiny

When I was little, Mom used to hold me and say stuff like, “oh Katie, you fit so perfectly on my lap! You’re so teeny tiny!” I loved it. She’d keep me warm and hug me and I felt so great. I’d always go to Mom if I felt sad or scared and she’d just scoop me up, saying “what’s wrong, my teeny-tiny girl?” and I’d tell her what was making me upset and she’d always always always make it all better.

The most vivid memory I have was the day I turned 10. It wasn’t of my party, which I vaguely remember being great, it wasn’t the presents, some of which I still have, but it was when Mom had me in her lap that night and had tears in her eyes and said to Dad, “Katie’s getting to be a big girl, huh?” I don’t remember what my dad said, but there was no denying it: I wasn’t her teeny-tiny girl anymore.

At 10 years old, I was about 4’10”, maybe 100 pounds. I was growing fast. Both my parents are tall. I remember being scared. The scale kept going up, and by the time I was 11 I was 5’2”, 120 pounds and getting boobs. At that point, when I was sad, mom would hug me tight and say the right things, but it all felt different. She never cradled me. She never had me in her lap. I felt cold and lonely even though I was never really cold or lonely. I just wanted to be closer to her like I was when I was little.

So I decided to get little again.

Mom started to notice when I pushed around my food on the plate, trying to pile it up on one side to make it look like I ate more than I really did. “You’re a growing girl,” she said, kindly but firmly. “You need to eat.” I couldn’t leave the table until I was done.

That night after dinner, I remember lying on my back on the bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling the food in my stomach. Mom’s words “you’re a growing girl” echoed in my mind and I felt so sick that I ran into the bathroom and threw up. I was really glad I had my own bathroom so they couldn’t hear me puking. After I was done, I felt so much better. Lighter and smaller, even.

Mom was so happy to see me eating normally again. She’d worried aloud that I might be getting the flu, so seeing me chowing down like my old self pushed those worries right out of her head. What she didn’t see was how I went to bed afterward, and while the bathwater ran, I was throwing it all up. I did this every day for years.

One of the sad truths about throwing up your meals is you don’t lose all that much weight. I actually gained more. Sure, I’d get rid of what I’d eaten, but probably twice a week I’d be lying in bed, wide awake, fingering my collar bones, hip bones, and ribs, all while obsessing over food. Something inside me would snap, and I’d run to the fridge or the cabinets and eat until I felt like I was bursting. Then, exhausted, I’d go back upstairs and pass out on my bed. Calorie-for-calorie, after those twice-weekly binges I was eating more than I would’ve if I’d been healthy. Except I really, really wasn’t healthy. And nobody knew.

All this built up to the last few months after I graduated high school. I was 5’11, 175 pounds. 17 years old. There was absolutely nothing I hated more than my body. I was constantly lonely and wanted to try to take my mind off it all. I decided to get a job. When I told Mom I found a position at a place that recycles old medical gear, she was proud of me for taking the initiative. It was bittersweet; I knew she was starting to see me as an adult. Not her teeny-tiny girl. I felt like a complete and utter failure.

The recycling place where I worked dismantled big machines that hospitals used and sold the parts. I was the receptionist. I took phone calls and helped set up deliveries. The people I worked with were really nice, and after a few weeks they gave me a key so I could get there early and have coffee ready and work orders printed out. One night, after everyone left, I went back there and let myself in.

To this day, I still feel bad about breaking their trust.

A couple days earlier, my coworkers were bringing in an old machine. They were all wearing heavy gloves and had on breathing gear like scuba divers. When they were done, I asked what it was. Apparently it was something hospitals use to give radiation therapy to cancer patients. I didn’t know too much about that, so when I got home I went on Wikipedia and did a lot of research — and then I got my idea.

When I let myself in that night, the place was empty. I made a beeline for where they had that radiation therapy machine and I investigated it. Most of it was completely dismantled. What I was looking for was conveniently labeled and brightly marked in a massive lead container. It took me a while to get the cover off. Lead’s so heavy! But after I did, I saw a round metal part that looked like a wheel. I picked it up, rotated the mechanism, and it opened a little window in the front. A faint blue light was inside. I held it up to my eye and looked in. Nothing but that light. I figured it was probably what I was looking for.

I brought the object home with me and locked the door of my bedroom. I worked to pry the thing open with a screwdriver, but it seemed locked from the inside. Eventually I got frustrated and I turned the wheel again to open the window and pushed my screwdriver into the blue stuff and tried scooping it out. It turned out to be pretty soft. A lot of it broke as I poked it with the screwdriver, and when I turned the wheel upside down, the pieces tumbled out onto my desk. Now I could see how pretty it was. It was like chunks of glowing blue clay and sand. I gathered it up as best I could and put it away, save for the little bit I was going to use tonight.

