As any outdoorsperson knows, ticks are an unpleasant thing you have to deal with, from time to time. They lurk in the bushes, on tree limbs, and in the grass of your wandering excursions. If you are lucky, you catch them crawling on your clothes or skin before they’ve attached themselves. Once they do, it can be quite difficult to remove them. Like other parasites, they don’t want to let go because we are their food source.
Every day it seems they’ve discovered a new disease, malady, or condition associated with their bites. It used to be that Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Lyme disease was the biggest risk, but not necessarily any more. Those life-threatening illnesses are certainly bad enough, but new research every day uncovers other potential dangers. There’s no telling what else they do to the human body. Certain tick breeds are known to even cause allergies to red meat.
Needless to say, any bites you can avoid is a ‘win’. Well, I recently ‘lost’. I was about to get in the shower and happened to notice a weird ‘skin tag’ on my backside when I removed my clothing. The more I touched the odd ‘growth’, the more I suspected it wasn’t a skin tag at all. Naturally, I couldn’t see back there, so I felt the place with my fingertips until I could locate a mirror to examine the spot.
Not only was it a tick, it was also embedded deep in my skin! It’s such a creepy sensation to realize a foreign organism has been clinging to my body and living off me for nearly a day, unrealized. I shuddered at the invasion. My first instinct was to just pull it off, but I forced myself to avoid doing that, for fear its tiny head might tear off and remain embedded in my skin. I tried being gentle. Nothing. It clung to my skin like it’s life depended on it. Technically it did, I guess. Every moment, more of my precious blood was sucked into its bloated, eight-legged body.
I pulled harder, but still with some restraint. Again nothing. That blood-sucking-freak held on, desperately. Losing patience, I pulled with more authority this time. At last, it came off in my hand. I should’ve been relieved but I was too worried about diseases; so instead of examining it, I quickly tossed it into the toilet and flushed. Boom! The disgusting little creep was washed away to the ‘underworld’ of my septic tank, where it belonged.
I put some alcohol on the bite and some antibiotic cream but those only treated the surface wound. It’s saliva already made contact with my blood stream. Any viruses or diseases it carried, were already floating within my veins and arteries. I tried not to think about that, but as a recovering hypochondriac, it’s all I could do to stop picking at the sore. Eventually it formed a scaly, unhealed scab. I tried to convince myself I would’ve already developed symptoms if it infected me with some insidious malady.
It was a comforting lie, but I knew better. Lyme disease can take years to manifest, and who knows about the other ugly possibilities. I maintained a certain degree of intellectual disconnect, in order to not freak out. That is, until I began to itch. First it was only the bite area itself, but then it spread to surrounding tissues. A large pimple formed like a volcano, which I continued to dab with alcohol swabs and more antibiotic cream.
I honestly did my best to leave it alone, but it was agonizing. The itch and proximity of the swollen sore to the contact area where I sit down, led me to rub and squeeze it obsessively. Obviously that made it swell up even more, which caused the cycle to begin anew. I scratched and rubbed it aggressively, which felt pleasurable as the histamine reaction triggered more tingling sensations. As it filled with angry white blood cells fighting the unknown infection, it occurred to me that the tick’s tiny little head had probably severed and was left behind, rotting inside my body. Immediately I was creeped out that the disgusting thing’s decaying head might lie under my skin.
That led me to even more aggressive squeezing of the festering boil. At all costs, I had to discharge it’s foreign tissue from my own. Only then could I begin to heal, I convinced myself. My network of lymph nodes swelled from the barrage of invasive attacks to my nervous system. Realizing the issue was greater than I should attend to on my own, I vowed to visit a doctor after the weekend was over. Monday was just around the corner, and I was hopeful my general practitioner could squeeze me in, soon.
Sunday morning I awoke, drenched in sweat. I had been in the throes of a feverish dream about being a horrible mutant monster with hybrid DNA. My skin burned and was inflamed in numerous places, far outside the festering tick bite. I had six new swollen areas on my back and sides. There was something hard inside the core of them which I couldn’t stop picking at. It was like a twig or bone was embedded within me, and about to protrude through the raised areas of my embattled skin!
I noticed there was an odd symmetry to these huge new boils. There was one on each buttock, one on each hip, and a pair about mid way up on my rib cage. My first instinct was to put on my clothes and race to the emergency room but I stopped myself cold. I was too afraid of what they would find, or say. I didn’t want to be examined or treated by any medical professionals, because I already realized what was happening. I’d be quarantined and experimented on, or far worse.
Slowly, the beginnings of dangling insect legs pushed through the boils. My own arms began to contort as well, to be twisted and gnarled. Any attempt to tear away the disgusting, inflamed foreign tissue connected to my evolving body was excruciating and unbearable. The tick’s arachnid DNA had completed bonded with my own, and all the intertwined nerve endings were fused together in an tangled, non-reversible matrix.
Then my head began to shrink and reform into some hellish monstrosity that should’ve never been. Antennae pushed through my aching temples. The reflection of my face in the mirror was unbearable. It was a contorted mask of insectoid nightmares. That’s when the sanguine cravings began. I was so hungry for blood that I couldn’t focus on anything else. As a desperately needed distraction from my developing woes, I suppose that could’ve been considered a ‘blessing’. My rapidly morphing form was no longer human by any stretch of the imagination; and not quite arachnid either. It existed within the unnatural realm of a diabolic mashup between those two disparate states.
I crawled to the door when darkness fell to attend to my growing needs. I crept on my belly toward the nature path. There I await an unsuspecting outdoors-person walking the trail for exercise. I don’t want to do this, but I must. The thirst and need is too great. I fully understand now. I’ve decided to embrace the hybrid thing I’ve become. It’s just a matter of perspective. Self preservation is the most natural thing in the world, even for an unnatural parasite like me which used to be a man. Each night after preying on a new donor ‘host’, I return home to document my continued metamorphosis into this unparalleled territory, via the necessary technology aid of voice-to-text.