Chapter 1
It's an intense fatigue, when I find myself alone at night. I feel a heaviness starting from my rear, a lightness-which is contradicted by a mild heat-on my spine, and a hard and heavy weight pushing down on my shoulders.
I try to find a distraction, so I stare at the ceiling. But, its pitch-black. I force a thought, "lets focus on the white crown molding." I trace the patterns of the ceiling behind my close lids. I imagine the grooved, white plaster-like chalk-grazing the groves of my finger---
The pain returns. This time radiating from my hips. I turn to my side, pull my knees up, and focus my thoughts elsewhere. Anywhere but here, in the dark.
I can't help but sweat, sob, and choke as I try to still every muscle with my breath held.
But, I'm dragged, feet first, back to reality.
I feel it's legs, the fine hairs, trailing from my toes to my chest. They're rough and itchy. The pain is still present.
The legs, eight of them, stop at my chest. and they press.
They dig, I cry a little, only to attempt muffling them with my hands. To which point, two of the eight legs, pry my hands apart.
They're cold, the pads of the finders the only source of warmth. A finger finds the corner of my eye. It wipes a tear a way, and there's. a softness in contrast to the itchy hairs rubbing against my knees, thighs, hips and waist.
I almost forgot how hurt my body is, until those arms-rough yet gentle press down on my shoulders. It's a slow process, and I lay their wondering if it's purposeful. If it's sadistic--
Suddenly there's a pain between my legs, and stomach. It hurts more than the pain between my shoulder blades. There's a heat there, a spasming heat, and the feeling of steel wool down there, rubbing against my stomach, makes me want to gag.
"I need to vomit," I think to myself.
The thing, as if finally sensing my discomfort pauses. It releases my legs, my hips and my shoulders. It's cold again.
The loneliness sets. I grit my teeth, as the pain and nausea intensifies. It overrides the aches that I was feeling earlier.
A wetness, warm, and thick begins to pool between my legs.
"I want to vomit," I think again.
But, I can't move. I don't want to move. The floor, cold and hard helps mediate the painful heat...
The anger at this sickness, the sadness from the loneliness, and the loss-
A heat returns this time from my right side. a hand returns, gently touching-rubbing really-my stomach. a leg cold, and rough from it's course hairs, tries to go between my own.
While, another arm, leg, I don't know slowly pulls a some of my hair back. All, while a cool breath is blown on my neck.
I shiver, and goose flesh arises...
"hmm," a soft, deep voice rumbles, deep in my head. The heat between my legs, is still there but becomes muffled by the sound of the other's indistinct mumbles.
I start to think, "It's odd, how the pain is present, and yet I'm not".
like, I'm outside myself, watching in a darkening tunnel, a body not my own, sweating and writhing. My back, though it aches, arches. My hands grip the sheets, until my knuckles turn white.
And yet, I still cannot turn away, from the other party's ministrations.
"1,2,3," I count slowly in my head, as it's thumb rhythmically swirls on my hip.
"4,5,6," its long, slender, yet sharp finger crawls up my waist pausing at my shoulder. I feel the hairs on those fingers. Their fine, they itch, and they glisten...
I see lots and lots of hair, glistening white. but they're not fine, like aged white hair. Instead there's a bounce to the way they bristle along my waist and twirl along my hip. the folicules though fine, are strong as they slowly peel layer by layer-
--I sharp pain enters my stomach, I bite my lip as a wave of nausea rolls over me. I try to curl up, shrink myself to forget the pain. but my body refuses to listen.
"1,2,3," its back at my hip.
"4, 5,6" it drags along my waist, again. My stomach tightens, i start to tear up, as I realize I have no place to exit my waste.
I feel my esophagus gather a ball-a bolus- I try to swallow it down but my stomach hurts.
I feel hot.
Its leg shifts moving up to my crotch. I gasp at the sensation of the movement cutting into me. The fine, white hairs are also below. They're thicker and so between the tight space of my thighs and it's sudden movement, I feel those hairs, fine, sharp and cold as a knife peel the first layer of skin.