One of the things I’d read about radiation therapy was that it made the poor people with cancer really skinny. They just totally lost their appetites. I couldn’t believe it was true. I’d always had such a big appetite. I kept telling myself I needed to be really careful when I took this stuff because if I get too much of the radiation I could get cancer myself. I took a pinch of the blue clay, put it in my mouth, and swallowed it with a gulp of water. It felt warm going down even though the water was cold. Since I’d gotten home from the recycling place I’d been pretty warm, in fact. Cozy. Like a little puppy under a blanket.

That night I woke up sweating worse than I’d ever sweated in my life. The bed was totally soaked. Gross. Water weight wasn’t really what I wanted to lose, but it was better than nothing. I took a shower and changed the sheets and went back to bed. My stomach ached a little.

When I woke up the next morning, my stomach hurt and I threw up a couple times. But, I wasn’t even remotely hungry. That alone made the pain in my tummy pretty much go away. I didn’t need to eat! Mom asked if I was bringing leftovers to work from last night’s dinner and I lied and said we were going to get a pizza. I hate lying to Mom, but I didn’t want her to worry. There was no need to tell her I wasn’t hungry.

At work, they’d finished disassembling the machine and started sending it out to wherever they send those things. I’d been really careful to put the canister back exactly as I left it. No one checked to see if the little wheel was still there.

The next few days were uneventful, aside from my stomach ache getting worse and having to puke once or twice. I’d barely eaten anything since I started taking the radiation medicine. Whenever I got woozy from lack of food, I ate an apple or a fat-free yogurt and I was fine. I was still sweating a lot. When I got on the scale, it said 168.

After a week of eating nearly nothing and faithfully taking my radiation medicine nightly, my stomach ache got really, really bad. I’d stopped throwing up, but this time it felt like I needed to go to the bathroom. I went, and it was awful. There was so much – I was shocked. I’d apparently eaten and kept down way more than I thought. I got on the scale after, though, and that helped me feel a lot better. 161.

Over the next couple days, one or two people told me how pretty I looked. They asked me if I lost weight and I said yeah, maybe a few pounds. I beamed. Over my whole adolescence I’d done nothing but get bigger. Now, finally, I was shrinking and on the way back to teeny tiny. I didn’t feel too great, though. My tummy was constantly having me run to the bathroom and it still hurt afterwards. I figured I was getting rid of all the extra fat. 158.

I was in the shower about 10 days after I started taking the medicine and I was horrified to see some of my hair coming out. That was bad. Really, really, really bad. I stopped washing it immediately and let just the water rinse away the remainder of the shampoo. I got out of the shower and took like an hour blow drying my hair because I was too scared to use a towel that might pull more out. When the mirror was unfogged and my hair was dry, I checked to see how noticeable it was. There was a good-sized patch of bare, red scalp about 2” wide above my left ear. I pushed the hair around it to cover the patch. Some more fell out. It had to be a nutritional deficiency from all the meals I’d been missing. I put on my Titans hat and got dressed. When I brushed my teeth I noticed a little blood in the sink. I made a note to get some multivitamins after work.

I didn’t shower the next day because when I woke up that morning, there was more hair on my pillow. My scalp was getting pretty visible. It looked prickly and raw but it didn’t hurt. Since I was off work, I stayed at home and looked online for all the nutritional deficiencies that might cause my hair to fall out and my gums to bleed. Most of the ones were covered by my multivitamin, so I tripled the amount I took just to be on the safe side.

I had to go to the bathroom five times during the 15 hours I was awake. By the last time, I was incredibly light-headed and so thirsty. I weighed myself before I started downing water and my radiation medicine. 150. The medicine helped me lose 25 pounds in under two weeks.

Mom hugged me the next morning before I went to work. She ran her hands up and down my back and she made a remark about how skinny I’d gotten. Then, she said it: “remember when I used to call you my teeny-tiny girl? I miss those days but I love you just as much as a grown up.” She let me go. Pain, nausea, and despair washed over me. Without warning, my lightheadedness came back with a vengeance and I stumbled and fell on the kitchen floor. My hat fell off. With my head spinning, I vaguely remember Mom gasping, “Katie what happened to your hair?!” before I violently threw up on the floor and myself. It was all blood. I passed out to the sound of Mom screaming.

I don’t know how much time went by at the hospital. I wasn’t completely unconscious, but all I remember up until recently were images of doctors in the same scuba gear as the guys at work, and they were saying meaningless words like “cesium” and “sloughed” and “gray” that didn’t mean the color.

Today, I can’t move or talk and I’m writing this using a cool keyboard they gave me that can pick out letters using the movements of my remaining eye. I’ll be dead soon. I’m not too fun to look at anymore. My hair’s gone. And my jaw. And my skin. The nice doctors are giving me medication that helps me manage the pain and keep me alert. They asked if they could do tests and experiments on me to help understand what ingestion of the radiation medicine does to the human body. Apparently there was a Japanese man a few years ago named Hiroshi who got a similar level of exposure and the same stuff happened to him. They said it would help other people in the future if they could compare our two cases. Of course I let them.

