Incubate, Intubate
An original short story (2412 words)
Trigger Warnings:
Rape of an Unconscious Person (Not Described, but it happens)
Denial of Assault
Body Horror
Self Harm
Vomiting
Medical settings/Medical apathy
Parasite
----
A state of emergency was formally declared at 8:10AM on June the 4th, after four men contracted a mysterious parasitic condition over the course of three days. All four of the men were alive and immediately rushed to the hospital for priority care. Hundreds of researchers and healthcare officials across the nation have traveled to study and develop treatment of this new condition. It was determined to be a sexually transmitted disease unique to cisgendered men, and a preventative vaccine began the manufacturing process within the week, with the vaccine scheduled to be publicly and widely accessible by June 20th. Until then, cisgendered male citizens are advised to follow this healthcare protocol:
Abstain from unprotected sexual intercourse until vaccinations are readily available.
—-----
Seth wasn’t planning on drugging her. He wasn’t that kind of guy. He didn’t need to drug anyone to get them in his bed, but everyone was losing their fucking minds over this “parasite” bullshit, and he hadn’t gotten any in over two weeks. His nuts were on the verge of exploding, and he deserved some relief. It’s not like she’d remember it, anyway. He wasn’t the kind of asshole who’d hold her down, or hit her or anything. He’d just tell her she blacked out at the party and stumbled into the wrong room. She wouldn’t know shit, and everyone goes home happy.
There’s always a chance this happens, anyway. She should know that, being a girl and all. Hey, men have needs, and she’s lucky it’s him instead of some sicko who’d stuff her in his trunk and dump her in a ditch.
She was heavier than she looked, even when he dropped her heels and bag at the door. His arms shook with exertion, and he finally dumped her on the carpet as soon as the door swung to. It didn’t latch, but he’d worry about that later. His neighbors weren’t snitches, and he could probably bribe them with a turn if they got nosy.
Turning his gaze back to her sprawled form, he noticed a tattoo on her arm he hadn’t seen before. It was a stenciled piece of the moon with an eye in the center of it, staring motionless from her bicep. His skin prickled as he held its gaze, and despite telling himself it was just a drawing, he could not shake the feeling that it was looking back. Out of the corner of his eye, he could’ve sworn it blinked. He shook off the goosebumps that prickled his arms and turned her with his foot so the tattoo was hidden beneath her body.
A matching tattoo, this time of a seeing sun, appeared to him on her other arm. He froze, caught in the watchful stare of the tattoo. It observed him from her shoulder, and he had the sudden frantic need to cover it, to prevent it from witnessing his crime. He pulled the duvet from his bed and threw it over her, covering her from the waist up. He stared at the display for a moment, still prickling with discomfort. After several long seconds, he shook himself out of it. Why would she get those stupid hippy tattoos? Poisoning her skin with ink and whatever bullshit they put in those things. Those would look stupid as fuck when she was wrinkly and old. He’d never date a girl with tattoos.
He hides his cross necklace under his shirt before unbuckling his pants.
—------------
He wakes to a silhouette in his doorway. Grumbling in confusion, he blinks away the sleep until his vision clears and he sees the girl standing in his doorway, holding a towel around her shoulders. How is she cold? It’s a million fucking degrees in here.
Seeing him awake, she steps back, eyes wide and wary. She seems weirdly frozen, so he just goes ahead with his story, feigning curiosity.
“Hey. You’re up early.”
She’s actually kind of pretty in the daylight. Maybe he can look past the weird tattoos. He’s glad the towel covers them.
“Where am I?”
“My apartment. Do you really not remember?”
“No. Did- did we sleep together?”
“No. You were totally blacked out and your friends left you alone, so I brought you up to sleep it off.”
“I…”
She’s not buying it. His palms start to sweat. His dad will be pissed if he loses this scholarship over one little mishap.
She takes a step back, pulling the towel tighter.
“I have to go.”
