Out, Damned Spot! Chapter 3
How It Escalated.
Content Warning: Extreme body horror, graphic self-harm, graphic violence and murder, strong language, intense psychological distress, and descriptions of foul odors and infection.
Reader discretion is strongly advised.
New to the Story? Start here:
Previous Chapter:
(Didn’t run screaming? Impressive. Let’s make it worse.)
The spots were spreading. Not only were they spreading, but they were also growing. The first one, the one on my big toe, now covered the entire digit down to the knuckle. The next two both had spots the size of kidney beans, and my fourth toe (ringtoe? Is that what it’s called?) had a small spot not much bigger than a grain of rice. These new spots itched worse than the one on my big toe as I curled my foot under and scrubbed it into the carpet, the rug burn relieving the itch and sending those lovely feelings of bliss shivering through my body.
I slathered my foot with the ointment and stopped scratching, biting down on a towel as the itching grew stronger and pinpricks plucked at my foot. I took a few Advil as well, maybe they would help dull the pain. I made it fifteen minutes without scratching before I broke down and had to relieve the itch.
I called in sick to work, relaying to Ken my experience the previous night at the Urgent Care and ER. Speaking of Urgent Care, I called and gave Dawn an earful for the shit she put me through yesterday. I even called her a daft cunt; I liked that new insult a lot. I figured I could get a lot of mileage out of my new fun slur before it gets old.
Dawn wasn’t working when I called, so I told whoever answered to relay the message. I’m sure she’ll get it.
I felt a twist in my stomach. I didn’t eat anything for the entire day. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, spilling milk all over the counter and myself when a twinge of pain bit my foot, and the muscles in my arm twitched in response.
How I thought cereal was a good fucking idea is beyond me. Every time I lifted the spoon to my mouth, my arm would twitch when the itching hit another spot, spilling milk and Cocoa Puffs everywhere. I was as successful feeding myself with a spoon as a Parkinson’s patient trying to thread a sewing needle while riding in the bed of a truck on a gravel road.
I threw the daft cunt of a spoon across the room and got on my knees and started slurping cereal straight from the bowl. This is what I’d been reduced to. I can’t even feed myself. I slurped as fast as I could because the itching in my foot was growing.
A twitch of pain caused a muscle tremor, pushing me face-first into the cereal.
“FUCK!” I screamed, then slammed my forehead as hard as I could into the bowl. I slammed it into the table over and over, embedding pieces of the bowl into my forehead and sending shards flying everywhere. Now my face was covered in milk, Cocoa Puffs, and blood.
I started sobbing. What the fuck was I going to do? I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t work. There’s only one thing I am good for now, and that’s itching. Itching and twitching. Two things. Itching, twitching, and bitching. Three things.
I am sure I would’ve sat there all day crying and bleeding in my spilled milk and Cocoa Puffs if it wasn’t for the knock on my door. In truth, it wasn’t the first knock; it was the second. I stood up and limped to the door.
I knew I couldn’t answer the door like this, face still covered in blood and cereal. Instead, I peered through the peephole to see who it was.
It was Sharon, the property manager. Now there’s someone worthy of being called a daft cunt if I ever knew one.
“Who is it?” I said, not opening the door.
“It’s Sharon, your landlord,” she began.
Property manager, I corrected but didn’t say. I didn’t know the difference between a property manager and a landlord, but the distinction was important to me in that moment.
She continued. “There have been complaints about the smell coming from your apartment. And as I was standing here, I heard you shout an obscenity that could be heard plain as day in the hallway by passing children.”
The one time she has a valid complaint. Still, fuck her.
And passing children? No kids lived here, so fuck that too. The smell, though, was valid, even if I doubted there were multiple complaints rather than just hers. The smell must be horrible, but I have been marinating in it so long that I have become immune to it.
“I’m sorry, I uhhh, was riding my bike yesterday and I…” I stammered as my foot twitched uncontrollably. If only I could become immune to that. “I… hit a skunk. I’m working on getting it cleaned up. I was in the emergency room last night due to the accident.”
“I still have to issue you with a complaint notice,” Sharon said.
Through the peephole, I saw her bend over with a dry heave. “I’ll just leave it out here.”
I unlatched the chain on my door. “No, no, it’s alright. Come in.”
I had no intention of letting her in, but I couldn’t resist messing with her.
“No, please don’t. I’ll just leave it here.”
I turned the doorknob and pulled the door just enough to free it from the weather seal.
“Joe, don’t you dare open this door, or so help me I’ll...”
I watched through the peephole as she ran down the hall, holding her hand over her mouth and retching. It was the first time I’d smiled in the past two days that wasn’t the result of scratching my foot until it bled.
I cleaned up the cereal mess and washed my face, using tweezers to pull small fragments of glass from my forehead. I swallowed another round of amoxicillin and applied more ointment to my foot. I also took a few more Advil. Five maybe? I didn’t really count, just shook them out of the bottle and tossed them back, chewing them like Flintstone vitamins.