I can’t eat food anymore. My esophagus got cooked away. Same with my stomach. The doctors are keeping me hydrated with a tube in my butt. I don’t really like to think about it. I guess all the excitement I get as I wait here is when they weigh me every six hours to see if I’m able to retain the fluids they give me, or if it all seeps out into the sheets. They hoist me onto a pad and a little machine voice says a number. This morning it said 72. The next time it was 66.

Mom and Dad have to wear those scuba suits when they come visit. Mom’s always crying because she’s not allowed to touch me. Dad just stares. Right before I started writing this, Mom bent down and started whispering to me some of the stuff I remember her saying when I was small. I closed my eye and imagined being warm and safe on her lap, just like a hibernating little bear. “I love you, my teeny-tiny girl,” she sobbed. I would smile if I still had a mouth.

Slough

For the last three decades, small groups of mycologists have been visiting a village deep in the Brazilian Amazon. It is suspected, based on some evidence, the village is atop a colossal fungal colony, similar to the Armillaria solidipes in Malheur National Forest, Oregon, only dramatically larger. If that’s the case, the fungus would be the largest living creature on Earth.

The hundred-or-so expeditions before ours yielded inconclusive results. Genetic tests have shown there is a type of fungus, a stringy, white mushroom, unique to the general area, but attempts to grow it in any environment outside a 40-mile radius of the village have been futile. My trip down last March was with the intent of seeing if the fungus could be grown artificially under specific chemically-induced conditions.

A biotechnology firm had recently developed an interest in that particular mushroom, believing it might have anti-carcinogenic properties. As a result, the two members of my team and I were given far better equipment to take with us than we normally had. We were happy to oblige.

Upon our arrival, the native people were as friendly and inquisitive as always. They’d taken a liking to all the scientists who’d visited them. While the lab was set up a hundred yards from the nearest structure in the village, it was common for the scientists and villagers to interact when the workday was over. A few of us even figured out a few words of their local dialect, although no one was anywhere near conversational level. It didn’t matter, though. Food, drink, and wrestling were the common languages we spoke. For 32 years, everything had gone well.

Everything, that is, except our research. We’d been stuck for the better part of a decade. With no ability to grow the fungus aside from that small, incredibly isolated locale, the likelihood of fully determining its properties was low. Further, without massively-invasive and destructive digging, we’d never be able to find out the true size of the fungal colony below us.

Things grew complicated, though. They changed for the worse. I’m not going to write out an explanation of what went on or why I’m the only person in our group to survive the last trip, but I will share my journal entries from that period. I have to warn you, though: the things I saw were unlike anything I could have imagined – and they’re things I hope no one will ever have see again.

March 9th, 2015
9:00am

It’s been absolutely pissing rain for six days now. Jared estimates the rainfall is exceptionally high, even for the time of the year. He thinks at least 20 inches have fallen. I believe him, too. I can see why the village folks have their huts elevated off the forest floor. Otherwise, they’d be in knee-deep water. You know, sort of like our fucking lab.

Ok, it’s not that bad in the lab. Maybe only ankle-deep. But I swear, I’m going to knock Frank’s teeth out when we get back home because it was his responsibility to make sure the place was sealed tight before his crew left. The dickhead.

Anyway, Annie said “fuck it” and hiked through the water to see if the trails had been flooded. They were. Big time. None of us are getting out of here for a while, so I hope no one gets hurt or sick. The place where the helicopter usually lands might as well be a lake and when it’s all drained away it’ll be 4 feet of mud. The sat-phones work fine, though, but when I called Rakesh, he just told us to suck it up and get some work done. The rain should be tapering off tomorrow. Well, as much as it tapers off in a rainforest I guess.

March 10th, 2015
8:15am

Well, the sun’s out. God DAMN there’s a lot of water around. Thankfully, it’s draining into the ground pretty quickly. I guess that’s one of the benefits of being on top of (maybe) the largest mushroom on Earth; mushrooms loooove their water. I can’t even imagine how much that thing can hold.

Yesterday, we laughed at Annie while she picked the leeches off her legs after her little hike. Well, we laughed until she starting throwing the nasty bastards at us. Then we just hid and giggled. Only in a rainforest are there so many leeches that you’ll get them even in water that’s moving.

We didn’t do any work today. I think tomorrow’s going to be a good day, though. At the rate the water’s draining, we should be clear to start getting new samples. Whenever it rains a lot, that big fucker underground sends up thousands of little mushroom caps that grow in under than four hours. We’ll have more than enough samples to play around with.

Side note, though: I think I’m getting a cold.

March 11th, 2015
12:00pm

I have a cold. You know how summer colds are the worst because the humidity makes the sinus pressure so much worse? Yeah, well a cold in a hot, tropical rainforest is about 1000x worse. I’m sniffling and blowing snot all over the place while Jared and Annie are out doing field work and hanging with the villagers. Being stuck in here gave me the time to do stupid Frank’s job and make sure the place was airtight, and after that was done, I had the opportunity to play with the cool toys from GeneMedica. That said, I don’t even know what half this shit is. We’re mycologists, guys. Not geneticists.

Update @ 3:15pm

Something started happening a little while ago and it’s definitely relevant to our work so I’m going to do my best to detail everything. I called Rakesh and he agreed I should document it all.

