A Slow, Steady March
By Jeremy G. Butler
Disclaimer: This story contains subject matter that may be unsuitable for sensitive readers.
1.
Maybe if Carl Wallace hadn’t had those extra beers with dinner, or had gotten a little more rest the night before, maybe he wouldn’t have been sleeping quite so heavily in that very moment. He might have felt it, that tiny pin prick that struck the back of his left hand. It was fast - the injection, transfer, withdrawal, and extraction over in an instant – and under normal circumstances it would have been sharply painful. But what should have startled him awake only prompted a soft moan and a subtle grimace, both quickly replaced by a solid return to deep sleep. Otherwise he might have woken up in time to see the…thing responsible. In the dark he would have probably shrugged it off as just another damn bug and, his instincts being what they were, he probably would have flattened it. That could have made things a lot better for everyone else. But instead, the fog of exhaustion and alcohol provided a perfect cover for this intruder (which, with its scarlet wasp-like body and scorpion tail, certainly was not just another damn bug) to simply march away. Six legs moving confidently over the relatively endless peaks and valleys of his blanket, to the edge of the bed, where it spread its wings and flew away, perching in the far, high corner of the room. A perfect place to watch.
And wait.
The next morning Carl woke up, still feeling a bit hungover from the excesses of the night before. There was the vague sensation that something wasn’t quite right, but it was buried under an all too familiar headache. He turned on the shower, hoping that it would start the process toward making him feel human again, like it always did. And again – under normal circumstances – it absolutely would have. But still, something just felt…off. As he stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped half-heartedly in a towel, willing himself to believe that he felt better, he absentmindedly scratched an itch on the back of his left hand. It was dull, superficial; just enough to trigger a reflex, but not quite enough to command his full attention. Not yet, anyway. The rest of the morning was spent in the usual fashion – getting dressed, making a quick breakfast, and heading out the door for work. By the time he left he had done a decent job of convincing himself that he felt fine. He didn’t immediately realize how hard he had worked to not look directly at himself in the mirror.
Meanwhile, his little visitor from the night before just sat there, perched in the far corner of the room. It hadn’t moved an inch from where it landed, but anyone who had been paying attention to it would have sworn that it had gotten just the tiniest bit…bigger.
2.
Perhaps if he had taken an extra moment to get a good look at himself as he was getting ready he would have been prepared for what greeted him as he walked through the office door. “Jeeeeesus H. Macy, dude. Did something run you over?” Ahh Dickens. Good guy, nice enough, but maybe lacking a bit, well, socially. His shortage of gracefulness was especially noticeable this morning; at least until he thrust a small latte cup in Carl’s direction. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. “Beer truck,” Carl said through that familiar hungover groan. “You know how it is.” He took a sip of the coffee, hoping the beer excuse was enough to sufficiently end the discussion, especially because he knew that whatever was wrong wasn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill hangover. Dickens just laughed. “And the damn things don’t even leave a note!” He clapped Carl on the back, who tried like hell not to let his face show just how badly it had hurt.
Wait, why did that hurt so badly?
It’s a question he tossed around in his mind for the rest of the day. And soon enough it was joined by other questions. Like why was it so hard to get comfortable in the same chair he’d been sitting in for the last three years? Why was it so hot in his office when the thermostat was set to the same brisk 71 degrees it was always on? And why the hell did his hand itch so much? It was that last question that had his full attention when his boss walked into his office. “Carl?” He didn’t like the look of concern on her face when he looked up at her. “OH, Leslie, hello!” Act normal act normal act normal. “Are you okay? You look…well, you look…exhausted.” Well, at least she had more tact than Dickens.
“Yes ma’am, I’m fine, I just, uh, overestimated my tolerance last night.” He chuckled as he made the drinky-drinky gesture with his right hand. He didn’t want her to see the marks on his left hand from where he’d been scratching it so hard just moments before. He hoped his little charade would be as effective as it had been earlier.
