Contributor: Drew Hays
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It started like the common cold. Jeremy Ashell sneezed mucoidal yellow gristle and rubbed his nose tender with brown tissues from the schools bathroom. When he got home, he coughed his way into his living room, standing up, holding a plastic electronic guitar as Aerosmith blared from the speakers. He was 9, and had no prior history of seizures, but thats what his parents thought he was having as he screamed and shook while they held him, pinned and flailing within his space, to the linoleum. In the panic, they didn't pay much mind to the slackness of his skin, or the heat he failed to give off at all.
They bound his wriggling, panicky form to the bucket seat of their rheumy van and took him to St. Martys. The nurses were frightened, and two EMTs with tense forearms hoisted his kicking legs and bucking head onto a gurney where he groaned and bit at his cloth facemask. The Doctors hurriedly spoke of blood tests, and pretty much everyone thought it was rabies from the get-go. He was such a biter, one remarked, that nobody thought to take his temperature until after he was tranquilized.
Noting the absence of a heartbeat after a shocking read on his temp, the staff at St. Martys assumed they had ended Jeremys life, and apologized profusely to the parents, who were now in a state of emotional and physical drainage. Phil Ashell had been bitten.
When he got home, Phil poured a foaming splash of Hydrogen Peroxide on the gouge in the space between his thumb and index finger. Threads of red ran like jellyfish tentacles off of his forearm and into the sink. The wound was not quite bleeding, but had a wet sheen to it, and contracted lightly with his slowing pulse. He looked in the mirror and shook his head while wrapping a strip of gauze in a tight sleeve on his thumb. The horror and shock of his sons death were not yet upon him, as the horror and shock of his son biting him with salivary lips and teeth and savage eyes still flared ubiquitously in his memory, and he could only shake his head and turn out the light as he muttered about his luck and life. He stood in the hallway and looked out the window, hoping to see his wife pull in from the hospital so he could comfort her, and be comforted in kind.
He needed a drink. As he walked to his office his knees cracked aloud like billiards and pain shot through his thighs. Spasms took his quadriceps for a moment and he stood panting in the hallway for a moment before straightening with an ache and made it to the office, where he sat down and poured some gin he kept in a sandblasted bottle under his desk. Pain slithered sharply and angularly through very perceivable regions of his brain, though the more familiar vague glower of a conventional headache was present as well. He looked down at the wound, and saw a wet red circle. The bandage was quickly loosening and bloating with blood that seemed remarkably thin, almost less substantial than water. And then he stopped looking.
His eyes pinkened and reddened and ran soaking with crimson as the heart beating in his chest gave stronger and stronger beats, each farther apart until it imploded and froze. His blood turned to sludge in his veins as dying platelets made a stew of his circulatory system, and his limbs contorted and stiffened as nerves went haywire and muscles locked up. He stumbled towards the bookshelf and fell against it, as the cage of his muscles constricting his frame quivered and jerked. His jaw slackened, his eyes rolled lazily, and his legs began to shuffle. He chewed thoughtlessly on his own lip, which tore away loosely, and staggered out of his office.
The rumble of the garage door buzzed the house, and the shadows of the furniture stretched and shifted as the headlights of an SUV shone inside, and Tina Ashell pulled into the driveway. She grabbed the corn chips she had picked up on the way home and walked inside the house. Phil was holding half of Fritz by the tail. She screamed, and the sound was inhuman.
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I am a counselor from the United States. I like to write, and I'm working on getting the punch back in my words.
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It started like the common cold. Jeremy Ashell sneezed mucoidal yellow gristle and rubbed his nose tender with brown tissues from the schools bathroom. When he got home, he coughed his way into his living room, standing up, holding a plastic electronic guitar as Aerosmith blared from the speakers. He was 9, and had no prior history of seizures, but thats what his parents thought he was having as he screamed and shook while they held him, pinned and flailing within his space, to the linoleum. In the panic, they didn't pay much mind to the slackness of his skin, or the heat he failed to give off at all.
They bound his wriggling, panicky form to the bucket seat of their rheumy van and took him to St. Martys. The nurses were frightened, and two EMTs with tense forearms hoisted his kicking legs and bucking head onto a gurney where he groaned and bit at his cloth facemask. The Doctors hurriedly spoke of blood tests, and pretty much everyone thought it was rabies from the get-go. He was such a biter, one remarked, that nobody thought to take his temperature until after he was tranquilized.
Noting the absence of a heartbeat after a shocking read on his temp, the staff at St. Martys assumed they had ended Jeremys life, and apologized profusely to the parents, who were now in a state of emotional and physical drainage. Phil Ashell had been bitten.
When he got home, Phil poured a foaming splash of Hydrogen Peroxide on the gouge in the space between his thumb and index finger. Threads of red ran like jellyfish tentacles off of his forearm and into the sink. The wound was not quite bleeding, but had a wet sheen to it, and contracted lightly with his slowing pulse. He looked in the mirror and shook his head while wrapping a strip of gauze in a tight sleeve on his thumb. The horror and shock of his sons death were not yet upon him, as the horror and shock of his son biting him with salivary lips and teeth and savage eyes still flared ubiquitously in his memory, and he could only shake his head and turn out the light as he muttered about his luck and life. He stood in the hallway and looked out the window, hoping to see his wife pull in from the hospital so he could comfort her, and be comforted in kind.
He needed a drink. As he walked to his office his knees cracked aloud like billiards and pain shot through his thighs. Spasms took his quadriceps for a moment and he stood panting in the hallway for a moment before straightening with an ache and made it to the office, where he sat down and poured some gin he kept in a sandblasted bottle under his desk. Pain slithered sharply and angularly through very perceivable regions of his brain, though the more familiar vague glower of a conventional headache was present as well. He looked down at the wound, and saw a wet red circle. The bandage was quickly loosening and bloating with blood that seemed remarkably thin, almost less substantial than water. And then he stopped looking.
His eyes pinkened and reddened and ran soaking with crimson as the heart beating in his chest gave stronger and stronger beats, each farther apart until it imploded and froze. His blood turned to sludge in his veins as dying platelets made a stew of his circulatory system, and his limbs contorted and stiffened as nerves went haywire and muscles locked up. He stumbled towards the bookshelf and fell against it, as the cage of his muscles constricting his frame quivered and jerked. His jaw slackened, his eyes rolled lazily, and his legs began to shuffle. He chewed thoughtlessly on his own lip, which tore away loosely, and staggered out of his office.
The rumble of the garage door buzzed the house, and the shadows of the furniture stretched and shifted as the headlights of an SUV shone inside, and Tina Ashell pulled into the driveway. She grabbed the corn chips she had picked up on the way home and walked inside the house. Phil was holding half of Fritz by the tail. She screamed, and the sound was inhuman.
- - -
I am a counselor from the United States. I like to write, and I'm working on getting the punch back in my words.
Author:
Drew Hays
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