I was sitting at the computer and looking out the window when what looked like dark orange smoke started pouring from the ground. And I mean pouring. The visibility went to practically nothing. The tree that’s about ten feet from our lab was borderline invisible. Outside, I can hear the villagers yelling to one another. They seem pretty frightened. I’m unnerved, to say the least. Unnerved, but also excited. Is this a spore bloom?

I’m assuming it might be, and even though I’m in the lab which I know is finally sealed properly, I’m putting on my hazmat suit. I’m probably being overcautious, and I know Annie and Jared are out in the stuff without any protection, but something about the ferocity of the way it’s coming out of the ground worries me.

Update @ 3:35pm

Jared just came back. Well, he’s still outside but he’s at least back where I can see him. He’s acting like he’s high out of his mind. He’s walking around and laughing to himself. Like, a lot. It doesn’t look like he’s having any problem breathing, but the amount of orange powder in the air and stuck to the surfaces of nearly everything is disconcerting. I can’t imagine having that stuff in his lungs.

I yelled out to him about Annie and the folks in the village. He just yelled back how awesome they were. There’s no way I’m getting through to him until his buzz wears off. It doesn’t appear that he wants to come in the lab, and I’m glad about that. I don’t think it’d be a smart move if the only clean area gets contaminated.

Update @ 7:15pm

Annie came back and is in the same state as Jared. They played around outside like two kids and wouldn’t listen to a word I yelled from the lab. They’ve since fallen asleep outside on the picnic table. I’m going to bed.

March 12, 2015
6:30am

The spores (I’m calling them that from now on because there’s no other conceivable explanation) stopped erupting overnight, and after it rained early this morning, they’ve blended in with the mud. I’m not taking off the hazmat suit, but I’ve disconnected the breathing apparatus and just using the filters in the mask. I doubt any particulate matter is small enough to penetrate the filters.

Jared and Annie seem to be no worse for wear, aside from exhaustion. After cleaning themselves in the river, I agreed they were probably fine to come back in the lab and sleep. As for me, even though I’m miserable with this cold, I’m too excited to stay in here. I’m going out – first into the village, then to the forest around us. I want to see if that spore explosion could confirm the presence of that enormous mushroom.

Update @ 10:20am

I spent a little over an hour in the village. None of the people seemed injured, just a bit confused. I’m concerned, however, about the skin irritation a few of them developed overnight. Annie, too, has red blotches on her back and stomach. She insists they don’t hurt, but they look painful. They remind me of eczema. Jared, so far, isn’t having any skin problems. He’s been coughing up disgusting orange crap from breathing in all the spores yesterday, but that’s the worst of his problems. I’m heading out into the forest for a few hours.

Update @ 2:00pm

My trip to the forest was unsettling. There were many, many injured animals. They appeared to be suffering from a skin condition similar to that of the people affected by the spore eruption. I’m going into the village once more to see how their symptoms have progressed.

Update @ 3:50pm

I returned to the lab and found Annie and Jared having sex with one another in the middle of the main room. When I entered the lab, they didn’t even try to hide themselves. They just continued doing what they were doing. That is entirely uncharacteristic of Annie, first of all, who is happily married and Jared, who, as far as I know, is gay. Neither of them ever appeared to have any romantic interest with one another and their interactions have always been professional.

I approached them and they greeted me happily, but not even pausing their action. The blotches on Annie’s back looked much worse. As they went about their business, they talked to me about how much better they were feeling after getting some rest. Annie, who had been riding Jared chest-to-chest, leaned back and exposed her chest and stomach. The flesh was terribly damaged. Jared, too, had started to show signs of skin deterioration. His own chest and belly were riddled with ugly, red, eczematous patches.

When I asked if they’d be okay with stopping for a few minutes so I could take a look at their skin, they didn’t argue. Annie hopped off Jared and they stood in front of me, naked and beaming. I have no medical training, but I thought it was important to get samples of their damaged tissue. While I’d never done a biopsy before, they didn’t look hard and Jared and Annie consented.

I made the first cut on Annie. As the knife went in, when I expected to hear a gasp from pain, she groaned with what I could only identify as pleasure. I glanced up and saw her with her head back, smiling. I took the sample, bagged it, and put it in the refrigerator. Jared, too, expressed delight at the feeling of the scalpel sliding into him, his pleasure manifesting itself more obviously as he regained the erection he’d lost following his interrupted sex with Annie. I did my best to stay professional, but I was very, very disturbed.

I put his sample in the fridge next to Annie’s. When I turned back around, I was horrified by what I saw. Annie and Jared were kissing again, and rather than resuming their intercourse, she had invaginated his navel with her index and middle fingers. She slid them in and out of his abdomen, blood trickling through his public hair to the base of his erection and dripping onto the floor. All the while, as they kissed, both their faces shone with ecstatic glee.

Sick to my stomach, I backed away and walked outside. From the village, I heard screams of rapturous joy. Many of the villagers had congregated in the center of the main huts. They were all nude and writhing against one another. Men. Women. Children. And bright blood glinted off their dark skin.

