INNER TAILS
by
Kurt Fillmore
I lay, quite mad in my room; angry at the way in which I have been treated by every one of those individuals who claim to be offering me assistance.
They lie. Of course.
Some would wonder at the source of my medical deficiencies. I have asked them to investigate my condition. I have given them my own explanations; those symptoms and occurrences of note which have caused me great distress.
They indicate that my fears are groundless. They say the ailment which I purport to have contracted simply does not exist.
And the tests, the long corridor of tests and samples that they have gouged from my body with their primitive, decaying instruments, show nothing. Predictably enough.
The infestation merely moves from site to site within my body, never appearing in the spot from which they bleed me, never foolish enough to be taken along with a peel of skin, a sample of stool, a tube of bile.
They give me medication. Thin steel needles feed the clear liquids into my veins, the only coupling (so reminiscent of sex) that I have had in years. My partners in this dance are large bodied men and women, who couple with me in groups, one to do the deed, and many others to assist.
If I am to be freed of this malady, it is I who must find the solution. Patient, heal thyself. It is a process which I began some months ago, by reviewing my medical history. I have been taken to many doctors, by my parents, by court officials, and by my dance partners. It is always the same, they want to know about me. My history. As if knowing my true name and place in the world will give them power over me.
I relate the details, knowing these facts as I know every stitch in the wall padding. I have considered both for countless hours.
Parasites.
The first time I heard the appellation it had been burned into my mind; as though glass rods tipped with radium had been slipped alongside my eye and driven into my brain. The word could not have been more deeply etched.
Parasites.
It was before my seventh birthday and as a joyful child I explored my limitations. There was the front sidewalk, cautiously approached if one's mother were present. The house was a complete pleasure, every room a towering puzzle of delightful things. The garage was dark, and had an illicit pull upon me. It was forbidden, due to the many hurtful things that were kept there. I hesitate to say 'safely' kept there, as my father injured himself routinely in that cavernous void. The smells, the dark, and the many closed cardboard boxes drew me towards it, though my mother's threats kept me away.
Such a mix of fear and desire had a sweet telling upon my youthful soul.
But it was the backyard which did the most damage; the backyard and our dog Lolly. I remember squatting down in my polished black shoes and the ill-fitting suit that resembled my father's. The sound of children's laughter and prattle floated in the air, the party unnoticed behind me.
My gaze was fixed upon Lolly's latest gift, a series of brown ropes which still gave off the warmth and odor of her body. Radiating outward from the pile were hundreds, it seemed, of white strings, each alive and searching. They would elongate, every one an individual with its own motions. Like white needles, they thinned to sharp points. The tips curled, hunting left and right, then they crawled farther along.
My own member elongated as I watched them. As if my one wished to go on the same search as these threads, these strings. It grew larger, and a firm pleasure made itself known to me.
I rocked back and forth, my hands clenched between my legs and pressing against my one. Rocking and rocking. The duality of pleasure and revulsion claimed me then.
My mother must have noticed my absence, for she had left the table and was magically at my side. She grabbed me by the collar and pulled me up and back, drawing me away as one of the threads was close to touching my shoe.
Whatever pleasure I had been headed towards was averted in an instant.
"Worms," she said, her voice thick with disgust.
My eyes never left them, even as my mother beat me for showing an interest in such filth. Later she washed the dirt with a hose and poured noxious smelling bleach across the entire area.
I had forgotten that she washed the dirt. Ridiculous.
I didn't want our dog to be killed. In my childish reasoning that was why pets went to the doctor. It was there, in the company of my parents, that I first heard the blasphemous name: Parasites.
Parasites are things which live within other living things. They eat them, from the inside out, often resulting in the death of the animal which provides the little beasts their home.
Parasites. The doctor killed them with a shiny needle, stuck into our dog's flesh. He squeezed the plunger, and the deed was done.
How I wish such an easy solution would present itself to my own situation. Some days the frustration is such that I scream until I am exhausted, my throat raw, my lips cracked and bleeding.
I try to contain myself. There is no escaping my sickness, no matter where I travel, I carry it with me.
I have screamed before of course. The day I found my own parasite caused such an uncontrolled fit of yelling and glass breaking that my father was forced to kick open the bathroom door. He found me staring into my underpants, where a short lump of rice was crawling, giving itself away. It was not any natural part of my body, it was a thing. It would consume me and I would die.
