My skin is not my skin anymore. I can feel it growing inside of me. I can feel it eating, slowly consuming and replacing my body. It hurts, you know… Imagine the ground, and imagine a seed deep under its surface. The seed eats and grows, weaving through the soil. It pushes it aside and splits the ground open in a horrible effort to bloom.
Now, imagine that the ground can feel it. The soil feels the seed growing and cutting it, and It wants to scream, but it does not have a mouth.
The only difference between the dirt and me is that I can still scream.
For the next few weeksw months ago. I had just accepted a part-time job at a small-town Mortuary in the middle of nowhere Illinois. It wasn’t anything too gruesome or unsightly. Just a small filing job. It was mostly the usual thing, expense reports, work schedules, and billing. The worst part of the job was the Body Examination and Causation reports. I had to fill them out twice a week, sometimes once if it was particularly slow.
Now, I have never been bothered by dead bodies. Sure, I could be a bit squeamish at the sight of blood or gore. But all and all, I was pretty composed. But no matter how much I tried, looking over those bodies on the table and analyzing them always made me sick. It seemed like a huge invasion of privacy. I mean, these people had died, and here I was poking and prodding them trying to figure out the best way to prepare them for archival and burial.
Looking back, It was a stupid mistake. A classical case of curiosity killing- Or rather, changing the cat. It was a cut. A small, inch-long incision was made just inside the bicep. It wasn’t particularly deep, or fresh. It could have been from anything, a fall on the ground, a particularly tacky thread from a shirt, or even a scratch from a fingernail scratching a little too vigorously. Even now I still have no clue why it stood out to me so much.
I ended up asking my supervisor about it, a young man named Marcus. He simply laughed and teased me about being jumpy. It seemed genuine. But the look he gave me as I walked out of the room was enough to spook me. In the reflection of the glass on his door, he watched me leave. It would have been fine enough. But I swear… I swear that I saw his face… Ripple. Just a little. A slow and shallow movement of the muscles in his face. Flexing in a wave that rolled from the corner of his mouth to his forehead.
Needless to say, I got out of there quickly.
For the next few weeks, I went on as if nothing had happened. Hell, I had even convinced myself that it had been a trick of the light, or a hallucination, or something…
But as time went on, I started noticing more of those incisions. All the same. Shallow, about an inch long, and just faint enough to be hard to notice. It actually took me about two months before I realized I had started looking for them.
They were always there. Sometimes on the arm, sometimes on the thigh, a few were even on the tongue or the chest. I became convinced that these incisions were not just accidents. I became convinced that something inside of the Mortuary was causing them. At first, I thought it was a problem with the stretchers we used to transport the bodies.
I searched all over them, but not a single piece was out of place or even very sharp.
After that, I though it had to be a problem with the sheets we used to cover the bodies in the cold storage. Again, no problems.
Finally, I though that I would check the storage themselves. Nothing.
After that, I thought it had to be a problem with the sheets we used to cover the bodies in the cold storage. Again, no problems. But that was where I started to make some progress with this unique problem of mine. Every body I hadn’t inspected yet had an incision somewhere on it. That came as no surprise to me.
But there was one other body. A woman by the name of Mrs. Evangeline Hartwrite. I had examined her the day before. I don’t really know why I examined her again. Curiosity maybe? I often think how much better things would have gone if I had just turned around and walked away.
Her incision was about midway up her left bicep. The area around the cut had been completely undisturbed when I had inspected her last time. But now, almost her entire bicep was nothing more than a large flap of skin hanging off of bone.
I had to turn around and catch my breath. No matter what the reports say. No matter what anyone tells you. Her bicep was gone. It wasn’t due to some strange disease. It wasn’t due to an accident she had had in her younger years. It had either just vanished. Or someone had taken it from her.
Whatever was happening, I was sure it was at night. How else could a muscle be stolen between my looking at it? I hid in an air vent and waited for Shady Oakes Mortuary to shut its doors. I really didn’t know what to expect. Maybe a grave robber? Or maybe her muscles really had just disappeared into thin air. That was what made the most sense to me. How else could a muscle escape without any wound or scar left behind?
I waited until I heard the window underneath my vent open. I tried to keep my heartbeat in check as I watched Marcus walk in. He spun his keys around his finger and headed to the storage. I followed him at a far distance, slipping into doors as they closed behind him. We entered the storage and I was able to slink behind a well placed surgical cabinet as he started towards the rows of doors on the wall.
We had received two new “ Patrons “ That day. He pulled them out on their trays. He whistled a jaunty tune as he extended his index finger. That same ripple overtook his hand. This time I was forced to admit that it had been real. I watched as the tip of his finger split open, and a short and gleaming point of bone jutted from his open wound. Blood plipped onto the floor as he made a small incision on the thighs of both bodies.
I have some formal medical training, and I can tell you that whatever bone he used to make those incision, is not one that exists anywhere in the human body.
I tried not to throw up as his finger fused back together, the bone pulled itself back and even the blood on the floor ran up his leg and flowed into his closing wound. A small amount was left on his undamaged fingertip, which he promptly licked off. He then moved to a body I had inspected that very day. He pulled back the sheet and reached down to the man’s thigh. His fingers shook as he removed his shirt. His body was rippling. It was like a cat stuck under a blanket. It protruded and writhed as he inserted a finger into the incision located just above the man’s knee.
The ripple extended into the man, his muscles shook and twisted. Blood pooled around Marcus’s finger. Small red ropes began to make their way out of the Man’s skin and coiled up and around Marcus’s fingers. They reached and crawled up his back, before raising themselves up and plunging into his own flesh. The excited shaking in his back began to increase as they feasted on the strange bloody ropes. It was at that moment I realized that Marcus was removing the muscle fibers from the Man’s leg. The thigh deflated and twisted as the muscle worked it’s way out of the skin and into Marcus. His face was contorted into a sick grin, his eyes seemed to be eating the sight as much as his body was consuming the thigh.
I wondered how much of the thing in front of me was actually Marcus, and how much was… Someone else.
I took my mind off of staying quiet for a single moment. During that moment, I released a small squeal of fear and disgust. All at once the muscles stopped. I heard bones snap and blood spill as Marcus turned his body to face me. In the next moment, I ran. I sprinted for the door. My breathing became heavy and Marcus bellowed a laugh behind me. I caught a quick glance of his muscles flexing and expanding. He became nearly three times his size, formed out of twisted and unnatural muscle and bone. Fibers exploded out from him as I slammed through the door. I heard hundreds of small collisions as they collided with the heavy metal barrier.
I didn’t look back as I ran. I just sprinted to my car and drove away.
It wasn’t until I was inside my car that I felt the sharp pain in my thigh. I pulled up my pant leg to reveal a single bleeding fiber about a foot long. I tried to pull it out as it dug and burrowed depper into my calf. It was too slippery. The hole it had made closed before I could dig into myself and pull it out.
In the last month, I have seen exactly 26 doctors. Each one had concluded the same thing. There was nothing wrong with my muscles. But I know they’re wrong. I can feel that fiber growing through me. Each day, I have a harder time moving my body. That muscle that is not my own is working against me. I have woken up multiple times to find my body outside, walking in the direction of Illinois.
I don’t know how much time I have left. Before the muscle that is not my own takes command away from my own mind. Before it makes me move and I can not stop it. I know where it wants to take me. I know it is leading me back to Shady Oakes.
All I can do is hope. All I can do is pray; that when the thing that is not Marcus finally makes my body into his own, he will kill me before consuming all that I am.
But I highly doubt my luck will last that long.