March 12, 2015
5:15pm

As much as I thought I had to, I wasn’t ready to go into the village yet. There were things I needed to do back in the lab. Annie and Jared obviously aren’t healthy and I’m worried about how safe they are around one another. I remembered GeneMedica had supplied us with three bottles of Laphroaig 30 to use in celebration if we had any breakthroughs. So, I did what any self-respecting scientist would do: got my fellow researchers blackout drunk and locked them in their respective rooms with a fresh bottle to call their own.

Then I called Rakesh. He seemed more freaked out than I was. He’d known Jared for 20 years; apparently he’s in a 25+ year monogamous relationship with his partner, and, to directly quote Rakesh, “gayer than gayer than gay.” Rakesh agreed with me that stranger things have happened than two people pairing off when stuck in a bad situation, but with everything else going on – the spore eruption, the skin lesions, the pain/pleasure rewiring, and whatever the hell was happening to the villagers – it was impossible to say it was just a situational fling. He commended me for figuring out how to keep Jared and Annie safe, then he told me to get my ass into the village and take notes.

I have a sinking feeling it’s going to be really, really ugly.

Update @ 8:00pm

It’s hard to form a coherent narrative when you’ve been traumatized. At the same time, it’s easy to recall the details of that which traumatized you. The first things I noticed, upon leaving the lab and starting the hundred-or-so yard walk to the village, were the bird feathers. They were raining from the trees and dancing in the weak wind. I couldn’t make out much through the thick canopy, but I could see one bird very clearly. It was perched on a branch nearest the trunk and vigorously rubbing its body against the bark. Once one side was denuded of feathers, it started on the other until the same result was achieved. Then it leapt from the branch and flew in a bizarre, moth-like trajectory that didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. It went out of sight before I could learn what was happening to it.

A dog ran out from the general direction of the village and stopped in front of me. Its fur was mangy and the visible flesh was punctured or rotted away. Its tail wagged furiously and its ears were up, making it look incredibly happy despite the horrible condition of its skin. I reached out to pat its head, and it obliged, pushing its snout and head against my palm very hard; almost as if it’d never felt the touch of a person before.

It ground its skull against my hand and I felt something slide. I recoiled and pulled back. The skin stuck to my gloved hand as I pulled, tearing the fur and flesh from its head. The dog, with blood trickling down its face and its tail still wagging, stared at me and began to eat its scalp off my glove. I didn’t shoo it away. I didn’t know what to do at all, aside from let it finish. It didn’t take long. I continued my walk to the circle of huts.

With each step, the details of the natives, who still swarmed in the center of their village, became apparent. I can only describe their activity as a blood-soaked orgy. Every conceivable sexual pairing was demonstrated, all the way up groups as large of six. Most sickening to me, aside from the atrocious and seemingly-indiscriminate disparities in the ages of the participants, were the injuries. Every person had terrible damage to their skin. It appeared to be the same as what Annie and Jared are dealing with, but most of the villagers were much worse off; likely due to their constant and frenetic activity with one another.

They paid me no attention as I walked through their midst. Every so often, I’d come across a corpse. Each had profoundly-disfiguring damage to them. While I know some of it was the result the fungal spores’ effect, a good portion was clearly from the action of another person. This was verified when I saw a young man in the crowd, a rictus of pleasure etched across his face, having his entire back flayed open by his partner. The man gasped with clear delight, his nudity making obvious the arousal he felt despite the terrible injury. His partner pressed his face into the wound and planted tender kissed on the exposed ribs.

There were more acts like that, but they’ve all blurred together. I’m exhausted and overwhelmed. I called Rakesh once I got back and while he expressed sympathy for what I saw, he insisted on the importance of documenting the behavior and progress of those affected by the spore cloud. I promised him I’d do a better job tomorrow if I was able to get any sleep tonight. I checked on Annie and Jared; both were snoring. Their skin looked worse, though. I’m not sure what to do. Rakesh assured me that by tomorrow evening they’ll be able to get a helicopter to us. When I asked about where it’d land, he told me not to worry about it. So I’ll do my best. I’m going to get drunk and try to fall asleep.

March 13th, 2015
6:15am

Before I went to sleep last night, I bound Jared and Annie to their beds. It was something Rakesh suggested and I eventually decided it would be for the best. I could deal with them being pissed at me as long as they didn’t hurt themselves while we waited for the helicopter. Apparently ours would be the first of a few; there’s a medical helicopter scheduled to come in minutes after we’re taken out. While I’m really happy the villagers will get medical attention, it absolutely sucks so many of them will be either dead or terribly disfigured. If we’d been able to figure out the workings of that massive underground fungus, we might have been able to prevent this from happening.

I’m heading down to the village again. I’m bringing my voice recorder so I can document enough detail to make Rakesh happy. I’m not going to transcribe it all, but I’ll put what I feel are the most important parts in this journal.

