Short stories

Animal Stories #2 - Ticks

Volksferatu

05.29.26 – 11:44pm

By V Volksferatu

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Animals - Ticks 

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My eyes open to a lavish velvet room, the walls heavy with curtains of  all different hues, air rich with the aroma of succulent food, exquisite cutlery and perfumes. My perception begins to skew. A delightful tune dances in my ears. My fingers graze the luxurious silk beneath me. Above, shining like a pristine diamond beneath a dome, a giant clock keeps time for an indifferent eternity. The tune keeps dancing, baa-ba-ba-baa, a gentle rhythm that calms me and makes me want to feel more. The room keeps filling my senses, overloading  them as I revel in the sensation. Taking more, and more, and more from the source, losing myself in this room, I was drinking from it, from the fountain of feeling and I found myself getting lost in its waters. 

A screeching noise cuts through my velvet room like a guitar out of tune, the music in my ears slows, the pitch dropping. Words twist through the awful noise which form a sentence, shouted at me by the speakers in the room.

“Did you know that, in addition to the traditional five senses, modern science has discovered over thirty-three distinct systems to regulate the experience we call reality.” 

Click. 

A drone hums in my ears, quiet and slow. The music keeps slowing in speed.

“We’re going to turn some of these off for you, Mr. Alexander, to repay what you, and they, have done to us.”

Click. 

The enticing smell of the velvet room  turns to spoiled milk, then to nothing. I stand up suddenly searching the room.  

“Please, tell us how this makes you feel.” 

Click. 

The room sways like a ship in a storm, spinning until I collapse. The music in my ears keeps slowing. 

Click. 

I reach for something, anything, to steady myself, desperate for stability. Something warm trickles down my arm. Unfeeling, the flesh of my fingers curls around an intricate blade. How can I not feel it? I threw it away. 

Click.

The room spins faster. Symbols flicker across the giant clock, none of them numbers. None of them are familiar. The only relief I have is that blissful, angelic music, even as the droning lingers, threatening to take that, too.

Click.  

Click. 

A bottle lands gracefully in my palm. A miracle. A blessing from my angelic choir, a refreshing cold drink. But I cannot feel it in my mouth. My wish of water is not granted by the gods.  

Click. 

Suddenly, I no longer care to save myself. No longer care to stop the bleeding, to quench my thirst. I realize I am now free in all ways but one, the music. That glorious, angelic music, filling me with calm…and that damned droning, so loud now I cannot ignore it any longer. It swells, rattling in the back of my head. My chest pounds. The room spins impossibly fast. 

Click.  

Everything turns black. Thank the gods, it’s done. No  more spinning, no more feeling, no more wanting. But I can still hear! I can still hear my sweet music. The song seemed to play forever. As the music played in my ears, I layed in the cage of the black sun of this new world, in this new velvet room. My skin withered into dust. In this empty eternity, in the back of my mind, the droning never stops. 

Suddenly, the music fades.  

“No. Please. Not my music!” I cry.  

The melody changes from a “hum”, then to a “brzzt”, then finally a “buzz” sound.  It gets higher, and louder, and higher, and louder, and higher, and louder. It turns  to whine, the highest pitch a human ear can hear before breaking. 

“Please let me keep my music! That's all I have! It’s me! It’s everything!!” I plead with the gods of this universe.  

However, the gods do not care. 

Click. 

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I wake in my bed. No luxurious silk sheets or music or cruel gods, just my room. But that dream, the velvet room, the sounds of the music in my  ears, the pounding in my chest…the droning from the back of my head, I swear that I’ve lived that dream before. 

I breathe, fully expanding my lungs and eagerly try to get up. I cannot. My arms, my legs, I cannot move them, Only my eyes, which dart around, panic seeping into my mind like ink  on a white canvas… No, wait, I see it. The canvas, and on it, a door, my door, it was opening, and from it a shadow started to crawl towards me on the floor. The shadow was large in shape, with several thin sticks pointing out from it; emitting a soft “buzzing” sound and approaching my bed erratically, all of its stick legs trying to move at the same time. The shadow escaped my view for a few seconds, but the  “buzzing” sound never left. It droned louder and louder into my ears, into the back of my head. 