“Okay.”
He breathes a sigh of relief as the apartment door clicks shut behind her. No way she figured out what happened. She was out cold.
—-------
The pain begins in the evening.
It starts small, an ache similar to a bruise at the base of his spine. He assumes he bumped into something without realizing, and ignores it.
By nightfall, the pain has spread and intensified, throbbing along his lower spine and pricking through his abdomen. He takes two ibuprofen, and the pain wanes minutely but continues to creep under his skin, impossible to ignore. He turns in early to attempt to sleep it off.
He wakes up to an agony so unbearable his vision blacks out for several seconds after waking. The pain radiates from the depths of his abdomen, as if someone has sliced him open, dumped burning coals into his organs, and stitched him closed again. His mouth opens in a silent scream, but the agony throttles any sound he might’ve made. Nausea boils up his throat, and he barely manages to roll over before he’s vomiting what feels like a gallon of hot, viscous tar onto his carpet. Between spots dancing in his vision, he sees a puddle of impossible size spreading across his carpet of something like motor oil and molasses mixed into a horrible slurry.
Is he dying? Is this what happens when you die? He clutches for his cross necklace, clawing for it beneath his shirt, but in his haste the weak chain snaps and the necklace is lost in his catastrophe of covers and sheets.
Another consuming wash of pain takes over, so severe he begins to seize and convulse as his body thrashes to escape whatever hell his pain emerged from. Hot tears race down his cheeks as he sobs, praying to anything, anyone out there that this demon returns to its fire and leaves him. What has he done to deserve this, God? He’s devoted, he prays, he goes to church once or twice a year, what more could God possibly want from him?
He freezes in horror as the pain turns suddenly to a distinct scratching from within his gut, as if a great dragon is dragging sharp talons along his abdominal wall. His organs writhe within him like maggots, and a bout of nausea sends another vat of gelatinous tar onto his carpet, streaking his sheets and covers as he rolls, clawing for his phone. Finding it nowhere in the mess, he remembers with dismay that he’d left in it the jeans he’d worn the day before, across the room. He closes his eyes and sends another prayer to the sky before attempting to rise, and immediately tumbling into the viscera on his carpet. He gags in disgust, feeling the substance crawl up his skin and seep into the fabric of his boxers. He continues to crawl, crumpling every other foot as the scratching begins anew, moving from his spinal column to his pelvic floor as whatever hell has awoken in his gut attempts to escape its imprisonment. The trek across his bedroom floor feels like miles as he sinks his fingers into the carpet and drags himself forward to the jeans, smearing tendrils of the gore into his carpet. When at long last he reaches the jeans, the pain has shifted to a long, insistent push along his spinal column. He cries in relief when the 911 operator answers his call, and begins spilling unintelligible nonsense in an attempt to tell the operator what is currently attempting to eat its way out of his body.
He’s several minutes into his desperate tirade when his addled brain finally processes that he has gotten no response in some time. Blinking watering eyes at his phone screen, his brain catches up and realizes his phone is dead. He sobs in anguish, attempting to throw his phone but only succeeding in letting it slide from his hand and into a smear of tar-vomit. The agony is ramping up again, and feels this time as if someone is tying his intestines into knots. There is a distinct movement within him, pushing on the scaffolding of his body and moving his intestines and veins aside to make room for itself. Seth comes to the horrible realization that it has grown since its conception, and there is a steady, throbbing vibration of a pulse reverberating through his bones.
He rolls onto his back, panting towards the ceiling as sweat drips from his brow and into his soaked hair, clawing up his carpet as the scratching begins, deeper and slower, carving along his abdominal wall and pushing insistently on his diaphragm so firmly that his breath begins to shorten, and he sees his rib cage expand. The push intensifies, and his body groans as it attempts to compensate for the movement. There is a sudden, vicious punch of force, and Seth screams as his ribs fracture. He feels shards of bone pricking his skin from the inside, and screams again, uncontrollable and shrill as the clawing continues and he can feel the intruder shredding the inside of his body. He must get this demon out of his body now or it will eat his insides and crush his bones until he is nothing but abused meat and blood, left in the viscera of his own carpet.
