Growing Pains

I wake in a pool of my own sweat and urine, in the boiling furnace I loathingly called my new home. I’d moved in a week ago, taking over the old German mansion from my late Aunt Gertrude after she’d disappeared. Batty old loon probably wandered off into the woods and got eaten by wolves… but that’s neither here nor there.

Shortly after moving in I’d come down with some bug, the flu or something, and had been doing my best to stay healthy in the decrepit old place, in the dead of winter. Germany, for all its advances in science and culture, still could not master the blizzards that would come annually. I’d have probably been well on my way to recovery had I been able to leave the place, but thanks to the snow I was stuck there, fending for myself.

The fever had come on so suddenly I hadn’t a chance to do anything about it. The next day the chills began, followed by the worst nausea I had ever experienced. I was having to trouble keeping down water, though this was probably due to the fact I was forced to drink well-water. Lord knows what parasites dwelled in the darkness of that centuries-old hole…

“Shit!” I cry out as a wave of pain ripples through my stomach, echoing throughout my limbs, as if my veins are trying dance their way out of my body. This has been the latest symptom, crippling pain.  Now I know I can’t leave this hellhole even if I wanted to.

Another wave pulses through my frame, but unlike the others this one seems to end in… relief? Like the draining of an infected wound, it feels as if an unknown pressure was being lifted from my chest and stomach. I sigh in relief, pushing myself up onto my elbows with the plan of hobbling to the bathroom for a hopefully relaxing shower.

Instead I see blood-stained sheets decorated with my own entrails, leading from between my legs, which I can no longer feel and which are taking on a dangerous purple hue.

And then they start flowing out of me…

Thousands of small, gooey globules, colored red either naturally so with my own vital fluids, become minute spiders, that begin streaming out of me like water from a busted dam. Panicking, I try and pull myself away, but the numbness is rapidly spreading up my torso, leaving me weak. The spiders are now spiraling up my chest and arms, as hundreds more continue to carve their way through my body, oozing rivulets of blood pulsing randomly as spiders push their way through the newly carved tunnels.

My screams begin to waver as my throat goes cold, and go silent as the same spiders begin spewing forth from my mouth. Now in the silence I can hear them. No hissing, just a rhythmic chanting with each to go softly into this horrible night:

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”