part0020

I felt it as an itch on my neck, halfway between the ear and the shoulder. I leant my head to one side to rub it away against the collar of my work shirt. As my skin brushed the limp cloth a terrible pain shot out like something with teeth. I lurched and dropped the cigarette on the sofa where it rolled into the groove of the seat cushions. Jumping onto the cold floorboards I flung the cushions aside and found the smouldering butt, dropping it into an abandoned cup of coffee, and patted down the embers that were smouldering on the fabric.
   I sat on the icy floor, my heart racing a little. Delicately I sought the throbbing area on the side of my neck. Even to touch it brought near-agony. It was about the size of a 50 pence piece and raised up by about half an inch. It felt warm to the touch and I could feel a pulse beating quickly within. What the hell was it? Perhaps an ingrown hair, an impacted follicle? Perhaps it was an allergic reaction? But none of these things gelled. That morning there had been nothing there. I had used no new shower gel or washing powder, anything that might have caused it. Maybe that was the issue? The amount that I could shower and do washing had become something that I had to ration to make ends meet. Maybe it was an accumulation of that greasy, cold, dirty feeling that comes on the poor with winter? It was not pleasant to think of myself as poor.
   I stood up and looked at the mark in the mirror which hung behind the sofa. The mark was a deep plum colour. It looked as bad as it felt. My shoulder twitched as little shivers of pain radiated out and into the nerves. I leaned in towards the mirror. At the centre of the mark was a spot that was almost black. Only the reading lamp was on and I tilted my head to allow the light to fall on it better. The black spot moved. My chest felt empty as I watched. I turned this way and that. But it had twitched. I considered that it might have been a convulsion of muscle. I considered this for a long time as I stood before the mirror which hung behind the sofa. But I knew what I had seen.
   I sat back down and stared blankly at the television. I no longer felt the cold. I only felt the itching in the side of my neck and a breathless kind of fear. I looked out of the window beside me, drawing back a corner of the curtain. An icy chill came off the glass. The nearest hospital was 5 miles outside of town. I had no money for a taxi. A hollow variety of hope was fending off logic and I could not bring myself to ring an ambulance.

I went into the bathroom and pulled the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet wide. I stared at the bare shelves as I brushed my teeth. I closed the cabinet door and went to climb into bed. One of the drawers in the nightstand was open a crack. Inside was a strip of Tramadol pills. She had used them when her period was bad. The temptation was to drop a couple and drift away into sleep, dumb and anesthetized. But I had to be up at 6:00 to make it for work. It didn’t matter to them if you had a growth on your neck or an eye out; you didn’t get paid if you didn’t clock in. And if you didn’t clock in 177 days out of 180 you were clocked out for good. I plucked the strip of pills from the drawer and they rattled like tiny bones in their happy, hermetically sealed little pods. The itching in my neck was very bad. I lay down on my side and closed my eyes.
I can’t say that I slept but I drifted. Half dream and half memory, I thought of some TV advert that I had seen that day or that week. In it a cartoon polar bear crawls in a desert. Big blue drops of sweat roll down his forehead. He sees an oasis on the horizon and his eyes light up. The advert cuts to him reclining on a sun lounger by the oasis, sipping a can of cola through a straw with his face beaming behind a pair of huge sunglasses. He dips his sunglasses and winks at the camera.
I’d seen a video recently about the melting ice caps at the North Pole. It was footage of a pallid, emaciated polar bear staggering across the jagged rocks of the coast, looking for food. Pawing at the seaweed in the tidepools. And I was sure that people watching it had picked up the phone to set up their monthly standing order to donate to the charity that had posted the video. And I was sure that another set of people had made a note to try a new and refreshing cola drink. And perhaps a subset of these people were in both camps. But I didn’t have the money to donate to polar bears or buy cola. And I didn’t give a fuck either way.