The doctor my parents took me to was more concerned about my twisted ankle and the cuts on my hands. I had taken my anxiety out on as many of the bathroom fixtures as I could damage. He proclaimed me normal, and told my parents that many children develop worms. That was his phrase, 'develop worms'. As though they were present all along, waiting only for the right set of conditions to allow them to burst forth.
I was not given the steel needle, like our dog had been. I feel now that this was a grievous error on the doctor's part. I would kill him if I could discover the place where he practices his bad medicine. The daily regimen of pills forced the parasites into submission, perhaps even killed the white ones, but allowed the black ones to make themselves at home.
I sob in complete helplessness. The steel needle, administered at the proper stage of the disease, could have saved me.
By the time I had become sixteen, it was too late. My face developed an oily sheen, my voice deepened, and my one became the center of interest in a forest of black hairs.
I thought then they were hairs. I was so naive.
My one began to exhibit behavior which made me question my own mind. It would lift up, aroused from its slumber, at the most inopportune times; when shopping, while dressing for gym class, while being talked to be a girl who had taken a liking to me.
I discussed these distressing events with no one. I felt as though I could not control my own body. If I was not in control, then who was?
My face itched terribly, and the discomfort kept me from sleeping. Many mornings I would awaken, my eyes red and swollen, to find I had cut my skin with my nails, clawing at my cheeks, jaw, and forehead during the night. I washed again and again, trying at all hours of the day to remove the filth which coated my skin. There seemed to be an endless supply, welling up from somewhere inside me.
My one became ill. I did not suspect right away that it's sickness was related to the other things which affected me. Now I catalog it along with the complete symptoms of my infestation.
My one discharged a white goo while I slept. This pus could only have been from some internal hurt, an infection which my body was trying to fight off. My anxiety over my condition was excruciating.
Then came the day of revelations. I had gotten over the fear of the bathroom, and now felt safe there, the door locked against unannounced intrusion. Small sores had broken out around my nose and cheeks, little red rings surrounding white, puffy skin. I washed my face, and several of the larger ones tore, sending thin tendrils of blood curling down. They felt better to me when they had been ripped open, their pressures relieved. Having made this discovery, I proceeded to pinch them with my fingers, making them pop and spray their contents on the mirror before me. Soon my image was clouded by a suspended snow storm of white particles.
My face felt better than it had in weeks.
My mother's face however went pale, and before the scream erupted from her throat, her mouth opened wider than I had thought any mouth could open. Her piercing shriek threatened to make me go deaf.
As so many times before, I was beaten.
But this time, my one rose up, and made itself known. The beating continued, along with curses and statements questioning my worth as her son. I hated my love for my mother, and that hatred caused an intense pressure to build up in my body. Release came suddenly when my one discharged it's goo.
I mentioned neither the pressure or the resulting discharge when I was forced to sit in the examing room. While my mother was consulting with the doctor, I hunted in the drawers of his cabinets. I found tissues to clean myself, and thus kept my secret.
His poking and prodding of my body revealed nothing. A trend which continues to this day. He smiled at me, and asked how I was liking girls now that I was growing up.
I hated him almost as much as I hated my mother.
He clapped me on the shoulder and promised he would talk to my mother about giving me information. Things he said I would need to know. When he had gone one of his nurses came in and washed my face with an ointment from a metal tube. I had seen nurses before, but now my one reacted with its newly developed lack of judgment.
She turned my head and gave me a critical appraisal.
"You've got an ingrown hair," she said.
As I fidgeted, trying to hide my one from her (and trying not to be obvious about my fidgeting), she deftly jabbed me with a pair of tweezers. The pain was sharp, and my one retreated instantly. A short tug, and the source of my hurt was gone.
She held the twin steel arms before my eyes, and I saw captured between their polished faces, a thread, a line of relative innocence.
My retina's were burned as though exposed to the flash of an electric arc. The answer, so cleverly hidden, had been revealed. This was the parasite, the tiny beast which infested my body and brought much suffering. Indeed it was obvious that the raising of my one, and its discharges, were directly related to the presence of that which the nurse had taken.