It started then. It started on my fingers. It was an itching sensation, but instead of butterflies it was worms crawling in my skin. The buzzing never stopped. It moved up to my whole hand, then my elbow, 

up to my shoulder and spread out to my chest. The itching stayed there for some time. My eyes glued to  the black ceiling, the “buzzing” was so loud it filled my head, it filled my world, my eyes lost focus. I  couldn’t see but I felt the shadow creature laying on my chest and using its stick hands to prod my flesh. I felt it pushing it, touching my skin side to side. I somehow knew it was getting ready to feed and I…welcomed its touch. 

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I open my eyes, this time to sunlight and an itching sensation on my chest. I stand up and feel joy that I  can move my body again. I rub my eyes and scratch my chest to feel a bump in my chest hair. I look  down and I open my eyes to a tick feeding on me. It was perched to my right peck like a new born babe  suckling for life. I immediately grabbed it by its so-called neck and squeezed hard until its engorged body  exploded black ichor all over my hands. In a dazed state I brought my fingers up to face to smell the blood, immediately regretting the decision and recoiling from the smell of what I thought was rotten flesh. I jump out of my bed and run to my bathroom, throw the tick corpse into the trash and start my shower to clean myself of a horrible night to get ready to start my day. 

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“…in the past 3,000 years. The meteor has been examined by the state's first response science team, whose leader, Justin Wry; I managed to get an exclusive interview with. Professor Wry claims that…” 

I open my eyes and try to drown out the news caster with a bite of my ham sandwich before I realize Stacy sits down right in front of me. 

“Such amazing times we live in huh! A meteor landing in our town what are the odds? Mind if I sit down, of course not!” Stacy sits down with her lunch in her red travel bag and a trusting smile on her  innocent face. She always made me feel safe. I feel a bead of sweat come down my right temple.  

“I’m going to be going along with the secondary team later this afternoon” she keeps talking like I just  said something.  

“I just wanted to pick your brain about the time you spent with the rock. What was your reaction to it?” 

I feel a bead of sweat come down my left temple. I wipe it away with my hand.  

“Are you ok? You don’t look too good.” Stacy asks, genuine concern in her green eyes. 

“I had one of those dreams, within a dream, within a dream last night. It was more like a nightmare  within a night terror to tell the truth. ” 

“Oh I think I saw a movie about that once.” 

“Did you like the movie?” 

“I fell asleep and woke up confused.” she said with a laugh.

Stacy always knew how to make me smile. I feel an itch on the back of my scalp and I use my fingers to dig into my skin. I could feel a few bumps which I just knew were several ticks burrowing into my head. For only a split second, I heard a loud “buzz” sound, it was as loud as if it was a truck horn was right behind me. I  jump out of my chair and shake my head like a wet dog.  

“What’s wrong?!” Stacy follows my lead and stands quickly, knocking back her chair. 

“I felt three; no…four ticks in my hair! They were burrowing into my head!” I yell at her. 

Stacy runs over and looks for herself. She takes a moment running her slender fingers through my black  hair. 

“I don’t see anything Justin…” Stacy said with concern in her voice.

“What?!’ I run my own hands through my hair. There really was nothing. “But…it felt so real…” 

“However you are burning up and acting very irate. Why don’t you go home and get some rest, I’ll let  them know you left early.” 

I met this suggestion with a weak smile. “Yeah…you are right. I’ll go home, take a shower…” 

“Maybe two.” she added, then met my smile with hers.

“Maybe two.” I repeated what she said as I stumbled out the double doors, back to the train station. 

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I open my eyes having no idea how I made it home, but I fumble into my kitchen. I think back to the over-stimulated carousel they call the public train station. Between the headaches, the people, the sweating, the constant buzzing sound, the nausea, the ear pain…wait the ear pain is new, when did that happen? I reach my right index finger into my right ear to feel for the reason. I feel another bump, I feel another tick feeding inside my ear lobe. I scream out in pain.  

“No more!” I declare and run to my bathroom.  

I grab the tweezers from my cabinet and stick them into my ear. 