Update @ 12:00pm

What I saw yesterday was paradise when compared to the devastation and depravity I was forced to observe today. Rakesh, I wish you hadn’t asked me to do this. I understand why you needed me to, but as a result, I am not the same person I was a few days ago. There’s just nothing I can express other than sadness and terror. Well, maybe one thing. There’s a tiny, tiny bit of solace in the fact those affected by the spores don’t appear to be in pain. But the other side of that is how they gleefully destroyed their fellow villagers. People who were entirely innocent. People who, even as I write this, continue to scream with impossible ecstasy as they’re torn apart. So Rakesh, you asked for details, so here. Choke on them.

Woman, woman, man grouping. Severe skin deterioration among all three. Severe mutilation of the man’s genitals. All that appears to remain is approximately 5 inches of his urethra, which is being stretched and pulled by both women. Each woman takes turns performing oral sex on the remains of the man’s genitals. The smaller woman, when not occupied with the man, had created holes in the larger woman’s thighs, into which she thrusts her fingers and tongue. All participants in these acts express joy.
Man, boy grouping. The dead man is on his back in the dirt while the boy sits in the gashed crater of the man’s belly. The boy is laughing and pulling out loops of the man’s intestines. Every so often, the boy will duck his head into the dead man’s stomach cavity and move around, as if trying to swim. Gaping bite wounds are visible on the boy’s arms.
Man, man, man, man, man grouping. Four men are having intercourse with gaping wounds in the torso of the fifth man. The fifth man is on his back on a small table, chewing on what appears to be the dismembered hand of a child. The child from whom he got the hand is not in sight.
Woman, woman grouping. The women are engaged in mutual oral sex. Each woman’s belly has been torn out and is dangling her viscera either onto the dirt or onto her partner’s body. The woman closest to me is bleeding very badly and will not live much longer.

Side note: As these observations were made, I noticed a change in the surface of the spore victims’ skin. Aside from the growing blight of sores, the skin appears to be growing sticky. It also appears to be weakening. I watched a boy, whose back was relatively free from deterioration, get pushed against a hut. When the boy moved forward, the skin stuck to the hut and tore from his body with each step. This is similar to what I experienced yesterday with the dog’s head.

Man, woman, woman grouping. The older woman is flaying all skin from the other two group participants. Both the flayed man and younger woman are sitting, apparently chatting happily, while the older woman removes their skin with a small knife. The scraps of flesh are being thrown both at the other groups of villagers and into the forest. This flesh is particularly tacky and is sticking like glue to whatever it strikes.
Woman, man, woman, woman, infant grouping. The woman on the ground appears to be in the process of giving birth to what may have been a healthy, unaffected infant. The man and other two women are pushing the infant in and out of the mother with a great deal of force. I have no doubt the infant is no longer alive. All four living participants are either laughing or yelling with excitement or pleasure.

It was that sight which forced me back to the lab. I’d reached my limit. When I walked in, Annie and Jared had escaped from their rooms. Once their flesh had deteriorated, it was not difficult for them to slip out of their bindings. I hadn’t bothered to lock their bedroom doors after tying them up.

They had resumed their intercourse from the day before. Jared was atop Annie, his chest against hers. When I entered the lab, Jared, surprised and delighted to see me, lifted himself off Annie. Their skin clung together and the force of his motion tore the flesh from the muscles. Amused by this, Annie pulled back from Jared and attempted to disengage their genitals. Her vaginal walls clung to Jared’s penis as she moved, sloughing off and detatching from her anatomy.

They stood in front of me, like they did yesterday, happy to talk about how much fun they were having. I couldn’t stand to look at them. I asked if they’d kindly go back to their rooms and wait for a little while. Even though they looked confused, they listened to me. I locked them in. That’s when I began to write this entry. As I type, I can hear them moaning as they pleasure themselves. I don’t know what I’m going to do between now and the eight hours before the helicopter is supposed to arrive, but I’m compelled to go into the forest and see if I can salvage anything useful from this horror show. Even if I don’t see anything, maybe it can help clear my head.

Update @ 6:00pm

The first important thing I noticed was how the chunks of flesh thrown by woman who flayed her two partners had sprouted mushrooms. Stringy, white mushrooms. Everywhere I found chunks of flesh, I found the mushrooms. Also of note: the orgy of hideousness in the village had abruptly stopped. I hurried back to see what had happened. I thought at first they might all be dead, but they were there, smiling and wandering around aimlessly. Their injuries were horrific; some catastrophic. Those too hurt to move lay on the ground. The sticky flesh that had touched the dirt had begun to grow the same mushrooms.

Gradually, those capable of walking started to spread out in all directions. They moved slowly, picking at their skin and throwing it on the ground as they walked. Over time, they increased their speed. I ran behind a group of boys. They pulled small strips of skin from their bodies and flung it to the dirt with each step. The bit off their own lips and tongues and spit them on the ground or at the trees. They ran and ran and ran, leaving a trail of gore behind them. I looked from side to side and saw the other villagers running and tearing themselves to shreds as they went.