I try to jerk away or I imagine I would. But, it's as though I'm far away...smothered.
The other party blows cool air on my neck, and I do not know if I should interpret that as pleasant.
It helps numb the jabbing pain in my stomach, back, and shoulder blades. Yet, I still feel trapped.
My eyes fall shut without, my willing. I feel trapped...
The darkness is inside me. Four-six walls all cold, and hard like plexi-glass surround me, and I feel myself begin to shift. I'm curled in on myself.
But this position does none to ease the horrible pains in my stomach. Instead those walls begin to gently push in on me. My knees climb up to my chest squeezing on my breasts. The taste of bile rises up my throat and into my tongue, I feel a wetness, my tears fall down my face. And I can't focus, as my chest tightens from lack of air, my body cramps or rather caves in on me, as I am forced into an uncomfortable position.
And I try to breathe, to think of a way to escape. There is no floor, no hardness, no sensation of softness, cold or hot. I hear nothing, see nothing, but an endless void of black. I can only taste the rotted mass gathering in my mouth. I begin to think, "what the fuck?!"
I laugh a little at the thought of covering myself in my own vomit.
I think myself, like a nasty pig wallowing in it's own wastes, feeding off the wastes of others. And I liken the idea of vomit-my own regurgitation-serving a temporary source of relief. After all, I recall that vultures use their own vomit to cool themselves, due to their inability to sweat.
I shake a little as I laugh, and I let my mouth fall open as I decide to release-
Unexpectedly, I find myself upright. No sitting. My head leaning back on a cool shoulder. Those fine little hairs, spike-like, bite into me.
A pair of hands, no my own, rest on my shoulders awkwardly, and they begin to rub small circles. It itches because of the hair, but it develops into something soothing.
It's like little pine needles injecting cool morning dewdrops into my shoulders. It ripples out and dances, along my collar bones. Radiating down to my breasts, gently rolling over my nipples like morning fog, and onto my stomach.
I'm held gently, as another pair of hands comes towards my mouth-I laugh at this. Because its dark, silent, and nothing but the itching and cold exists beyond this now four walled box, which cannot stop shaking.
My head, though it's kept in place by another entity holding me, dances. But those fingers which have been poking and prodding me begin to tug at my lips.
There's a cool draft there, which turns into a cool wetness. I look down to see what it is, and find a dark liquid pooling under me.
"w-we-weird," I mutter and quickly those fingers bring a soft white ball, a cotton gag into my mouth.
I try to move, but another pair of arms six now, hold's my legs down. My shoulders which were momentarily restrained by the other pair of hands. loosen.
"drink," it whispers in my head. or it says as theirs a fine wetness pooling by my ear.
I gulp reflexively to the unexpected voice. Then I find that there is water in the gag. It's cool. It chases away the feeling of nausea, and makes the heat in my belly recede.
It hands gently, lovingly rub my body, as if to pet me like a domesticated animal.
"Hmm, you're a mess ," it whispers in my ear.
A part of me wants to shove them off and say, "fuck off," but this coolness, the water feels to good.
"are you always this messy, when you're on your period?"
I blush and find that I'm able to move again, only to turn and see and black eight legged mass retreat into the fading darkness.
"The fu-" I retort as I'm shocked awake by the sound of my phone alarm.
6 o'clock in the morning. I get myself up, ready to start my day, and I grown at the unpleasant surprise of my period staining my unicorn onesie.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" I slap my sweaty palm on my bed, As my legs swing out and touch the cold floor. "That was my favorite, How do I clean blood out of-"I groan, at my second alarm 6:05AM. I can't mull over this, I'd waste about ten minutes turning this into a crisis. I want to.
My chest heaves, I force a breath down, as I begin making my way to the bathroom...
"Don't think about it, don't think about it," I chant internally.
My mouth itches, and I begin to think I got hair caught in it. Except it's a white wadded mass, full of stray threads, dangling from the side of my face...