“Noooo... I’ve seen hangovers before. This…well this isn’t that. This is something else.” Dammit, why couldn’t she be as dense as Dickens? “You have sick time, yeah?” He sighed. “Yes ma’am.” “Good, use some. Go home and rest. And if you need to go see a doctor, be smart and do it. Okay?” He sighed again. “10-4.” He started shutting down his computer as she walked toward the door. Just before she left his office she turned around and said “Seriously, take care of yourself. I don’t want to see you back here until you’re feeling better.” She gave him a warm little half-smile, then turned and walked away.
She wouldn’t see him back there ever again.
The ride home was especially excruciating. Carl didn’t realize just how much being at work had sort of forced him to ignore everything that was wrong, and without that distraction keeping the worst of it at bay, everything started to break down. Getting a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror certainly didn’t help things. He couldn’t help but recoil at his own pallid, almost waxy face; his eyes draped by circles that seemed to be getting darker by the second. At first he was convinced he had some sort of flu. Fever, chills, aches, skin sensitivity; they were all familiar from the last time he had it. But there was something else, something he’d never felt before, almost like a pressure that he couldn’t place, like there wasn’t quite enough room for him in his own body.
And that damn itch was still there.
“It’s just the flu, that’s all it is. Just make it home, take some medicine, and you’ll be fine.”
He kept repeating that to himself, but it was the making it home that was proving to be the most difficult. The sweat from the fever ran into his eyes, making it hard (and painful) to see, while abdominal cramps kept him lurched over, leaving his steering rigid and erratic. His difficulties didn’t go unnoticed by other drivers on the road and earned him a few honks and less-than-friendly gestures. He didn’t (couldn’t) pay them any mind – he had one sole focus: just make it home and you’ll be fine.
Somehow it worked, although he overshot his driveway by about a foot and ended up parked halfway in the yard. He shut off the engine and stepped out of the car just in time to vomit in the grass, the sight of which appeased the few nosy neighbors who happened to be home at this time of day and watched him make a parking lot of his lawn, their whispers of “Well well what have we here” turning into compassionate exclamations of “Oh, that poor man.”
The sudden purge brought with it a certain sense of relief though, and left Carl feeling just better enough to stumble in through the front door, lock it behind him, and stagger to the kitchen. He took a quick dose of flu medicine and a few vitamin c tablets, then leaned against the wall as he sort of dragged himself down the hallway into his bedroom, removing articles of clothing as he went. It felt like an eternity, but once he made to the bed he collapsed, asleep before he ever hit the pillow.
It was 2:45 pm. He wouldn’t wake up for the next 16 hours. And across the room, perched high in the corner, the insect that wasn’t exactly an insect kept a still, silent watch.
And it was definitely getting bigger.
3.
At 6:30am the alarm started going off, but it took another 20 minutes for the sound to actually burrow its way into Carl’s subconscious and start pulling him out of the fog. By 6:55 his eyes were open, at least partly; a thick crust of fluid had almost cemented them shut. He managed to force them open but it proved to be difficult – and painful; the process costing him a few eyelashes. But that would turn out to be the least of his worries. As he went to reach for the alarm clock to turn it off, he noticed his left hand seemed to be stuck to the pillow case. Stuck with what he couldn’t tell, as his hand was tucked underneath the pillow, but whatever it was he was certain it wasn’t good. Ultimately the incessant chirping of the alarm clock proved to be the bigger immediate concern than the mystery underneath his pillow, so he braced himself and pulled hard. The sound of his hand tearing free from the cloth of his pillow case (combined with the feeling of a giant scab being ripped off) made his stomach turn, but it’s what he saw once he had it free that actually made him ill. A thick, black abscess, maybe an inch in diameter, had formed in the middle of the backside of his left hand; deep and slick, matted with blood and pus. Where it had come from he had no idea, but he remembered how badly it had itched the day before. He tried to convince himself that he’d just scratched it too hard and maybe some dirt underneath his fingernails had infected it – nothing some antibiotics wouldn’t take care of, right? But as he reached to turn off the alarm clock he could have sworn he saw something pulse inside the abscess, and that’s when his stomach turned. Luckily he was able to roll out of bed and make it to the bathroom in time, the sheer determination distracting him from just how much his whole body ached.
