I clutch my stethoscope as I watch yet another man burst, his flesh and tissue slide down the glass that separates us.
“Another one, that’s the 113th one so far.” Noor says with a pained sigh.
“No symptoms?”
“Yes, no symptoms other than itching an hour before burst time. One hour to the dot.”
I try my best to contain my frustration as I make my way to the burst patient.
‘Harry Covington’ the monitor read.
Nothing remained of Harry Covington. Nothing that could distinguish him from the 112 patients that came before them.
When they burst they splattered everywhere. Their flesh and tissue covered every surface. When they burst they were just a pile of flesh and bone and blood, nothing remarkable, nothing that could discern them from one another.
It started a month ago on the 13th. The first one to ever burst was a child aged 12, her parents brought her in, frantic and shaking as she scratched her skin so violently that it oozed blood. The scratches were severe, they were everywhere. The scratching hurt her but she couldn’t stop, it drove her insane, she screamed as she rubbed her nails against her skin. The pain, unbearable but the itch was even more so.
Her hands had to be restrained to stop her from assaulting her skin but she started chewing it, she chewed it so much that it came apart wholly under her teeth’s wrath.
No one could figure out what was happening. Nothing worked on her. We tried to put her in a medically induced coma but it didn’t work. Nothing worked. Nothing could stop the itch that was driving her mad. She trashed against her restraints so destructively that she broke free. She looked like a madwoman as she chewed and scratched her skin. Her parents were just standing there in the corner, forced to watch their daughter’s descent into madness.
And then, exactly 15 minutes before one hour, her skin tore, not due to her nails, it tore from the inside and she screamed, she screamed like a man being tortured.
Every inch of her skin came apart and gave way to tiny white things. They were like maggots, they were white and shiny. They crawled out of the holes, slowly slithered in her skin and blood, crawled in the gore. They came from her scalp, from her face, from her hands and every other surface that had skin.
There were so many of them. Hundreds, if not thousands. They never seemed to end, they came pouring out until all you could see of her were her eyes. They covered every inch of her. She tried to swat them away, she tried to chew them so they’d leave her alone but they didn’t budge, it was as if they were glued to her. Then, at one hour on the dot, she burst. She burst like a balloon. The sound, so loud it hurt my eardrums. Her body was now just clumps of flesh and bone. Her flesh and blood splattered everywhere. She exploded. She was now nothing but clumps of meat, blood oozed out of the clumps and stained all that it touched. And they were gone. Just as suddenly as they had come, they were gone. There was no sign of them. It was as if they disappeared.
Then more and more people started bursting. They all showed the same symptoms. Itching and bursting. No one knows why or how. We just know that if you start itching, you’re dead.