If only she could have removed them all. I have prayed that lament on many occasions. But even then I felt that the time of hope was past. For though several parasites might be extracted by mechanical means, another score of they fellows remained entrenched in my skin, in my body.
Still, hope can be sought from the slimmest of straws. I asked her if I could keep the tweezers, and in her kindness she allowed me to take them along with the ointment.
In the weeks which followed I spent much time digging with the tweezers, tearing into my skin with the same hopefulness of an oilman, and indeed, searching for the same sort of substance. My labors often coincided with the rising of my one, and probing into my body caused sensations of pain which reduced it to normal proportions. I was pleased, once again, I was in control.
One particular incident occurred regularly. I would grasp what I felt to be a hair, and start to draw it out with the tweezers. But at the last instant, it would break off, or worse, slip from the tweezers only to hide inside my skin. Once hidden, it was impossible to locate again. I began to think of my hairs as the bodies of worms, broken in half only to regrow whole. But the true answer presented itself shortly thereafter, they were tails; the tails of some creature which infested me. Like the smallest of skin dwelling lizards, they lived and flourished, even when a predator broke off their tails in the heat of pursuit.
The predator failed, and the lizard continued on.
Still I sought to remove from my arms, legs, face, and head, all vestiges of their presence. My puncturing of my flesh created holes which became infected. At one point a blue circle spread across my forearm, a diffusing line which crept up towards my elbow, not unlike the creatures I sought to eradicate.
Once again I was taken to the hospital. I was treated, and advised to avoid self abuse. The hushed conversations from the staff lead me to believe that I was not anyone's favorite patient. Though I pleaded with them to listen to my diagnosis, and presented the evidence quite convincingly, their ears were deaf and their minds were closed.
In fact, no one listened to my pleas until the year that I had my first, abortive attempts at dating. I did not know the girl long, though I did like her. They have asked me about her for years. All I will say now is that my shaved head was attractive to her. Perhaps she saw me as a way to bring hurt to her own parents. My personal style was described by them as aberrant. Like so many others, they didn't understand my fear, the fear that I was slowly being consumed from within.
Our dates went well, and one evening while secluded together she removed our clothing. I marveled at the hair thicket into which she drew my one. Our coupling was joyously resolved when my discharge erupted from me. As we lay after, I knew it had been wrong. I had most probably infected her with my parasites. Could it be the discharge was their way of moving to a new host? I could not allow the pain of the disease to claim her, and there was the greater threat of others becoming similarly infected.
They have asked me, sometimes during periods of personal weakness, just where the girl lies. Her buried body must be kept hidden however, lest it become the innocent source of a world wide plague. Though they torment me, I have never revealed just where I sealed away the disease. So noble am I.
Following that incident, I was sequestered, to this facility I now call home. I have regular visits with doctors, and to appease me, they keep my body shaved. My head is smooth, like my prepubescent skin once was. My legs and buttocks, even my one, are bare as an innocent babe. I know that by damaging the parasites this way, their growth is slowed.
Recently, a fellow patient who is sympathetic to my needs, managed to procure me a pair of tweezers. I bless him constantly, and during free times when we have only minimal supervision in the ward, I remove much of his hidden body hairs, helping him as best I can.
It is not enough.
For I have discovered what I should have known all along. The thickest hair of the body is on the head, and it follows that this spot should be home to the largest population of parasites. Their waving tails give them away.
Once burrowed into the brain, they control the thoughts and actions of the host, as they once tried to control me. Is it no wonder then that no doctor or public official will hear my pleas? What parasite would give up its warm home and food source? None would, willingly.
For several nights now I have practiced removing my wrist straps. I use the concealed tweezers to lift the hasp and have gotten my arms and legs free well before the second bed check of the evening. My calm demeanor has lulled my dancing partners, and now they say I have been showing improvement. The one I like best has a bald head like me. I call him Walrus, because of the heavy growth of red hairs on his face. The poor man's mind may be clear of infestation, but the damn little beasts are trying.
I am free of my bonds now, and stand out of sight behind the door. So many people are infested by this plague, all helpless, all ignorant. I cannot passively watch while the human race is consumed. I will free them, and Walrus will be the first.
I hear his footsteps getting louder as he comes down the hall. I raise my tweezers.
I am ready.
THE END
© 1994 by Kurt Fillmore
All rights reserved.
