Ticks

A peaceful hike becomes a nightmare when parasites tied to childhood trauma appear.

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This is a horror story. Reader discretion is advised.

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"Fucking parasites." Sean's palm came away from his neck smeared with blood and the black paste of a crushed mosquito. The bastards had been hunting him since he'd stepped onto the trail that morning, undeterred by the coating of bug spray he'd liberally applied.

It could be worse, he thought, a shiver crawling up his spine despite the sweltering humidity—they could be ticks. They were supposed to be bad this year due to the drought, and the thought of those things filled his mouth with a sour taste and made his skin squirm.

Fallen trees and weathered stones marked a natural rest stop at the hilltop. Sean collapsed onto a hickory stump, his shirt clinging to his skin. His heart hammered against his ribs as he took a drink from his bottle, fingers pressed against his neck in an imitation of every medical drama he'd ever watched.

His pulse slowed and his breathing steadied. He slapped at a tickle on his leg without looking—another goddamned mosquito, he was sure—and took in his hard-earned view.

Magnificent. The one thing everyone knew about West Virginia was its beauty. An ocean of green, the hills rolling on like waves. A honeysuckle-flavored breeze blew and the treetops swayed, their rustling leaves a song that man couldn't imitate.

The tickling returned, more insistent now. His palm cracked against his leg with unnecessary force. Hopefully, the cursed insect suffered ten times worse than his stinging skin. But there was no trace of the insect on his palm, and the tickle continued.

Please don't be poison ivy.

He'd been careful not to walk through any, but it was possible he'd raked against some without noticing. Looking down—poison ivy would have been better.

A tick. Eight needle-thin legs wove through his leg hair, pulling itself higher. Its armored body—nature's disease-carrying tank—ignored his desperate slaps and kept crawling, climbing, undeterred.

His mind recoiled and his leg followed, rising for him to slap against it with the fury of two middle schoolers in a schoolyard brawl. A thousand strikes later, he calmed himself enough to make sure it was gone.

It was, but his now hypersensitive body was one raw nerve that felt everything. Beneath his shirt, countless legs crawling up his chest, his back.

He ran. Not a conscious choice but animal instinct. Screams echoed and died off the trunks of trees as he clawed at his skin like a man on fire. He had to get the shirt off. Had to. Fabric twisted around his head as he stumbled blind, tripping on branches, ankle twisting on stones. Head stuck in the shirt, wet cotton suctioned to his face, then freedom just in time to meet a walnut branch.

Crack.

Behind his eyes, an explosion of light. Down he spiraled, fear and ticks and darkness swallowing him whole.

In the dark, he saw himself when he was five and in the public showers at Mammoth Cave State Park, washing away that day's hike with the family. As he scrubbed, something strange pressed against his crotch, a small nodule hanging between his testicles and leg. Had he grown an extra testicle?

He rinsed away the soap, and there it was: a tick. Fat and swollen and bigger than his thumb from feeding on him.

His scream—the earth-ending kind of scream that only children can make—had his dad ripping the curtain aside in seconds. His eyes followed Sean's down where they locked on the parasite in horror.

"It's okay," his dad had said. "We'll pull it off. It'll be okay."

Sean nodded and closed his eyes as his dad reached for the thing.

Pain flared behind his eyes at the first tug, and he let out a whimper.

"Sorry. Thing's really in there," Dad said.

He tugged again. Sean's skin was peeling up like he was being ripped in half.

"C'mon, you bastard."

Then there was a pop. Meaty and unnatural. It echoed in the small shower stall and caught in the back of his throat where it tried to pull up the corndogs he'd had for dinner.

His eyes flared open. What had that been? Had his dad popped one of his testicles?

But there was no pain. Maybe it hadn't kicked in yet? Pain was funny like that. Sometimes it waited until you thought you were safe to show itself.

He didn't want to look, didn't want to know, but he needed to.

Dad's hand was covered in black blood. It oozed across his fingers and stained his nails. Between his fingers, a small deflated balloon, brown and wrinkled. Not his testicles but the body of the tick.

"Shit," Dad said, standing to put more quarters in the machine to turn the shower back on. "The head is still in. Rinse yourself off. Mom should have tweezers. We'll get it out at camp."

Sean didn't want to wait. He wanted it out now. Knowing that thing was inside him, devouring him, infecting him, was too much to process, and he started to cry.

In the present, as he came to, the memory faded as his consciousness returned, leaving a sense of deep unease. Something that matched the nausea in his stomach and weakness in his limbs.

His skin burned. Tight against his muscle and stiff.

He groaned, and it sounded—wrong.

He tried to open his eyes, but they fought against him, weighted with anvils. With force, he finally forced them.

Light shimmered down through the canopy. Above him, he made out the heavy tree limb. Through the flaked-off bark and bloody stain on it, he could piece together what happened. He must have run into it and knocked himself out.

Why was he running though? Then he remembered.

He shot up to a sitting position, aching muscles be damned, and looked for the ticks.

They were gone.

It was just skin, but his skin looked—strange.

His arms, legs, and torso were darker than he remembered. It looked like he was covered in scabs.

Had he run through a briar patch in panic and it scabbed over while he slept?

No. Briars he would have felt. And they wouldn't have been able to do this much damage. He looked like he was healing from a severe burn.

He reached out and gingerly touched his forearm. He didn't feel it.

But he could tell they weren't scabs. No, these were closer to scales. Tiny overlapping brown scales.

No. His mind ran away from the thought, trying to throw it away from himself like his stomach threatened to throw up its contents.

He ran his palm down his arm from elbow to wrist across the bubbling ridges.

Don't do it, a part of him begged, but like those decades ago in the shower, he had to know.

He reversed his path, brushing the scales upward.

They flaked up before settling back down with pings that pulled nausea from his lower spine.

Underneath each scale, tiny legs squirmed and writhed in the air as they were exposed. The skin underneath, where their heads burrowed in, was inflamed.

He vomited. His stomach heaved and contracted painfully even after all its contents were emptied.

That was wrong too.

Where was the sting of bile on the tongue? The burn of acid on his lips?

Don't, part of him begged.

But he had to know.

His tongue an alien thing in his mouth.

He had to know.

He ran it across his teeth. Scales lifted and fell with soft tinks.