After what felt like an eternity of retching, certain that he was going to see everything inside of himself fall into the toilet in front of him, his stomach settled, the dry heaves stopped and he sat on the floor, exhausted. He leaned back against the bathtub and forced himself to keep his eyes closed, lest he find himself looking at his hand again. While he was able to find some relief in his settled stomach and the cold porcelain of the bathtub against his skin, he just couldn’t understand why everything hurt so bad. He finally accepted that this wasn’t just the flu; the body aches were far more severe and everything inside him felt like it was on fire. Not from fever, but like his actual insides had started to combust. He needed to get up, take stock of himself, but the only relief he had at the moment was that cold bathtub pressed against his back and he didn’t want to leave it. After about ten minutes, the pain and the worry eclipsed whatever solace he found on the floor, so he managed to get himself to his feet, leaving every muscle and joint he had resentful of it. Once up he steadied himself against the wall, eyes still closed, until his body settled and he felt confident he could actually stand and walk. He took the several steps over to the mirror and, eyes still closed, placed his right hand on the edge of the sink to prop himself up. The left dropped to his side, as comfortably out of view as possible. He took several deep, calming breaths, trying like hell to brace himself for what he was going to see once he finally opened his eyes...
It was the bathroom sink; he was still too scared to actually look in the mirror. He took the opportunity to turn the water on and splash a little on his face, being extra careful not to bring his left hand into view. There was still a cup on the counter from when he brushed his teeth the morning before, so he filled it up and drank, swishing and trying to rinse the memories of getting sick out of his mouth. He spit and stared at the sink, trying to will himself to look up.
“How bad can it be? You’re just sick. It’s not like you’re a monster. Your skin isn’t falling off, you didn’t throw up your own organs (his brain interjected – “not yet, anyway”).” He winced at the thought, still staring intently at the sink. “You need to know what to tell the doctor, right? Just look in the mirror. It’s probably not any worse than it was yesterday.” He thought about the glimpse of himself he caught in the rear view mirror of his car. He instinctively closed his eyes again. He didn’t want to see, he didn’t want to know. But the imagination is a wonderful and terrible thing, and what it decided to show him was his own body covered in dozens of the oozing sores that had taken over the back of his left hand. The thought horrified him, but it also steeled his resolve. “There’s no way it’s that bad, no way. No way.” He said it once or twice more just to make sure he had convinced himself. He took one final deep breath and, with his eyes still closed, lifted his head. He exhaled and opened his eyelids.
He was right – it wasn’t as bad as what his imagination had shown him. But it wasn’t much better, either.
He leaned forward and stared intently at his own face, the rest of his body just visible in the periphery. There was no color whatsoever; he reminded himself of a corpse. His eyes were sunken into dark pockets, the waxy complexion of his washed out skin intensified under the vanity lights. The only sign of anything alive in what he was seeing was the mixture of saliva, water, and vomit still clinging to his lips and the corners of his mouth. That alone was all he could bear; he didn’t want to see anymore. But still he forced himself to shift his gaze downward.
If the sight of his own face had scared him, the rest of his body was downright horrifying. The same waxy complexion covered his torso, but it was highlighted by angry red hives and lumpy cysts that, while not yet full-blown lesions like the one on the back of his hand, weren’t far from it. Thankfully that’s when the tears came, blurring his vision and keeping him from seeing anymore. He knew he needed to call 911. But the tears were followed by the tingly black vignette that usually signaled a blackout, and with his legs rubbery from the full impact of what he’d just seen, the thought of taking the 15 steps that would lead him back to his bed seemed like an impossibility. But the impossible seems less so when your life is on the line, and he started to believe that his was. With that realization at the forefront of his mind, he struggled to keep himself on his feet, and shambled back to his room, his movements taking on the same living corpse-like characteristics of his own skin. What normally took him 20 seconds seemed to take an hour, but he eventually made it and sat down on his bed. He looked at the night stand trying to find his cell phone, but…why wasn’t it there? Where was it? He always put it on his bedside table at night, but it was gone.
