Bursting Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Todd felt awful all day. It felt like he had eaten too much and
had a lump of food just filling his stomach, unable to be processed. Only he
hadn’t eaten at all that morning or the night before. He had never grown
hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been hungry. He had been
overly tired for several days in a row. At first he thought he was coming down
with a cold or the flu. Now, he wasn’t so sure what was going on. He just knew
that he felt awful.
He was bloated and it was hard to breathe. There was a pain behind
his eyes and his stomach was fat and full. It hurt when he moved too quickly or
bent too far.
When he belched he could feel something come up on him. It was
salty and acidic. He tasted the bile in his mouth.
He closed his eyes. He just wanted to sleep. He was going to
be sick, but somehow he thought that if he could just fall asleep he could
avoid that part of it.
He lay down on the floor. Coughing. Choking.
Blood. There was blood. A lot of blood. He was coughing up a lot
of blood.
Then he noticed it. Then he got really really scared.
There was a lump of something. There on the floor. There, mixed in
with all the blood. There was a lump of something that had once been inside
him. He had coughed it up. He didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t look like
something that should be outside of his body.
For a moment Todd thought he was going to throw up. Something was
coming up his stomach. He thought the sight of blood had triggered a natural
reaction. But then he realized he wasn’t throwing up at all. There was
something in his throat. Something that was moving. Something that wasn’t a
part of him.
Todd wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Whatever it was, it was there
in his throat, it was there in his mouth. It was there, coming out of his
mouth. He couldn’t scream at all. He was lucky that he was able to breathe and
stay conscious with all that was happening.
His throat was torn up. Blood was pouring back down into his
throat and lungs. He tried to grab it. He tried to pull it out. But it was
attached to something deep inside him. It was getting bigger. It was ripping
apart his throat. It was getting bigger, but he wasn’t. There wasn’t room for
that sort of growth inside him. He could feel it spreading around, creeping
inside him, slithering through him. His lungs. His stomach. His insides. It
felt like it was everywhere.
He felt something snap inside and his body went limp. He slumped
over, unable to move. Todd wanted to speak, to scream, to move, to do
something. A tear did roll down his cheek. He was able to do that.
The thing inside him was taking over. It was feeding off him and
killing him in the process. Todd remained conscious through it all. His body
was broken and paralyzed, but he was awake for it all – awake for his slow
torturous death.
The thing inside him just grew and grew and then grew some more.
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