I must have gone a mile before I couldn’t continue. The hazmat suit was too heavy and I was overheated and exhausted. I turned around and trudged back. The closer I got to town, the first few scraps of flesh that had been torn off had already started sprouting the same stringy mushrooms. I was overwhelmed with visceral disgust and scientific intrigue. Back in the village, no one was left alive. Whoever was capable of running away had done so, and all the corpses remained where they’d fallen or been dropped. Each of the carcasses were sprouting bouquets of fungus.

Out of nowhere, I remembered Annie and Jared. I ran back to the lab, threw open their doors, and saw the consequences of being too late to help them. Both were dead. They’d torn themselves to shreds and blanketed the bedrooms with their flesh and blood. With no dirt or plant life for the mushrooms to grow on, the flesh just sat there. Useless. I don’t know why I did what I did next, but at the time, it felt like the only way to honor them.

I scooped up what I could of their remains and left it on the ground by the lab. I sat and watched the mushrooms grow. Now I’m waiting for the helicopter.

——–

That’s the end of the journal. The helicopter picked me up around 10pm. The other teams came in later to do whatever investigations needed to be done. Physically, I was fine. Aside from stewing in a sweaty hazmat suit for two days with a terrible cold and too few fluids, my body was no worse for wear.

The bodies of the villagers were found over the course of the next few weeks. Some of them had made it almost 45 miles before their bodies gave out and they dropped. All that could be recovered were bones.

It’s almost a year later and I’m back in the area with a new team. It’s unpleasant to have to wear a hazmat suit at all times when we’re not in the lab, but no one wants to go through what happened to our colleagues. The research difficulties we’d faced for the last ten years still plague us, but at least a few questions about the fungus have been answered.

Still, when it’s quiet, or when I’m working alone, I think about the villagers running blindly, as far as their bodies would go, all while tearing themselves apart — just so they’d fertilize the ground with the spores of that which had possessed them. And I can’t stop thinking about how, because of it, a full five miles had been added to the radius of where that particular mushroom grows.

Continued.

After 20 years, my wife finally allowed me to tell this story.

Like all good scary stories, this one begins with a testicle self-examination. Or, as its colloquially known: jerking off. It was my last day in Guatemala and I was sitting in the hotel, waiting to go to the airport, and abusing myself to help pass the time. Things were going as well as could be expected. Until they weren’t. My left middle finger brushed against a lump on my right testicle. My erection wilted like a primrose at Chernobyl.

I did a cursory examination, hoping it might be an ingrown hair. But I knew it wasn’t. It didn’t have the itchy pain of an ingrown hair. No pain at all, actually. It had all the telltale signs of a growth I absolutely did not want anywhere on my body, especially not on my balls. Within 20 minutes, I’d cancelled my flight, phoned Renee to tell her the flight was delayed, and called an emergency clinic to tell them I was on my way.

Fast forward eight hours. Interesting fact about Guatemala: great medical care! I was examined, given an ultrasound, and told, to my enormous relief, the growth was benign. Just a cluster of fatty deposits. It’d go away on its own in a few weeks. I was on the next flight home. Continue reading “After 20 years, my wife finally allowed me to tell this story.”

I’ll never eat exotic food again.

I spent three years as an IT contractor at the US military base, Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti. Our firm had been hired to perform a massive upgrade to all the information systems on the base. It was only supposed to take a year and a half. As these things usually go, it went enormously over budget and took twice as long as we’d estimated. I didn’t mind. One of my dreams growing up was to travel to Africa, so when I was presented with the opportunity, I jumped at it. Since I don’t have much family and wasn’t in a relationship at the time, I had no strings attached when I boarded that plane with my colleagues.

The base offered free basic housing and other facilities to their visiting contractors, which some of us took, but I wanted to live in town and embrace the culture. Djibouti City was nearby, extremely inexpensive, and replete with all the cultural experiences I ever wanted. I met wonderful people, learned a little French and Arabic, and discovered their local cuisine is not only some of the best on Earth, but far less fattening than American food. I must’ve lost 25 pounds while still eating like a king. As our IT project dragged on, I almost wished it would take forever. I just didn’t want to leave.

But, of course, all good things must come to an end. In April of 2005, with our task complete, we were on a plane back to Burlington via a New York layover. The team was given a month off to reconnect with everything back home. Those of us who didn’t have homes or families to come back to were put up in hotels until we could find places of our own. The hotel room was so much bigger and nicer than the tiny apartment in Djibouti to which I’d grown accustomed. It felt downright decadent to get to sprawl out and get comfortable. And as much as I loved the Djiboutian food, knowing a bacon cheeseburger could be room-serviced up to me 24 hours a day was a damn good feeling. I took advantage of it many, many times.

After being home for three days, though, a rather unpleasant situation arose. I’m not going to get graphic because we all have our own intimate knowledge of such a thing, but I’ll just say I was terribly constipated. Three days stretched into four, then five. I was extraordinarily uncomfortable at that point. Most of the advice online said to wait it out and make sure I was staying hydrated. I drank bottle after bottle of water, but, to my chagrin, my desired result continued its elusion.