I was jolted awake by a pain in my neck that made me vomit over the side of the bed. I tried to place a hand across my mouth and the bile ran between my fingers. My hand went, instinctively, to my neck and I pressed against the growth. The pain flashed again, and bright red flowers of light exploded across my vision in the dark room. I rolled off the bed and stumbled, disoriented and barely breathing, into the bathroom. I pulled at the cord to turn on the light and found that I barely had the strength to engage the switch. I hauled on the cord and the light came on, the cord swinging wildly and clicking against the wall. I was almost blind with the pain; my eyes took time to focus as I squinted at the blurred mass of pale colour in the mirror’s surface.
The growth was larger, darker and, to my horror, there were long, black, thread like marks radiating out from it. My fear was that whatever infection was in the growth was spreading out into on my bloodstream. Heading towards my heart. I turned my neck and inspected the blackened veins. And then one of them curled in on itself, the blunt end of it touching and stroking against my skin. I tore at it and it came away in my hand. Open mouthed, I looked at it as it lay twitching in my palm. It was about four inches long. It was not a vein. It was some kind of insect leg.

The bile rose up in my throat again but as I tried to vomit into the sink I staggered backwards and fell against the wall. I could feel the other legs wildly tapping and writhing against my flesh. I reached and pulled away another, fighting a revulsion that made me once more vomit down my bare chest. Two came away in my hand. I tried to hurl them away from me, but they were so light they only floated down and fell on my leg where they spasmed. I kicked my legs, trying to loose them, and smacked my foot against the cold porcelain of the sink
I sat down in a daze. I could feel the feverish movement of the insect-like legs where they emerged from the skin. I could feel their ends dancing on my neck. I felt a sickening lurch of movement in the growth. The pain was intense, but it lurked beneath the shock and I was barely conscious of it. I pulled myself to my feet by the edge of the sink. The plaster burst and the sink came a little way away from the wall. I forced myself to look. The growth was still horrifically dark and the black spot near its centre had become larger. The black spot flickered this way and that beneath the bruised and shining skin.
My hand trembled as I reached towards the growth. But I could not bring myself to touch it. My mind raced. Another jolt in my neck and the sound, more a feeling in the tiny bones of the ear than something external, of the flesh and muscles being wrenched and torn settled it in my mind. I went into the kitchen and pulled a knife from the block.

The tiles were freezing against the soles of my feet. The whole living room and kitchenette were horribly cold. The wind whipped outside. I turned on the gas hob with a hand that shook so desperately I could hardly keep the knob depressed. I held the dull blade of the kitchen knife to the blue flame with both hands. The smell of scorched metal filled the bitter air. I took the black and slightly smoking knife back into the bathroom.
   Standing before the mirror I drummed my feet on the cold floor. Every muscle in my body was taught and soaked with adrenaline as I tried to summon the courage, or perhaps just the abandon, to take the knife to my flesh. My teeth were set as I watched the insect legs twitching at their points of articulation. I brought the knife slowly towards the growth and tried to plan in what way I would approach this little impromptu surgery. As the hot steel got close to the skin, I was seized by a pain that crippled my intent as much as my ability. My hand dropped to my side and the knife dropped from my hand. It clattered and skidded on the tiles with a silver scream.
   A scream was more than I could manage. My breath was caught somewhere between my chest and throat. The thrumming light of the bathroom’s single bulb seemed to be pulsing in a spot just behind my eyes. I caught a reflection of those eyes in the mirror. Amongst the chaos and terror and isolation they were the sad, helpless eyes of a child.
   A jet of sallow looking blood shot from my neck and began to run down the shower curtain. I looked towards the wet sound it had made with disbelief. A few gouts of more vibrant, circulatory blood dripped on the cold tiles. Small wisps of steam floated up from them in the frigid air. A wrenching feeling in the growth brought me to my knees where my hands slid in more blood. I brought them up to my neck. I could feel it beating against my palms. The legs swishing this way and that, soaked in blood and pus, were still, somehow, the thing that terrified me the most.