He makes a desperate grab for the jeans again, and shakes from them his seldom-used Leatherman. A Christmas gift from his father when he wanted to be a boy scout for four days as a child that he has not opened in the decade since, but enjoys the vague proximity of masculinity.
He cannot scrabble the blade out of the tool set with his bloodied fingers, only managing to pry out the scissors. He tries to work out the blade instead, but as a horrific squelching emanates from his guts, the frantic, animal terror overtakes him and he plunges the scissors into his stomach with a horrified cry. Adrenaline drives his hands forward, dulling the pain and allowing him to drag the blades through his body. He feels every sedimentary layer of flesh as he rends it; his skin rips along the seams and his muscle shreds and pops apart as the tendons separate, the wet purge of yellowish fat seeping out of the walls between the parasite and its freedom.
Blood spurts from the incision and soaks everything in its path, and Seth stares in horror as needle-sharp spikes begin to emerge and undulate from the opening, widening and tearing the gap further as dark, slimy flesh surges and writhes from within. Long antennae like that of some great cockroach slip through the blood and lift to the air, swaying curiously about. Seth remains paralyzed, staring at the seeking appendages as they swish towards his face, tracing over his cheek and brushing his eyelashes, sensing its host.
More flesh emerges alongside shining black appendages and thorny, insectile legs and as Seth watches, the mass opens its eyes.
All of its eyes.
It begins to seep from his flesh, and he loses consciousness.
—---------------------
He wakes to the sterile neutrality of the hospital walls, and his head spins as he attempts to take in his surroundings with the hefty blanket of pain medication blurring his cognition.
He cannot sit up, but manages to crane his neck and look down to the source of a dull signal of pain emerging from his stomach.
A great, black mass swims into focus, spiked and pulsating, and he screams. There’s the thunderous rhythm of approaching footsteps, and between one second and the next the room is full of bustling scrubs and white coats, administering medication and surrounding his prone form. The panic escalates as he becomes aware of what seems to be miles upon miles of IV drips and cords winding from his body and tangling his living tissue with machinery and chemicals. Cords wind from the parasite as well, and as it begins to move more vigorously, a doctor rushes over and injects it with some fluid that lulls it into placidity once more. Seth’s screams have been continuous, but begin to slow into short bursts as medication dulls his awareness and plunges his emotions into a great swamp of apathy. Panic ebbs and flows as he falls back into the bed, and he stares at the doctors around him, searching for any kind of explanation as to why the monster that brought him agony he could never fathom is still attached to his body.
His words come out slurred and raspy from screaming,
“Get it off me.”
A doctor to his right takes in deep, tense breath before responding,
“I’m afraid that, at the present moment, removing the parasite would cause significant damage to both yourself and the organism.”
“I don’t care, just kill it.”
“It has currently connected its cardiovascular system to your own. A significant portion of your blood flow is routed through the parasite. Removing it now is too risky, but we are optimistic the parasite will loosen its attachment at some point in the future. It is currently…incubating.”
“Incubating- like a fucking egg?”
“Yes, similar to an egg.”
“Wait- how long is it gonna- how long will it take?”
“That, we are unsure of. Currently, the parasite is firmly enmeshed with your bodily function, and cannot be separated.”
Seth is losing his battle with the cocktail of meds swimming through him, but a sharp spike of terror jolting up his spine jerks his arm up to tangle in the doctor’s coat sleeve, pulling him closer.
“Get it out. I don’t care. Get it out, now!”
The doctor gingerly removes his hand, holding his slackening fingers as he would something unpleasant. Seth’s eyelids flutter from exertion, and he begins to lose the battle between the impending darkness and his desperation.
“We are doing everything we can.”