That’s when it hit him. He remembered, with horror, coming home yesterday, parking (and puking) in the yard. At the time his cell phone was the furthest thing from his mind. Now, he needed it desperately and even though it was only out in the front yard, not 100 feet away, when he thought of actually making the trek all the way out there he realized that it might as well have been three states away. Defeated, terrified, he collapsed back onto his mattress. “This is where I’m going to die,” he said to no one.
In the periphery, he thought he saw movement on the far side of the room, like an insect flying. “That’s a big ass moth,” he thought to himself. He closed his eyes.
4.
It was 10am on Wednesday morning, and back at the office Leslie sat at her desk thinking about Carl. He had looked terrible yesterday and she hoped he was feeling better. She thought about calling him just to check but decided against it. After all he hadn’t even called into work (which she attributed to him not being able, as opposed to just not doing it) so she decided that he was resting and it was better if she didn’t bother him. Still though, she was worried. “If I haven’t heard from him by Friday I’m going to go to his house and check on him.” Down the hall, Dickens was thinking the same thing.
And 10 miles away, in a cute little house on a street full of cute little houses, something terrible was happening to Carl Wallace.
5.
He was right about the movement he though he saw, though it wasn’t the moth that he assumed it was just before he fell back to sleep. His little guest had gotten too big to just sit quietly in the corner anymore, and had Carl not been so preoccupied with his own deterioration, he would have noticed. Though, it’s less likely that he would have believed what he had seen. The tail had completely retracted inside of the insect’s abdomen, and three of the legs had fallen off, but what would have made him recoil was the fact that its body had started…changing. The deep scarlet had started to become more flesh-like and soft. And if Carl had really gotten a good look he would have noticed that the little bug’s face – for lack of a better term – had started to shift and show features that he would have found, well, oddly familiar. The process had indeed begun, and the visitor needed to find somewhere safe to complete it. So it flew away from the wall and took shelter in the shadows and space underneath Carl’s bed.
But Carl was also changing, he just wasn’t awake to experience it - it was a blessing he didn’t know to be thankful for. By late afternoon the cysts he had seen had doubled in size, and underneath the skin that covered them – which had started to dry and thin – there was evidence of something…moving. His stomach and chest heaved, but not with breath, as Carl’s had become shallow and strained. By nightfall his body had withered as the tissue and muscle underneath his skin had been eaten away, while the cysts had gotten even bigger. The abscess on his left hand had grown as well, its black infection spreading out to just below his wrist. Had a doctor seen it there would have been an immediate amputation, but instead it - and the rest of him - continued to rot freely. And by sunrise, Carl Wallace was dead.
His corpse, however, continued to writhe and heave. Something was inside of him.
And it wanted out.
6.
By Thursday afternoon the cell phone that was still sitting in his car showed three missed calls; two from Dickens and a third from Leslie, both growing more concerned with the fact that they hadn’t heard a thing from him. His neighbors were starting to worry as well, seeing as his car had been parked in his front yard since Tuesday afternoon. They all kept an almost round the clock watch on his house, not sure exactly what they were expecting to see, but knowing that whatever it was, they were going to be ready to help. A couple of them had flirted with the idea of calling 911 or the police department just to have someone come check on Carl, but they all stopped short, not wanting to embarrass themselves by causing a scene for nothing.
Everyone kept telling themselves the same thing; he’s fine, he’s just sick. Let him rest and he’ll call back or come outside when he’s able. But even so, a text notification popped up on the screen of his phone. It was from Leslie, the message inside reading “If I haven’t heard from you by tomorrow morning I’m coming to check on you.” One of the neighbors, and old retiree named Joe Gumbal, had the same idea – “If I haven’t seen some sign of improvement by tomorrow I’m calling someone.”