I shuffled away until my back hit the wall. It lay there on the white tile, pushing itself around in an issue of blood and ichor. It made no sound but the tiny maddening sound of its legs skittering on the wet tile as it tried to find purchase. I put my hand to the wound on my neck. There was a trench of flesh there, a hollow, the size of a chicken egg. It was raw and slippery to the touch. But I did not seem to be losing any more blood. Whatever had been growing in there had made itself a little cavern of muscle and sinew away from the other workings.
It picked itself up from the small pool of mucus and filth in which it lay. I got my first proper look at it as it stood on shaky legs that seemed too fine to support its bulk. Its body was around the same size as a closed fist, and of the same irregular outline, supported on those thin legs that were like those of a spider or a daddy long legs. It was gelatinous, and a mix of pale yellow and blue. The organs and viscera quivered and pulsed within its semi-transparent body. As it turned, its eye fell on me. It had only one eye, set in the lower front end of one side of its body. It was like a fishes eye. Or maybe an octopus. A great black pupil within a protruding bulb of a cornea, suspended in a clear liquid. The pupil flicked this way and that. Taking my measure. It was like being caught in a terrible black beam. It seemed to pin me to the wall. A hideous shudder went across my shoulder blades. As if in response to the movement, it raced across the tiles with frightening speed. It flew past me and out of the bathroom. I jerked my legs away from it in disgust as it passed. Tiny little specks of red blood followed it into the hall.
I sat up against the wall and pulled in a juddering breath. A flash of light brightened the bedroom as a car pulled out of its spot and drove out into the night. My breath floated before me in tiny clouds of vapour. Looking back, I imagine I must have been in shock. But the numbness of the fight or flight response being turned in on itself still felt more like life than the months of emotional numbness that had preceded it.

I stepped out into the kitchen, following the breadcrumb trail of blood. I found the thing crouched in the corner. It was smoothing itself down with its insect legs. It reminded me of a fly resting on a windowsill. I looked around the room, measuring up what I might use to kill it. I had a very strong urge to kill it. I looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It read a quarter to four. Keeping an eye on the strange creature, I gently lifted one of the kitchen chairs. As I drew nearer to it and the shadow of the chair fell across its rolling eye, it jerked and scuttled to the opposite corner of the kitchen. Its legs made a tinny patter on the tiled floor. I aimed to crush it under one of the chair legs whilst I had it cornered. My fear was that it would escape out into the rest of the flat. That it might end up under the sofa or the bed. Somewhere that I could not keep my eye on it.

I watched it for a long time. It just sat there cleaning itself. Sometimes its eye would fall on me and the pupil rove all over, judging what I was likely to do. I waited a long time. It was very cold in the room and my fingers and toes were beginning to numb as I stood there in the pair of tracksuit bottoms in which I normally slept. But I did not want to leave it to fetch more suitable clothing. I did not feel as if I could look away from it for a second.
   I was waiting for it to turn. For its eye to face away from me. It became apparent that this was not going to happen. Whatever intelligence it possessed (and the extent of this was a gnawing anxiety in the back of my mind) was sufficient that it knew, or sensed, that I was a threat and not to take its eye off me any more than I intended to take my eye from it. There were a handful of loose coins on the table behind me. It was my bus fare for work in the morning. Very delicately, I reached behind and picked up a coin. Weighing it in one hand I placed the other on the back of the chair. I tossed the coin into the kitchen where it struck one of the cabinet doors with a clang.
   The thing whirled round. And it hissed. It hissed like nothing from this Earth. I picked up the chair and lurched towards it. My numbed feet came down like slabs of concrete. I was bringing the chair leg down on it when it turned to face me once more. It raced out from under the descending shadow of the chair leg and brushed against my ankle as it rushed into the living room. In a moment of panic, I hurled the chair into its path hoping to crush it or trap it, shouting a curse at it as I did so. It ducked sharply out of the way of the falling chair which clattered on the floor. The sound of feet being planted on the floor in the upstairs flat distracted me and I did not see where the creature hid, though when I looked back it was no longer there.
   The chair was still rocking on the wooden floor of the living room. A heavy and deliberate thudding came from upstairs as someone stamped their foot in anger. I could hear muffled but aggressive remonstrations coming through the ceiling. I looked at the clock in the kitchen. It read a quarter past four .