Day number six was a repeat performance of the previous five. On the seventh day, I didn’t rest. I hauled my bloated self over to the drug store and bought some laxatives. Just the thought of the things grossed me out, but the promise of their efficacy did great work to quell my emotional misgivings. I went back to the hotel, read the directions, swallowed the suggested dose, and waited.

The medication acted quickly. Again, in an effort to avoid the all-too-familiar details, I’ll simply say the pressure and discomfort ended abruptly. The only pain, as I’d expected, was located on the, well, exit. Unfortunately, here is where I must start a period of elaboration. I assure you, it is not scatological. It is, however, profoundly disturbing.

As I went to clean myself, I noticed an obstruction in the area. It was not what I, or likely you, are thinking. No, as I learned rather quickly, it was far, far worse. I peered down between my legs and saw the most horrifying sight in my 42 years of life. Dangling into the the bowl was a thick rope of tangled, grayish-white worms. I screamed with such terrific ferocity that I immediately damaged my vocal cords, causing the outburst to sound as if it were produced by a dilapidated chainsaw. I flexed the muscle through which the creatures were hanging, hoping to dislodge them. Nothing.

Needless to say, I was panicking. I had no idea what to do, but I knew I had to get the things out of me. All my life, I’d been terrified of bugs and insects of all sorts. Having these monsters infesting me was beyond any level of abject horror I could’ve imagined. The next move I made, I would later learn, is not a recommended method of removal.

I reached behind me and grasped the writhing column in my fist. I involuntarily retched as I felt the thickness of the parasitic invaders against my palm. All bunched together, they were the diameter of toilet paper tube. I squeezed the atrocious things and pulled as hard as I could. For a moment, my only respite from the terror was the impossibly acute agony produced by my pulling action. A tearing sensation of pain exploded right below my sternum – practically in my chest. With dawning realization that the creatures were far deeper in my body than I could deal with myself, my panic mixed with deep helplessness.

Remember, this was 2005. Personal cell phones were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are today. While I had one in Africa, I’d turned it in upon my arrival home. It wouldn’t have worked on our network, anyway, and my company had yet to give our group new Blackberry devices. What that meant was I had to get up and walk to the bedside telephone. I distinctly remember the wet slapping of the repulsive rope on my bare thighs as I waddled across the room. I dialed the front desk, not 911 for some idiotic reason I can’t remember, and simply said, “medical emergency in room 1142.” I stood there, naked from the waist down, with a tail of twitching parasites hanging out of me.

The hotel staff who’d been trained in CPR and other basic emergency services arrived first. Without knocking, the used their own key to barge in. Each of the three looked puzzled, and, within a span of ten seconds, realized why they’d been called. One by one, they turned varying shades of white. The largest of the group, a man with a name tag labelling him as “Jeremy,” sat down on the bed and promptly fainted backward. The other two, “Maria” and “Tyshawn,” did their best to maintain composure. They asked me if I was having trouble breathing or experiencing chest pains or blurred vision. As the procedural questions dragged on, the real EMTs arrived.

Hardened as EMTs are, one of the two men who arrived audibly whispered “Jesus fucking Christ” when he saw why they’d been summoned. Wrapping a towel around my waist, something I hadn’t even thought of in my panic, they helped me onto a stretcher and we went down the elevator and into the waiting ambulance. At the hospital, the ER doctor in charge of me just said, “well that’s a pretty bad case, huh?” I nodded, stupidly.

A few doses of specialized medication and two days later, I expelled the invading creatures. I was told I probably got them from eating contaminated food in Africa. Also, apparently I was lucky that I didn’t have to have surgery. Sometimes when they’re as deep as mine were, surgery’s the only option.

So, it’s almost 11 years later. I had a few scans in the months that followed my hospital stay to make sure I didn’t have anything new growing inside me, but each time I was clean as a whistle. Still, as you might imagine, I’m haunted by the experience. Worst was the feeling of how thick and heavy the tangle of worms felt in my hand. That, and how impossibly long the things were. I swear, I was convinced they’d made their way into my chest and were coiling around my heart, ready to squeeze the life from me. But all is well, I keep telling myself. Nothing is out of the ordinary.

It’s interesting, too, because the worms themselves don’t scare me anymore. I’m traumatized by the experience and the stress resulting from it, of course, but as the years went by, I could easily study the things online and in textbooks without shrinking away. In fact, I’m almost drawn to them. Today, I’d venture to guess I know more about that genus and species than even some experts in that field. It’s strange how our experiences can shape our interests, isn’t it?

A couple years ago, I quit my job in technology. Using the money I’d been saving, I started a food truck. The customer base started off small, but it grew pretty quickly thanks to word of mouth and social media. My customers love the cuisine and regulars line up every day to enjoy the outstanding Djiboutian food made by the quirky white American. As the business flourished and customers came in droves, all the diners were happy to report to me how they finally found a diet food that works. Even though hearing that warms my heart, I still experience a pang of jealousy that makes me feel a little empty inside.

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