Have you ever heard about the tongue-eating louse? I think I read about it on one of those tabloid news articles that typically spews false information that they pulled out of their arse. After that, I saw it again a few months later on Reddit, which obviously meant that it had to be true. In case you didn’t know, from what I can tell, the tongue-eating louse is a parasite that attaches itself to the mouth of a fish, replacing its tongue so that it can steal its food. I don’t think it would be quite so terrible if it weren’t for the fact that the parasite kept the fish alive: after all, how else would the ghastly little bugger get its food?
So, why am I telling you this? I think it ought to be obvious by now.
A few weeks ago, I decided to travel to Ecuador. Lovely place by the way. It had been a while since my last tan and I’m a professional swimmer, you see, so getting a decent tan might as well be part of my job description. I’m a natural-born explorer, so I asked the locals of the small village where my Airbnb was about good places to swim that tourists never go to. They did me one better and pointed me in the direction of a lake that even the locals never go to, though they didn’t say why. Keep in mind my Spanish isn’t exactly perfect, and most of my knowledge of the language comes from watching football (the ball kind, not the egg kind), so for all I know, they were telling me to avoid this lake. Still, water was water, so off I went through the tropical jungle, hiking until I stumbled upon a picturesque lake.
It was beautiful. The water was the kind of blue you’d get if you cracked a chunk of lapis lazuli in half, and the scenery around it was so lush and vibrant that if I took a picture of it, you’d swear that it was photoshopped. It was perfect, so I took off my clothes and jumped in. It was a hot day, but the water was cool and refreshing, so I swam length after length as the fishes in the lake danced and darted around me. As I grew tired, I decided to see how deep the water was and dived down. The water grew darker and murkier the further down I went, and as I reached a hand out to feel for the side of the small scarp that overhung the lake, I accidentally drove my palm straight into a sharp rock. Pain exploded in my hand as my blood burst from the cut and into the water. Unable to help it, my mouth opened as wide as possible and roared a muffled yell, which was quickly smothered by the lake water rushing in and attempting to squeeze itself down my throat. I spat the water out as I anxiously ascended, but lost control of my breathing and involuntarily sucked as much water back in. In, out. In, out. In, out. I had forgotten all my swimming training and my lungs kept gasping for air that simply wasn’t there, and only water filled its place.
It felt like an eternity until I broke free of the water. I must have spat out a gallon of bitter lake water, and my hand stung like someone had taken a knife to it, which probably would’ve been more ideal. By the time I crawled out of the god-forsaken lake, I had noticed a numbing sensation on my tongue. A numbing sensation was nothing compared to a butchered hand, however, so I ignored it and soldiered on back through the forest, hoping to make it back to my Airbnb before my wound became infected from whatever the hell might’ve been in that water.
Sleep came for me quickly, but the next day I woke up with an almighty fever that meant that I spent the final day of my trip in bed, unable to muster the effort to eat or drink anything. I spent the entire plane home to England asleep under a blanket while my head ran a fever hot enough to set my eyebrows on fire. A thin scab had grown over the wound on my hand, but the numbness of my tongue refused to go away. I was certain that I was just sick. I googled ‘numb tongue’ while I queued up for passport control and my phone told me it was likely from some allergic reaction, or Lyme disease. Jesus Christ, I wish it were Lyme disease…
I forgot about when I got home until the morning I went to brush my teeth and noticed the feeling of something in my mouth. It was large and soft, so I bent over my sink and spat it out. It was my bloody tongue. The horror I felt as a stared at my own severed tongue was greater than any emotion I’ve ever felt. My ears burst with the sound of screaming, only for me to realise that the screaming was coming from my own mouth. My own tongueless mouth. I waited for myself to stop screaming and lifted my shaking hands up to my pale face. I knew that my tongue wasn’t there, but I could feel something in my mouth. I took a deep breath and forced myself to open my mouth, fingers gripping onto my lips to bare my entire mouth plain to see. Two beady black eyes stared back at me in the mirror. I screamed again. I had only opened my mouth for a second but I knew what it looked like. It was a sickly yellow colour, with a bulging, bloated body and legs, goddamn legs, clinging onto its disgusting body. Now that I saw it, I could feel its legs tickling the bottom of my mouth. I threw up. I had barely eaten in the last few days, so all I felt was acid burning my already hoarse throat, but I could feel the creature in my mouth writhing its legs all the same. It was a vicious cycle, every reaction of disgust I made prompted it to remind me of its presence even further. It was more than I could take. I passed out.
I woke up on my bathroom floor, and I remembered immediately what had happened. I spoke a thousand silent prayers in my head as I reached my fingers back into my mouth, and there they gripped the creature again. I felt the intense urge to crush it, then and there, but I knew that having the disgusting smashed corpse of a tongue-sized insect was hardly better than having a living one in my mouth. Neither could I bear to hold on to the creature for long enough to attempt to rip it out, and who knew how much pain that might cause? I bundled my tongue in a plastic bag and resolved to drive to the hospital.
Now, every second that passes, my skin crawls. Every jolt of the car over a stone or bump that forces the creature against the sides of my mouth makes me want to vomit all over again. Without my tongue, I cannot speak. I cannot tell the doctor what is happening, only open my mouth and share the grotesque horror with them. My throat is sore from screaming, but with the creature living in my mouth, screaming is all I can do.