The Slow Theft of My Body

I was seven years old when I first noticed it—a faint, shifting shadow beneath my skin.

At first, I thought it was a trick of the light. A vein, perhaps, or the ghost of a bruise. But veins don’t writhe.

I pressed a finger to the spot, just above my wrist, and felt it—something solid, yet restless, twitching beneath the surface. A worm. A root. A thing that did not belong.

I told no one.

The First Movement

By twelve, the thing had grown. No longer confined to my wrist, it slithered up my forearm in slow, deliberate pulses. It was most active at night, coiling and uncoiling beneath the flesh as if testing its limits.

I began to dream of it.

In the dreams, my skin was transparent, stretched thin like damp parchment, and beneath it, the thing was no longer shadow—it was black, glistening, segmented. It moved with purpose, as though mapping my body, claiming it inch by inch.

I woke each time with my fingers digging into my arms, as if I could claw it out.

The Awakening

At seventeen, the thing reached my shoulder.

I stood shirtless before the mirror, watching as the skin over my collarbone rippled. Not a twitch. Not a spasm. A deliberate, undulating wave, as though something beneath was rising to the surface.

That was the first time I heard it.

A sound like wet paper tearing. A whisper, dry and rustling, just beneath my ear:

"Soon."

I screamed. My parents burst in, but by then, my skin was still. They dismissed it as stress, as nightmares, as the overactive imagination of a boy who read too many horror stories.

But I knew.

The thing was learning to speak.

The Invasion

By twenty-three, the thing had spread.

It lived in my arms, my chest, the back of my neck. It pulsed beneath my ribs like a second heartbeat. Sometimes, when I moved too quickly, I felt its resistance—a sluggish, alien weight shifting inside me, adjusting.

And then came the hunger.

Not mine. Its.

I woke in the night to the sound of my own teeth grinding. My jaw ached. My gums bled. I craved things I had never wanted before—raw meat, the metallic tang of blood, the crunch of bone.

Once, in a fugue state, I bit into my own forearm. The pain was sharp, bright—but beneath it, there was something else. Satisfaction. Not mine.

Its.

The Revelation

The mirror no longer lies to me.

I see it clearly now—the way my skin stretches in places it shouldn’t. The way my fingers twitch when I’m not using them. The way my mouth sometimes moves without my permission, lips forming words I don’t remember thinking.

Last night, I woke to the sound of my own voice.

It came from my stomach.

A wet, guttural whisper:

"Almost ready."

The End

I write this now with hands that are no longer entirely mine. The thing has reached my spine. I feel it there, nestled between the vertebrae, threading itself through me like a parasite through rotten fruit.

It’s learning.

It’s growing.

And soon—

Soon—

It won’t need me anymore.