Quietly Leaning Against

Almost two years ago exactly, McSweeney's Internet Tendency had a contest of sorts after they printed 13 Writing Prompts. I submitted one. It did not, of course, win. But I just realized I had never put it up. So! Behold my brilliance!

Prompt 5.
A wasp called the tarantula hawk reproduces by paralyzing tarantulas and laying its eggs into their bodies. When the larvae hatch, they devour the still living spider from the inside out. Isn't that fucked up? Write a short story about how fucked up that is.

*****

Go with me here. You're sitting at home. Say it's a Thursday night. You're curled up with a book and a pint of your favorite beverage. The book is a good one, and you've never read it before. The beverage is delicious. Even if it's water, it's the best water you've tasted. It's the perfect balance of hydrogen, oxygen, and the other shit that's in there. It's that post-dinner pre-darkness time of day. You have a very nice lamp, which is illuminating your text. Illuminating like casting light on it, not like drawing intense designs in the margins. It's late summer, maybe just about to be autumn. You can hear the kids playing baseball in the park. They're just tossing the ball around. Outside of the U.S.A., they're kicking a slightly larger ball around, having wholesome fun. If it's wine, or a cocktail, you probably shouldn't have a whole pint, although whatever makes you happy. Urbanites scratch the kids and add in people walking by on the street below, voices modulated and happy-sounding. Rural folk make it crickets and frogs and a lonesome car on the distant highway. So. You've just passed the halfway point, and the book's starting to get very good. Do you like music while you're reading? There can be some music. At just that perfect volume between annoyingly-too-quiet and slightly-distracting. There's somebody in the room with you, if you want, also enjoying a book. Or knitting, or something. Or you can be alone. Whatever. You're comfortable, is the point. You're comfortable in your favorite spot, wearing your favorite clothes, in socks that are thick enough to keep your feet nice and toasty but soft enough that they feel like bunny slippers. You go to turn the next page. Only you can't. The page has ended mid-sentence, and you wish to turn the page to finish the line, but you can't move your arm. You're sitting there, staring at the last few words on page 184, and you can't move your hand to turn the page. Which is weird. So you're going to put the book down and massage your shoulder or elbow, and make a quizzical expression and wonder, perhaps aloud, what's going on. Except you can't put the book down, and you can't massage your arm, and you can't use the telephone. You are unable to move. Completely. Can't wiggle your fingers. Can't adjust your position. You can't even take your eyes from those last few words on the page: "quietly leaning against" "quietly leaning against" "quietly leaning against." This is ridiculous, right? You're in perfect health. You were moving only a moment ago, when you put your drink down on the table. You can't move, can't swallow, and what's more pressing is you can't blink. Your eyes are open quietly leaning against and you can't even blink or close your eyes quietly leaning against for just a second to get your bearings and figure out what's going on. You are unable to call for help. And now you realize that you cannot breathe. And then, for the first time, you feel it. You feel the first nibble somewhere deep within you. In your stomach. Or your chest. Just the tiniest nibble. A sharp, sudden pain. And then sharper and more intense. And then sharper and beyond anything you've ever known. You fucking hurt. Something is deeply, deeply wrong inside of you. You want nothing more than to clutch your stomach and scream in agony, because something is biting you. Something that you cannot see is eating you from the inside. Your parched throat and drying eyes are nothing to you now because your chest is a cavity filled with teeth, malevolent teeth, quietly leaning against which are devouring your lungs your heart your quietly leaning against core. Your very center. This is not cancer, this is not your body against itself. Something is inside of you, and it is biting you. You can feel it in your neck. In your genitals. Nothing could possibly be worse than this. You would pray, but to whom? What kind of sick fuck god would let you be consumed from the inside, bite by bite? What kind of sick fuck would want you to be eaten alive like this? Sitting in your home on a Thursday night with a book and a drink just trying to relax. And now you're here, unable to move, paralyzed, being consumed. quietly leaning against. And now you picture the creature inside of you. The teeth inside of you. And you picture your own childhood. Birthed alive and held and nurtured and fed and played with and supported and loved in light and in comfort. Not like these teeth. These teeth that were born in you and in the instant of birth began to dig their way out of you. As a test of survival. The first moments of this precious fucking life not spent being held by mother in a warm, soft room coming face to face with existence. The first moments of life spent devouring. Taking the life of another being. This, unluckily for you, is you. For this new creature to survive, you must be devoured whole. Tough fucking luck, huh? If it makes it out of your chest, out of your brain, out of the tough skin around your ankle, it will get to live, and you will not. You will be left a husk. Deflated flesh. quietly leaning against. Oh fucking well, right? Here you are with pain so horrifyingly so abjectly terrible that you now find yourself cheering on the teeth. Come on, teeth. That's right motherfucker. If this is your lot in this miserable life then good fucking luck and please hurry. Please now. Hurry. You have given up because from this pain there is no turning back. Your liver and kidneys are being eaten bite by bite. Just please hurry now. quietly leaning against.

So. Is this what life is.