Panic

They tried to tell her she was crazy. "She's on drugs" they would say. "She's skitzo" they would say. Liar's, the lot of them. She wasn't on drugs, and she wasn't crazy.

There was something under her skin.

It nibbled tiny nibbles and skittered tiny scratches across her flesh.

She tried not to scratch at it anymore. At least, not in the daytime. Not when people were around.

They couldn’t see it, of course. They could see the nibbles and the scratches but they coudln’t see it. They only saw her, with her bloodshot eyes and raggled nails, hands and fingers always moving over herself, touching, patting, searching.

But they could not see IT, so it must be her. Of course it must be her.

So no scratching when the sun was up.

Night was different.

She was alone with it at night, and it was alone with her. At night nibbles turned to bites and sratches turned to gouging slashes.

Night brought darkness though, and darkness brough cover. It was worse at night, but at least at night she could scratch at it.

Claw for claw, bite for bite, in the night she could fight back, always.

Usually.

Tonight was different. Tonight it was playing a different game. It didn’t bite, it didn’t nibble or skitter or scratch or gouge.

Tonight it burrowed.

She felt it going deeper, much deeper than before. She could feel it dissappearing into the meat of her, escaping her own clawing fingers.

Tonight she panicked.

Her own nails, bitten ragged down to the raw quick of them, could not go deep enough. Her teeth, somewhat sharper, were still blunted and few. She tried, oh she tried, but they could not go deep enough either.

Not to where it was.

What would it do if it got deep in there? What would it do to her insides? She coudln’t see it, she coudln’t know without seeing and she needed to know.

Needed.

She keened as the searched the gutters for anything sharp that she could dig with, to follow it deeper into her body. The noise drew attantion, raising a few heads from the others who shared her streets with her, but they paid her little mind as she searched and searched until she found.

There, beneath the dumpster, a fork. Glimmer, silver, Excalibur for her.

Inside it squirmed, it snuggled, it nested.

Outside she raised her multi-tined fork and brought it down, took tarnished filthy metal inside to where it was. It burrowed and she dug.

Not once, not twice, but until she could see, until she could know.

The fork fell. Her blood pooled around her knees where she knelt.

She saw it then, the thing that had been living under her skin for as long as she could remember. Exposed to the elements, it slithered out of her and skittered away, it’s young following around it.

They went towards the homless camp she had been sleeping at, looking for a new host she knew.

Finally she could see it.

Finally, soon, finally they would see it too.

No longer panicked, she slept.