Turning my attention back to the living room I tried to look for a trace that would lead me to where the creature had hidden. Tiptoeing across the room I picked up the chair and set it back in its place at the table. I drummed my feet anxiously on the floor. Perhaps if I could not kill it, I could at least get it the hell out of my flat? I wedged open the inner door that led into the small porch before the front door. Then, creeping over to the ceiling to floor windows at the front of the living room, I unhooked the latch and pushed the part that opened as wide as it would go. A gust of freezing air pushed me back to where the tiles of the kitchenette met the wooden flooring. I had no idea if it could climb a window. I hoped that it could. And also, very much, that it could not.
   I walked over to the TV cabinet. And I kicked the hell out of it. I listened very carefully for the sound of the creature. I went over to the sofa and kicked that, also. Once, twice. Strike three came from upstairs as feet slammed on the floor. I barely noticed. My nerves were pulled tight as piano wires. The freezing air blowing into the flat was turning the anxiety within into a desperate mania. I kicked the TV cabinet again. And this time there was a rustling in the wires at the back.
   My breathing was heavy as I backed into the kitchen. I opened the door to the utility cupboard and reached in without taking my eyes from the TV cabinet. I pulled loose the iron. It had a nice weight in my hand. Wrapping the cord around my forearm I went back over to the TV cabinet. I kicked it again. Nothing. I kicked it harder. Still nothing. I reached behind and smashed the back of the cabinet with the flat of the iron. The thing came running out of its hiding place and headed towards the sofa. I hurled the iron at it as it went past. As the iron smashed into the floor, missing its target, an answering volley of banging issued from the front door.
   “What the fuck are you doing in there!? Do you know what time it is?”
   I froze, breathing very quickly and very, very quietly. I was quite sure that he must be able to hear the pulse that was beating in my throat.
   “Get out here!”
   BANG BANG BANG.
   “Get out here, you weird little fucker!”
   The creature could have danced across the floor in a top hat and tails and I’m not sure that I would have noticed. There are alien looking creatures that burst out of your neck in the depth of a winter night and then there are six-foot, skinhead psychopaths banging on your door. One of these is a more digestible horror.
   “Don’t fucking let me hear you again!”
   BANG.

But it was gone. I followed the line of the skirting board. There was a large dark rift running down it. Pulling the sofa a little further from the wall, and conscious that the thing should not come skittering out from beneath it, I stepped closer to the dark smear. I reached down. The skirting board came away from the wall with the slightest pressure. The thing had gone inside the walls.
   I stood back and tried to plot the layout of the walls and floors of the flat. A gust of paralyzing cold came in through the open window and I reached out to pull it shut. I vaguely noticed that the sky was beginning to lighten. The wall which held the cracked skirting board ran up to and met the wall that adjoined the next flat. I found my mobile phone on the table to use its torch. But, stood in the freezing flat in the first doleful light of morning, I made sure to check my messages first.
   Pulling back the skirting board with the tips of my fingers, I shone the light in as best as I could. A shadow fluttered as some clod of dust or hair was disturbed by a draught within the walls. I dropped the phone and jerked away, swearing under my breath. But there was nothing there. The inside of the wall was alien enough, filled with the husks of insect bodies and flecks of plaster and insulation, but it held nothing more sinister than that. So, it was gone. Now all I had to do was ensure that the point of egress did not become one of ingress.
   Searching the flat I found nothing that would do the job. I was beginning to panic. What if it found its way back in whilst the gap was open and unattended? I would need to find a temporary measure. I tried moving the sofa against it, but the shape of the arms stopped me from getting it flush to the wall, no matter which way I turned it. None of the kitchen chairs were heavy enough. I caught my dim reflection in the black expanse of the TV screen. The image was of some fish belly-white corpse floating up to the surface of a still lake. She had taken the plasma TV when she left. A friend had lent me the cathode ray relic that now sat on top of the media unit. It had taken the both of us, my friend and I, to get it up to the flat by the single set of stairs.
   With the sofa moved and the TV unhooked in the back, I tried to find a good grip on the monolithic hunk of plastic and glass. My knees creaked as I tried to take the first of the weight. I could barely get my arms around the front of it and onto the hand holds on the side. I tried gripping it from above. As I shuffled it towards the edge of the media unit, I was extremely conscious that, if it slipped and fell, my feet were likely to be crushed or my toes sliced off by the sharp underside. I got down on my knees in front of the TV. I came face to face with my reflection in the black expanse of glass. The ghoulish figure that stared back at me from what seemed an abyssal depth only inches away, was very pale and had its hair in disarray. It was a sick looking creature with dark circles around its eyes. I turned my head and looked at the wound on my neck. In the dim reflection of the TV screen it really didn’t look too bad.
   I tried to edge the TV off the unit and cushion its fall against my chest. It was an abysmal failure. The thing toppled off and smashed on the floor as I fell backwards. The crash it made echoed across the disordered room. I heard feet stamp on the ground in the upstairs flat. I sat, frozen, my legs splayed in front of me and all the hairs on them stood on end. The banging upstairs continued for a couple of minutes and a lump built in my throat and choked me to the point where my pulse ran like an animal fleeing a gun. I heard two muffled voices, one raised in fury and one pitying. In time the voices died away.