I tried the hospital again, and again they repeated that the labs were still working on the culture swabs to determine the type of infection, and that unless my symptoms changed, I had to give the medicines some time to work. I mentioned the extra spots on my foot, but they said it didn’t count since they were symptomatic of the rash they were already treating. It crossed my mind to mention that scratching my foot felt so good that I wanted to jack off just thinking about it, but I figured that wasn’t going to help my case.
Wait and see. That was the only answer medical professionals had for me. Fuck that.
The ointment wasn’t doing shit for the itching, and I needed to think and focus. And so far, there was only one thing that helped.
Pain.
I walked into the utility room for the duct tape and a hammer, then went into the kitchen and grabbed a drinking glass and a plastic grocery bag. I put the glass in the bag, tied it shut, and smashed that fucker with the hammer until it broke into tiny glass shards. I unrolled a piece of duct tape about a foot long and laid it sticky side up on the counter.
I was panting in anticipation at the thought of how amazing this was going to feel. I managed to work through the itching and muscle tremors to pour the glass shards over the duct tape, careful to keep the ends glass-free so it would stick. I placed it glass side up on the floor, then, taking a deep breath, I pressed my toes into the glass-filled tape.
I let out a moan when the bite of the glass penetrated my skin. John Mellencamp was right. It hurt sooooo gooood. The relief was so intense I shuddered, tears welling up in my eyes, the pain hitting exactly the way I needed it to.
I pressed the ball of my foot into the floor to dig the glass deeper into my skin, then wrapped the rest of the tape over the top. I put my shoe on my other foot and stepped down on the tape, twisting my toe into it like I was stomping out a cigarette. My knees buckled as I fell forward into the counter.
The pain was excruciating, and so was the pleasure. I leaned into the counter, smacking my palm against it and moaning as the sensations passed over my body. My lips were quivering, and I was panting and gritting my teeth as my mind was flooded. The relief was more intense than anything I had felt before. Every time the itching tried to start back up I just shifted my foot against the glass and it was gone. I don’t even remember picking up the hammer, but I was holding it tight in my fist and smacking it against the counter as waves of euphoria and pain pulsed through my body.
The bliss of the moment was broken by another knock at the door.
“What do you think you’re doing in there?”
Sharon. Fuck. Not now. I twisted my foot into the ground, sending the waves over my body again. My hand clenched around the hammer, slamming it into the counter harder.
She continued, her voice sounding a bit off from earlier. “If you don’t stop that hammering right now, I am going to have to issue a noise complaint.”
“Not now, Sharon,” I yelled as I rapped the hammer into the counter, my muscles in my forearm aching from the grip.
She banged her fist into the door harder. “I am your landlord, Mr. Ericson. You don’t tell me what to do. If you don’t stop right this instant, I will have no choice but to bring this up to the tenant board.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and curled my toes as I kicked my foot into the cabinet. I slammed the hammer into the counter so hard that the laminate cracked.
“I said not FUCKING now, Sharon!”
I tried everything to block her out of my thoughts and focus on the sweet, sweet feelings of pain and pleasure washing over me.
She scoffed. “How dare you talk to me that way! This is the last straw, the noise, the smell, the disrespect. Once the tenant board hears about this, they’ll have no choice but to-”
She pushed me. You see that, right? I tried to block her out, but she kept pushing me, pushing me out of my happy place and my sweet sensations of pleasure and pain. It was gone now, and I could feel the tendrils of feathers and needles reclaiming their grasp of my foot.
I screamed with rage as I ran to the door, throwing it open. Outside, Sharon stood dumbfounded with a clothespin on her nose, pinching her nostrils shut. Her mouth dropped open and she let out a scream as I grabbed her by the front of her sweater and yanked her into my apartment, slamming the door behind me.
I threw her onto the floor and pinned her down, sitting on her chest as I put my hand over her mouth.
She squirmed underneath me, her screams muted against my palm as she flailed her arms and legs, trying to break free.
“Shhhhhhh,” I whispered. “Or I’ll have to report you for a noise complaint.”
That’s when I remembered I was still holding the hammer.
I smashed the hammer down into the middle of her forehead, caving it in. Her eyes bulged, and her body shook like she was being electrocuted.
“Is that too much noise, Sharon?” I asked. I was giggling. No fuck that, I was laughing, smashing her face in as my foot twitched, smashing over and over. “Is that too much noise? Is that too much fucking noise, Sharon? Is it? IS IT?”
I turned the hammer around and struck with the claw end, embedding it in her forehead, then pushing up on the handle like I was removing a stuck nail from the wall. But it wasn’t a nail. It was the middle of her face. Then I kept smashing, over and over, until her face was indistinguishable from a puddle of strawberry jam. Only then did she stop moving.
Motherfucker. What have I done?
I stood up, my face and arms matted with gore. Bits of Sharon were in my eyes, on my carpet, on my sofa, and even in my mouth as I spat out a piece of bone fragment.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!
I never meant for any of this to happen.
The hospital was out now. I had to take matters into my own hands. There was only one way to stop the itching.
I had to cut off my foot.
To be continued in Part 4: How I Was Going to Fix Everything.
(Next installment drops in one week — or sooner if the itch demands it.)
Man, this is hardcore.
escalated quite nicely, this one did