CW: Disturbing bodily images

Down in the gut of my soul, I’ve felt a stirring. It buzzed and churned and burned for years. Ignoring it made it turn to lava, but at least I only burned from the inside.

Everything would burn if I let it out.

Consciously, I kept my ailments buried. There was once, twice, I spoke of the pain I was in. There was once, twice, where my concerns were dismissed.

Only in the silence of my home, nestled upon the couch I built by hand, the couch I bled on due to slipping nails and spinning drills–only there could I stick my hand down my throat and pull out the corruption that threatened to consume me.

Nothing was like those moments.

Stirring in my hand like a monster, like a snake, like some twisted beast of hell, I saw the insides of my soul squirming like intestines made alive. Red and smoking, searing my hands just to hold, the coils oozed a darkness I dared not peer too deep into.

Tomorrow, before I go back into the world, I will need to stuff them down inside me once more. But for now, I place them in a jar, close the lid, and hope they don’t break out before dawn.

Running from them has never worked – they are as quick as they are vile. I have never outpaced them, have never made it somewhere without them following. The jars always break by morning, and it is a wonder they do not break me.

Unless my shaking hands, my cracking ribs, the way my bones ache – perhaps they are breaking me. Perhaps they already have.

Continue on my day. Do not think of what I have discovered, of the ailments I now see riddling my body. Thinking on them will do me no good. I must keep the maggots from spilling out. I must keep them from showing the wickedness inside.

Tremors spread and with them, come the cracks. Sickly crimson ooze begins to bubble from the lacerations. I seek gauze, I seek tape. I wrap myself up before anyone can see, before anyone can know. But someone notices. Someone smiles.

Initially, their extended hand brought fear, but I saw the patience and understanding in their eyes. I took their hand and the skin that held me fell apart.

Overwhelming pain. Through my skull and through my nerves as it sloughed off in sections, in clumps. A greasy mess lay at my feet. The twisting intestines, the curling maggots, the darkness I had hidden – it was for the world to see.

Nothing was more beautiful.