I think there is something growing in me.
At night, if I hold very, very still, I can hear another heart beat alongside mine. This thing in me, it slithers to the back of my head and burrows a home for itself there.
The horror of it is unimaginable. I am not alone in this body. There is something in me.
It is akin to a tumour, I imagine. Silent in its conquest, merciless in its desire. It spreads its flimsy wings and flies leisurely in my body, filthying it as it pleases. I can feel it at the back of my throat sometimes—the shimmer of those wings. The smoothness of its scales.
I dream of screaming, "Get it off me! Please!" but when I awake I am quiet and complacent. I eat and remain hungry. I do nothing I want to do. There is something sinister digging through my brain. My insides shudder, but I remain calm. It's all a bit boring, really. There is something monstrous and foreign making the hollows of my body its own. So what? I swipe down to the next reel.
At the kitchen, I stand in front of the knives and imagine for a moment picking it up and hacking off all that is wrong with me. The thought is mango-sweet, almost perverse in its simplicity.
Cutting this thing out, it doesn't require delicacy. I cannot lay under the hands of a surgeon and hope his scalpel can strike true. No, this is messy work. It needs a butcher knife and a packet of cigarettes. It needs the hands of an alcoholic and the desperation of a teenage girl. I need to hack this out, piece by fucking piece.
But here comes the problem: I have let this thing grow in me as it pleases and now I don't know where it ends and where I begin. I don't know if we are different, or the very same. I don't know what it is I want to cut out of this body: the thing, or myself.
The panic rises. "Do something!" I am screaming at myself, "Move!" But the thing has always been good at keeping me quiet. The fit passes, and once again I am staring at my phone. I'm hungry. I don't remember why I was so scared. There is a sound coming from the backs of my eyes— a strange mix of hissing and purring. It sounds pleased.
There is something in me. I think I'm too late.
