It was the itch that finally got her out of bed and over to the bathroom. She’d been riding a king hell, horrendous headache when she’d finally been able to sleep, and that seemed to have faded in the night. Now, with the sky turning dark-grey from pitch black, it was this sharp itch. Somewhere in the sinus area she guessed as she felt her way, but deep and pin-point, urgent. Something new.
She made the bathroom, flipped the hall light, trying to save her eyes from light inundation. The shadows played all across her reflection though and she braced herself, flipped the switch.
She didn’t see it right away, the light making everything spot-blurry. She covered each eye with each hand and slowly began to draw them back. It was then - retinas aching, tears on cheeks - she first saw the string. It was a yellowy-white color. Twine-width. The string was fraying at the end, poking down from her upper lip like a fang. She touched it to make sure it was real. Leaning in, the girl took the end of the string between a finger and thumb. She said “ahhhh…” and leaned in, looking for string.
But there was no string, it was floating back there somewhere, invisible, or bunched up so she couldn’t see where it came from. She pulled it taut to find the source, and when she did she felt things in different places. Irritating scratchiness flashed across the arches of her feet and up her legs. She felt the string come taught and then she slowly pulled it out toward the mirror. One inch, two…She yanked for 1.6 seconds and stopped. A piece of string six inches long sagged between her face and her mirror face. She felt a small tug around her belly button. She raised her other hand and began alternating pinches of string. The Yellow twine flowed from her head like clowns from a tiny car.
She kept going. Pulling the string out a foot at a time now in big, spastic grabs. It draped over the sink and made loops towards the floor. It smelled like bad breath. There was blood in her mouth now from the friction and it pooled and spattered with every yank. Blood and saliva painted a hyper-space galaxy on her bathroom mirror as she ratcheted up the speed. Inside she could feel the terrible string slicing across organs, gouging muscle, making unwise adjustments to parts of her she knew were important. She pulled.
Ten minutes after she’d stumbled to the bathroom she felt something heavy catch on the twine and begin to jerk upwards inside her. It was big, ungainly, being reverse-force fed through her systems. She felt the vile thing gag her as it mushed her throat pieces apart. She saw it: big, brown-red, asymmetrical. She gagged and yanked and it stuffed into her mouth. She grabbed it both-handed and gave massive pulls. The thing was snagging, sliding and finally it let go and came vomiting up. It did not, however, come to an end. The ends separated in her hands but she kept pulling and things kept revealing themselves. Terrible, wet, slick with oddly-colored fluids, they fell from her awful mouth and she was laughing and crying. She felt dizzy, her spatial awareness failing. A terrible, reeking pile of fluid and tissue squished and squirted under her weakening legs. After a while she started thinking about clouds, then about the ocean. She thought about mud.
After a while things quieted down and the girl was still, drained and empty in a big smelly mess on the floor. It was then that the tiny grey being stepped out from behind the shower curtain. He looked at the pile of tissue and clothing on the floor and his face - mostly mouth and teeth - smiled an alien smile. A sound like buzzing came out of it. It dove to the floor and began to eat.
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