The universe compressed into the size of a small hospital room, and my pain became a billion supernovas. My mouth became a black hole, swallowing my screams before they could leave me.
I don’t know how long I lay there, curled up in the comfort of madness, it could have been hours, or days.
Eventually I returned to myself. Though when the next morning came and another series of injections coursed through my veins, I regretted my sanity.
It didn’t take me long to start hating the nurses. I knew they didn’t know what they were doing, but it was hard to care about that when I was suffering such agonies at their hands. But as much as I hated them, I hated the doctor a thousand times more. And I feared him with equal measure.
If I’d known what was still in store for me, I would have feared him more.
The chalky taste fades in about an hour, and as soon as it’s gone I try to convince myself that it wasn’t there at all. That I was mistaken. I don’t believe it. I never believe it. I just want to.
My first year in the hospital, I passed the time by counting the holes in the tile over my head. I named them. I made up stories about them, lineages and relationships, affairs and wars, treaties and betrayals. I calculated a rough estimate of the number of holes in all of the tiles in my room. I named them. I made up songs about them and sang them over and over again.
My second year in the hospital, I decided to relive my life. All the parts I could remember, in as vivid of detail as I could manage. Sadly, I hadn’t paid much attention to my life, and the alcohol and drugs had wiped away a lot, I could only come up with enough memories for eight and a half months.
After that, I switched to the Zen approach. I try to live in the moment as completely as I can. I try to focus on each second, each ticking of the clock, and see that instant as an eternity to itself. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s Zen or not; I didn’t learn much about eastern philosophy before I got turned into a vegetable, and I can’t exactly go looking it up now. Anyhow, sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
They wait until night to come. I don’t know if it takes that long for the chalky tasting medicine to take effect, or if the night nurse is the only one who’s in on it, but they always wait until night. Then they come. Two of them. The doctor and his assistant.
Both smell odd, and both are bald.
They unplug me from my machines and take me down the hall to the elevator. I try to focus on the sounds from the rooms that we pass. Mostly there are snores. Sometimes I hear patients muttering. Sometimes moaning.
Then we’re in the elevator, descending. Descending. I swear, it gets hotter as we go, like we’re falling into the bowels of hell. Actually, it isn’t heat, it’s fear. Terror.
Eventually we stop, and they pull me out of the elevator and down the hall. The heat disappears as they drag me into the operating room.
Actually, it’s the morgue. I know because of the smell. And the cold. And because once, after they pulled the lamp over me, but just before they turned it on, I could see bodies reflected in it.
They strip off my clothes and lay me on an icy table.
Then they begin.
Cutting.
They cut into me. Into my stomach. Precise cuts, always in the same place, they slice me open, and I try to scream. Try to throw myself off the cold metal square. I feel the knives slicing into me, cold, hard, invasive things, violating the core of my being.
It goes on. And on. And when I think it cannot possibly go on any longer, that they must have sliced every nerve, and severed every part of me an inch at a time, they cut some more.
I wish I could pass out from the pain. I wish I could block it out, or meditate my way to some kind of peaceful oblivion. But I can’t.
Eventually, though, they do finish, and both men set down their blades. That’s when the assistant disappears from view. I can hear him, still in the room. He walks to something close by, a refrigerator, I think, which he opens. And then he returns.
He has a metal container. Stainless steel, and covered in ice, though the assistant holds it with his bare hands, unconcerned with the cold.
The doctor removes the top and reaches in, digging through whatever is inside for a few seconds before removing a slimy, squishy ball. He sets it on the table and digs through the container again. He pulls out six of the disgusting, greyish green things before closing the container back up.
The assistant returns it to wherever he got it, and then makes his way back over to me.
The cutting felt like a violation, like a brutal assault.
Somehow, what they do next feels worse. The slimy things that they put into me don’t technically hurt, but they feel wrong. It’s like having your arm twisted, and contorted into an unnatural position, then forced to stay that way, only it’s happening inside my body.
Organs shifting, being pushed aside, as a slimy substance slips into my blood. I’m not simply violated, I am corrupted. I am unclean.
When the last of the things is placed in me, they sew me back up. They sew those things into me.
Back in my room I try to count the holes in the ceiling. I try to pick at memories from my youth. I try to live in the moment.
I try everything to distract myself from the things inside of me. The things that grow, with each passing day. The things that move about inside of me. The things that I can feel slowly nibbling at me.
I sleep in short, restless bursts, dreaming monsters crawling through my stomach, out of my mouth. Dreaming of animals ripping their way out of me. Sometimes they devour me. Sometimes they just leave, and I lay, helpless in bed, as nurses come and go, checking my pulse, and taking samples, ignoring the gore pouring, endlessly, out of me.
Then one of the things inside of me twists, or bites down, and I wake up.
The next morning Amelia comes in again. Smiling, chatting, checking up on me, making sure I don’t have any bed sores, telling me about the guy she met last night.
I try to listen, but can’t. The corruption inside of me is growing, feeding on me, tainting me.
Then she gives me my shots.
The things inside of me like the shots. They’re always more active afterwards. Always hungrier. This isn’t the first batch that I’ve had inside of me, and I can’t help but wonder how I’ve survived so many of them feeding on me. Perhaps my paralysis helps. Perhaps my body is better able to handle the internal damage because so little else is happening. Or perhaps that’s what the shots are for. Or the chalky taste.