I dragged and pushed the TV, inch by inch, over to the wall. The front of it sat perfectly against the skirting. I tried to push it with one foot and could not. A wave of relief washed over me. The thing was not getting back in. Not through here. I didn’t give a fuck where it went, as long as it never came back. The brightening sky threw a wan light into the living room. I turned off the overhead bulb and looked in the mirror. The gouged flesh in the side of my neck looked grim in the natural light, but the pain had been dialled down to a weak background noise. I would need to get some kind of antiseptic for it on the way back from work. The thought of going to a hospital had been put aside. The clear light of day is worthy of its place amongst the clichés. You don’t walk into an emergency ward and tell a nurse that an existential horror came climbing out of your neck last night. Trust me, you don’t tell fucking anyone.
Looking at the sickening mark that it had left, however, I realized that if I were to avoid it becoming a topic of conversation, I was going to need to cover it up. I went into the bedroom and found a sweater with a collar that, when turned up, did an adequate job. It would look a little strange, but it would have to do.

The sun fell across the bed and tumbled onto the back of my legs. It was deliciously warm. I would need to set off for work in an hour, there was no use getting any sleep. One usually feels better in the numb, unreality of a day after a sleepless night then one does in the thick torpor of one after a few hours. I sat down on the bed in the broad shaft of sunlight.
I thought, again, about the advert with the desperate polar bear. Forget jazz and forget rock n’ roll; advertising is the great American artform. To take an animal suffering on the wastes and use it to flaunt sugar water is an act of malicious genius. Or perhaps that wasn’t the case at all? Perhaps it was the documentary maker who took inspiration from the advert and used it to further their environmental cause? Maybe I had seen the advert before I had seen the clip of the bear? Maybe the whole thing was a test. Two picture cards set before me to see which one I would react to the most? What do you see? A token of a dying planet. A diet beverage which doesn’t compromise on taste. Were either of them real and who could you believe if they told you which came first? I lay back, only for a second. There was a pain at my temple. Some knot in the vein. I closed my eyes. But only for a second .

I awoke in blind panic. The midday sun streamed over me. Outside was silence, all the cars and children away at work and school. Groggily I became aware of an alarm sounding from my phone in the other room. And then I felt the light dance of spider-like legs on my throat and the pressure of something pushing, writhing, on my neck. I screamed. It was OK to scream now. I threw myself from the bed tearing at my neck and landed half on the bed and half on my ankle. I screamed again. My fingers dripped with some slick fluid from where I had touched the creature that now lay thrashing on the bed covers. I let out a desperate, anguished moan, rubbing at the raw flesh on my neck. The thing had been trying to fucking burrow back in.
Whatever dark and uncertain fear that had smothered me was now torn and ravaged by the white-hot light of actual terror. I pulled one end of the blanket and tried to wrap the creature in it. My ankle gave as I lurched forward, and my cry was mingled with the sinister hissing of the creature as it saw my intent. It skittered up onto the pillow and turned its grim black eye on me. I grabbed the lamp from the bedside table and, using my good foot, hurled myself towards the thing. It scurried away and down the side of the bed. As I limped after it, a web of acid pain flashed in my injured leg .