Grab any point of contact that feels like a tick, I twist and I pull as hard I can. Ripping apart my ear and causing blood to cascade freely down to my neck. 

I feel an itch on my calves. I lift my pants to see more of them. Squirming. Feeding. I know how to fix them now. Three motions. I know them now. 

Pluck, twist and pull. 

I keep plucking ticks on my legs. I keep causing my own flesh to tear. I keep bleeding all over my bathroom. I look down at my forearms. I see more of them, when did they appear?! So many ticks and they were all feeding me. 

I counted at a glance...fifteen…twenty three…thirty! Thirty ticks covering both of my forearms! But now I know what to do. Still holding the tweezers I began my work. My three steps. 

Pluck, twist and pull. 

Each pull of a tick I feel pleasure. Each peel of my skin I feel joy. I keep stripping away the meat until I find one tick that I cannot, that I do not want to pluck, twist or pull. It was on my chest, right in the center, feeding on me. It was as big as my hand and as black as the abyss. Its sac started to gorge and get bigger with my blood. As I kept looking at it feeding on me, the “buzzing” sound came back and I fall onto my bathroom floor, in a red covered mess. 

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I open my eyes on my bathroom floor to the sound of a door knocking, then opening slowly.  

“Hello? Justin?” a voice asked. “It’s me Stacy. I came to check up on you. I was worried. It’s been several hours and the door was open so I walked in…I hope you dont…” her voice trails off.

Suddenly feeling full of life and energy, like I awoke from the best sleep in my life, I eagerly jumped off the  bathroom floor and ran to greet the new guest. I could hear a loud buzzing sound in my ears.

 “Hello!” I have to think for a moment. “….Stacy! It’s so good to see you again!!” I give her my widest smile. 

“What’s going on, are you playing with me?” She asked with trepidation in her voice.

“Playing?” I ask genuinely, before I notice something squirming on her forehand. “Is that…” 

“Look if this is all some kind of act to get me to spend more time with you then just say it.” Stacy started. “Earlier you were acting all sick, but now you look like a hundred bucks, you’re all giddy, completely out of character, I don’t understand because to tell you the truth I do…” 

Without my thought or will commanding it, I stepped within 3 feet of Stacy. She yelps and takes one step back. I reach my hand out to touch her weak, frail flesh. 

She hits my hand with her palm. The small strip of what was pretending to be a piece of my skin falls down to the  ground. The human skin colored tick rocks side to side, before flipping around on its legs, it then started to crawl towards Stacy.  

“What is that!” she yells with pure fear in her eyes. 

The scream was so loud it startled me. I step back in response to this sonic attack, hitting some furniture and causing me to shake free the rest of my poor disguise. Like a tree during winter that is covered in snow, the other ticks started to fall off my body, exposing my open wounds. The other parasites were moving between my muscle fibers. A thousand black arachnids crawling all over each other.  

I regain my balance and take a step towards her. “Stacy…” I feel several ticks begin to crawl out of my ears, nose and mouth with each step I take. It tingles as they scurry over my flesh. The buzzing is so loud now. 

Stacy is paralyzed for a moment, then panic controls her and she runs right into a cabinet. She falls to the ground in front of me. 

“You have some ticks on you…I need to get them off of you…” I grab her weak, thin hand and pull her close to me like a forgotten lover. I start to pant like a dog. I am unable to control my saliva, it drips black and foul on her from my mouth. 

I use my finger nails to pinch, twist and pull the same ticks that were on me. 

“Those are my sunspots, not ticks! Justin, stop, please!!”  

She screams another sonic attack but all I hear is the buzzing sound now. It makes my work peaceful. I  look down at Stacy to see the rest of my swarm start to crawl all over her now. She is still alive. 

We need  her alive for the next step. We stood up, ripping apart my shirt with my claws and exposing the black tick that was attached to my chest to her. She looks in astonishment at the colony. We must make her feel welcomed. She will open her eyes soon.  

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The bite of a lone star tick can cause a person to develop Alpha gal Syndrome, which is a severe allergic  reaction to red meat, dairy and other byproducts. 

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