Or maybe this was all a dream, maybe I was really in a coma and everything that was happening to me was a delusion brought about by endless self loathing.
No. I didn’t hate myself that much. I didn’t hate anyone that much.
It’s easy to lose track of time when you can’t move, can’t communicate, when your days are a blur of routine. But when you have things inside of you, when you have parasites lodged between your organs, slowly devouring you, you start to pay attention to the passage of days.
One month. That was how long they left those things in me. Thirty days, exactly.
I used the tiles on the ceiling to count down my time. There were four tiles directly over my head. Four tiles, each tile with four corners, that made sixteen. The first sixteen days were one corner of a tile. The tiles made up one large rectangle, a rectangle with four corners. Sixteen plus four made twenty. The rectangle had three vertical bars in it, one on each side, and one on the middle, it also had three horizontal bars in it, one on each side and one in the middle. Twenty plus six made twenty six. Then there were the four tiles. Twenty six plus four made thirty. Thirty days.
Every day, after my injections, when the things inside of me were most active, when they were hungriest, I would count off my thirty days. I would count how many had passed, and how many were left. Front to back. Back to front.
I calculated the number of hours I had endured this time. I calculated the number of hours I had left. The number of minutes. The number of seconds.
I double checked my math.
Thirty days.
Twenty nine.
Twenty eight.
Amelia got moved to a different shift, and I got a surly old crone who talked to the equipment more than me, and even then, only to curse at it.
Seventeen.
Sixteen.
An old man down the hall from me died in the middle of the night. His heart gave out, according to the nurses. I envy him. I spend the next several days trying to stress my heart out, trying to make it crash.
Eleven.
Ten.
Nine.
The priest who comes by to read to us has gotten to revelations. It’s a very visual book. I can practically see it, as he’s reading. For a few seconds, I can almost forget the things crawling around inside of me.
Then one of them takes a bite.
Three.
Two.
One.
They come for me again. I know what’s coming, the cutting, the agony, but it’s a price I’ll willingly pay to get these things out of me.
Through the hall, down the elevator, into the morgue. I’m eager, this time, looking forward to the pain.
They cut me open, and I almost black out. The eggs that were in me have hatched, or molted, or something. The things they pull out of me look more like spiders, but with extra legs.
The doctor and his assistant handle them carefully. Lovingly. They move them off of me and into something nearby. One of the dead bodies, I think. I hear a crunching sound as the creatures begin to eat their new host with reckless abandon.
I want to throw up.
The doctor and his assistant pause, looking down at me.
I wish they’d get on with it. The sewing isn’t pleasant, but once it’s over I’m back to plain old ordinary misery again. I look forward to that.
“He won’t be able to handle another batch.” The doctor says.
I’m surprised. They never talk.
“He might be able to handle three.” The assistant argues.
“No.” The doctor shakes his head and pokes at something inside of me. “He’s done.”
Done? Am I done? Will they finally let me die?
The assistant nods and moves out of my view.
The doctor leans in, pulling a pen light which he uses to check my eyes. “Time for your miracle cure, Mr. Wilson.”
Cure? I stare at him, confused. He can’t cure me. With everything I know, with everything they’ve done to me, he can’t risk me living. He can’t . . .
The assistant steps back into view. There’s something on his shoulder. It looks like the things they’ve pulled out of me, but larger. A giant spider with many limbs. But they aren’t limbs, not like a humans. Not even like a spider. They’re tentacles. Long, thin things.
The creature slithers down the assistant’s arm and into the gaping hole in me.
The corruption I’ve felt before, the tainted feeling at having the young creatures in me is nothing next to this. Even paralyzed I can feel my body reacting, twitching, trying to reject the thing.
To no avail.
It climbs into me, and its tentacles stretch out, slithering throughout my body, everywhere, out to my limbs, to my head. I feel things cracking inside of me, bones breaking, muscle tearing, as this thing, this creature, makes room for itself. The last tentacle, the slowest of the bunch, slithers along my spine, along the inside. It climbs up, and up. My body spasms as it climbs through my spine, and into my brain.
The two men watch, faces expressionless. Finally the doctor reaches down, pulling my skin back into place and begins sewing me back together.
As he does, I move. My hand raises up in front of me, and my head turns to look at it. My fingers curl into a fist, then uncurl.
But it isn’t me moving them.
It isn’t me.
I sit up. No. Not me. It sits up, the thing wearing me sits up, and looks around.
“Do you know who you are?” The Doctor asks.
The thing wearing me opens my mouth, then closes it. I can feel something happening in my brain. Not physically, the brain doesn’t have any nerves, but I can feel . . . something.
The thing wearing me opens my mouth again, using me like a puppet, its slimy tentacles manipulating my body from the inside in a way that makes me feel ill.
“Wilson.” The thing says.
“Good.” The doctor pats his shoulder. “Lay back down. We need to take you back to your room. Tomorrow night we’ll practice more.”
The thing wearing me lies back down and closes its eyes.
I scream in my mind. I howl, and grind my teeth, I weep. In my mind.
The thing wearing me takes no notice.
The thing wearing me.
It can’t do this to me. It can’t. It can’t use my body while I’m still in it.
I’m not dead!