It was in the living room. It had settled on top of the TV pushed against the wall. Fleetingly I wondered how it had got back in. It could obviously squeeze its strange soft tissue into all manner of tiny apertures. It stood wiping itself with its front legs in that awful vermin-like way that it adopted. All fear had become fury. I was frozen, wounded and on the verge of losing the job that barely kept my head above water. All because this thing, whatever the hell it was, had used me as some kind of host.
   Tears of frustration in my eyes. I screamed at the creature in the bland light of that lonely afternoon.
   “What do you want? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT!?”
   And it blinked its black eye. The wet penumbra around its pupil rattled as the lid flicked across the glistening surface. Its legs, like dry witches’ hair, twitched in disinterested response. The flesh in the side of my neck burned. I limped back into the bedroom and came out with the bedsheet I had torn from the mattress. A couple of cold tears ran down my cheek. I spat on the floor. I wrapped the sheet around my arm and stepped forward, dragging my numb ankle behind me. It was time to do something.

The river was low. It had been a cold, dry winter. Thin, brown reeds poked above the surface of the water. As I stood at the railing, the road behind me was quiet. I looked to my left and right. The old man who had passed by with only the faintest interest in the occasionally writhing bundled sheet that I was holding was still heading along the pavement. I maneuvered the sheet over the railing, keeping it at arm’s length. Some animal sense in the thing, some smell of fear or predatory intent, awoke and it began to thrash wildly. Further up the road a car’s tyres squealed and its horn blared. I dropped the bundled sheet into the slow but powerful water. And I watched it float beneath the bridge. By the time I had managed to avoid a small stream of traffic and cross the road on my good leg, it was only a pale blur rolling on the swell of water and disappearing around the bend in the river.

I got home and collapsed on the askew sofa. The whole room was in turmoil; the TV overturned and tiny shards of glass leaking from within. The table was overturned, and cigarette butts littered the floor from where an ashtray had been hurled. I took the cigarettes from my jacket and tore the cellophane loose from the packet with my teeth. My heart was racing but I could not identify the feeling that made it run. My mind was a mess of unfinished thoughts, reeling around in gales of vague anxiety and elation. The flat smelled of stale smoke, vomit and the remains of the cold night air. My hand shook as I brought the cigarette to my lips. I became aware of the ticking of the kitchen clock as its insect twitches sounded steadily between the chaotic thumping of my heart. It was half past two. I looked at my phone on the kitchen table.

It was half past three before I had concocted an excuse for not being at work that seemed reasonable. They were not interested. I was advised that I was being issued with a final warning. As the evening drew in, around five, I turned on the heating. I turned on the lights. I ordered takeaway and dropped three Tramadol for a warm and gooey dessert. It was glorious to be warm and fed and comfortable, all at once, for the first time in several months. I was exhausted but happy. I could go back to work tomorrow and make amends. Perhaps I could find a cheaper place, a flat share maybe? There was something about the terrible events of the last twenty-four hours that made me feel a strange optimism. My life had seemed to be circling the drain for a while now, surely this was the final vicious bump? I could rebuild something now. And I had had a unique experience. Something significant. Surely providence would oblige me for meeting this test of character? This is how the human mind works. It believes in the narrative and the Hero’s Journey. I went to bed and dreamt that my brain crawled out of my skull and climbed the bedroom wall on legs of vertebral arteries where it lurked on the ceiling, watching me as I slept.

I did not awake until noon the next day. And I never made it out of bed until around three A.M the following morning. I dragged myself from the covers still in the depth of a fever so great that it had destroyed my senses. I tasted fever and saw fever and heard fever roar like a crippled beast. I crawled across the floor. Actually crawled across the floor on my stomach. It doesn’t sound real, like something you’d see only on television, but that was all I had the strength to do. I crawled through the dust in the doorway like an animal dragging itself to water. I managed to pull myself up to reach the phone that I had, in my pride and indulgence, left on the table the night before. Its battery was dead and I plugged it into the charger. I slumped back against the couch and waited.
The phone came on in time and all the little lights blinked as a slew of missed calls came in. There was a message informing me that I had been left a voicemail. And the voicemail spoke through the fog and smoke of fever and, in muffled tones, told me that I must attend a disciplinary the following day. At three A.M, rinsed with sweat and racked with ague; that day was today. The floor was cool and I lay my cheek against it. It felt good to sleep and know that there was nothing waiting for you in the morning .