Inside the house, the scene was far more grim than any of them would have dared to imagine. Carl was still dead, of course, but what was inside of him certainly was not, and those cysts all over his torso were just about ready to rupture. They swelled and pulsed from the movement underneath, straining the paper-thin flesh that covered them.
But all of that was starting to pale in comparison to what was happening under his bed.
What used to be a small insect that looked like a wasp was now a mass of organic matter that looked like…Carl Wallace? Or, well it would soon. The metamorphosis was staggeringly fast; the insect had processed the small amount of Carl’s DNA that it had extracted that first night and grown exponentially, to match both Carl’s height and weight in only a matter of days. The transformation wasn’t entirely complete yet, though; several of Carl’s features had yet to be defined and the massive lump of biological clay that lay underneath the bed was working just as fervently as whatever it was inside the real Carl up above.
But their work was nearly complete.
7.
As the sun broke on Friday morning, a hand reached out from underneath the bed, followed by its arm. It braced itself against the floor, and newly-formed muscles strained to pull the new Carl Wallace, identical in every way to the old one, out from the shadows. Nobody, not even his own mother, would have been able to tell the difference. The new Carl had every physical characteristic, down to the scars and birthmark, not to mention the speech pattern and the memories; this was an absolutely perfect copy. There were still the remnants of the transformation, however; New Carl stood tall in old Carl’s bedroom, covered in the same sort of fluid and material that newborn babies bring with them out of the womb. He knew he needed a shower, but there were some things to attend to first.
8.
Just as dawn started to creep over the horizon, the new Carl Wallace stepped outside, wrapped in a bathrobe, and headed toward the car parked in the front yard. After he sat down in the driver’s seat, he noticed the cell phone that had been left behind. He turned it on, noticed the missed call notifications, and then read the text message from Leslie stating her intentions to come see him. “Well that just won’t do,” he said out loud to himself as he typed out a reply.
“Hey Leslie, sorry, it’s been a rough few days, but I’m on the mend. No need to come all the way out here. Give me the weekend and I’ll be good as new. Make sure Dickens knows as well. Thanks!”
Satisfied that he’d averted that particular crisis, he started the car and parked it carefully in the driveway, then stopped the engine and got out of the car, closing the door behind him loudly enough to wake up one Mr. Joe Gumbal. The New Carl was already crossing the threshold of his house by the time Joe had opened his bedroom window to see what all the racket was. He smiled to himself when he saw Carl’s car parked where it should be and his young neighbor seemingly up and around again. He also enjoyed the breeze that came in with the sunrise and decided to leave his window open as he crawled back into bed.
9.
Back inside, New Carl was busy scrubbing away any trace of what his body had been through overnight. He stepped out of the shower confidently, comfortable in his new skin and made his way back into the bedroom. He stood over what little remained of his host, waiting for the final stage of this venture to come to terms. And within moments the largest of the cysts on the real Carl’s body opened up, and a dozen small insects crawled out; their small scorpion-like tails protruding from a wasp’s abdomen, deep crimson from nursing on Carl - eating him from the inside out. Soon another cyst ruptured, and more were birthed. Within minutes the original Carl’s corpse had purged itself of hundreds of these insects, and all that remained of the man he used to be was a husk; skin and bone that had been cleaned and drained and left in such a shape that they would have crumbled to the touch.
New Carl watched, astonished, as a parent always is watching the life they created grow. And even though these new little miracles were only babies, it was time for them to leave their nest and venture out. They had jobs to do, after all. So, with pride, New Carl walked over to the bedroom window and opened it. And one by one, each of the insects that covered the bed spread their wings for the very first time and followed the early morning breeze out into the world, their tails coiled up in anticipation of acting upon their one and only instinct. And Joe Gumbal’s open window provided a perfect opportunity for one of them. The rest would soon find opportunities of their own.
New Carl was beaming as he cleaned up the mess left behind in the bedroom, knowing that before long each of his children would have realized their full potential, their destinies carried out over and over again, until they each bore witness to the very thing their father had the privilege of seeing himself. And the process would start anew.
And that’s when the real work would begin.
