Burrowed

Erin could feel an itchy sensation in the heel of his left foot. It had been acting up for the last hour and he'd paid no attention to it, except to scratch his foot against the footstool, but even that was more a subconscious act than anything else. Now however, the place where the piece of glass had entered his foot a few days ago was beginning to burn. Erin jerked forward and pulled his sock off quickly, then propped his leg on his right knee and turned it into the light. Around the scab, about an inch in either direction, the skin had turned an ashen grey. Erin turned his foot towards him as much as he possibly could without breaking his ankle, the pain in his ankle nothing compared to the building irritation in his foot. "What the fuck!" He began to scratch. His fingernails dug at the skin vigorously. After a minute and a half had passed he had a sickening vision of himself scratching all of the flesh off of his foot until all that remained was a blood stained bone. He dismissed the thought and continued to scratch and dig at his aching foot. No sooner had the one thought dispersed, another one followed on the ass end of its predecessor. In his mind he could hear a buzzing sound, low and constant. Something about that sound made him shiver, gooseflesh popped out on his skin from head to toe. His scrotum shriveled up, as if it had been dipped in a tub of ice. What the fuck is that sound?

As Erin continued to scratch, the grayness in his heel got darker and darker. He didn't notice this, the thought of making the itch stop becoming as important as a weeks end quota to a lazy cop. Only there was no one around for him to "pull over" and ticket, and he was left with an itch that he could scratch, but to no avail.

The buzzing continued to grow louder and louder in his mind until he wasn't sure if it was in his mind at all or an actual sound. Erin's eyes widened and his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth as he scratched up and down his foot. "Come on you little bastard." He said, his voice shaky. It felt like something was in there. If he hadn't have been drinking, he probably would have stopped to consider this, but instead he continued to dig. This was far beyond unusual, this was fucked. Instead of relieving the itch, it only began to burn and itch more. It felt as if a hot shard of glass were stuck in his foot. Finally, Erin stopped scratching and stared down at his foot. The grey was now almost black, and instead of an inch, it had spread to the beginning of his toes and up the back of his ankle. He let out a cry of shock and closed his eyes. "This isn't happening. This isn't happening." He shook his head and let out a gasp as his foot jerked with the movement.

When he'd been growing up, Erin had fallen in the creek out behind his house. This creek led to the dump, where medical waste and other nasty things were poured into a giant hill. When he'd come home soaking wet, his parents had asked him what had happened, and he had told them with tears welling in his eyes. After he'd come up with a bogus reason for being down there (a reason other than spying on girls from behind a tree on the slope) his father had laughed and told him that he was going to start glowing green and that they'd have their own personal mutant. His mother and a friend of his had laughed along, only Erin hadn't thought it very funny. Later that night he had dreamed that he sat up in bed and pulled the covers back; looking down at his legs he'd screamed and began to yell for his mother. The flesh on his legs from just above his knees and down was rotting away, and every time he moved another chunk would fall away. He'd woken up, actually screaming for his mother. Only Erin couldn't do that now, his mother having been dead now for well over six years. Instead he began to rock back and forth, sobbing and reaching down to his leg, but not quite gathering up the guts to touch it. The buzz was now like the roar of a chainsaw right next to his head. With one hand he tried to cover his ear but kept wiping at his mouth instead. It was as if he had reverted back to his younger self.

There was a stabbing pain in his foot and Erin cried out in shock and reached down to his foot. The buzz stopped, silence engulfed him. All he could hear now was his own ragged breathing and the sound of his heart beat throbbing in his temples. "Oh, God." He sobbed and hit himself in the side of the head. It now felt as if someone were taking red hot razor blades to the bottom of his foot. He cried out again, spit spraying from his mouth. He was sober now. He started to quote "Hail Mary, full of grace-" but before he could finish another bolt of pain ripped through his foot and up his leg. His leg fell from its perch and hit the wood floor with a thud. Erin screamed and grabbed at the fabric of his pants. "Oh, God. Oh, God." He began to whimper as he pulled his leg back up and rested it across his knee. Something seemed to be moving around again in the heel of his foot. Erin's bloodshot eyes widened as far as they could as he got an idea, lightning bolts of red veins zig zagging their way to the blue iris. He reached over to the table next to him, knocked over a couple cans of beer, the television remote and a bag of chips. Another shot of pain went through his foot. "Fuck!" His voice cracked and he nearly passed out. Finally his fingers ran over what he had been looking for. He picked the object up and brought it into view, a sick smile twisting his somewhat handsome features into a chaotic painting of pain and suffering. In his hand he held a silver and black pocket knife.

Flipping open the blade with a flick of his wrist and then laughing, Erin cocked his head to the side and brought the knife down to the flesh of his now jet black foot. "I'm gonna get you out. Gonna carve you out. Gonna rip you the fuck out!" He stabbed the knife into the wound, pulled it back out, and then stabbed it back in again. He screamed and laughed, screamed and laughed. The two sounds becoming one and the same. He plunged the knife a fourth time, and then ripped it out again. "HA!" He exclaimed and then threw the knife across the room.

He stared down at his ruined foot with an insane look of child-like glee. Ribbons of flesh went this way and that, and in one spot he could see the bone peaking through. A small geyser of blood erupted and sprayed him in the face. Erin giggled and wiped the blood around on his face. Somewhere in his mind he heard a shhhing sound and he got real quiet. He leaned in close so that his foot was a little more than a few inches from his face. A piece of flesh was moving. He grinned wide, reveling blood stained teeth. The piece of flesh seemed to vibrate for a few seconds and then stopped. All was still a few more seconds after, then the blood pink meat fell away to reveal some kind of a "bug."

Erin's eyes seemed to light like Christmas lights. "Well hello, little fella." He reached out a hand to touch it, but the bug (somewhere between a spider and a wasp) spread its wings and lifted into the air. He could hear the buzzing again; it was the sound of the creature's wings. He let his foot slide off of his knee, and seemed not to notice when it hit the floor with a sickening wet splat. The spider-wasp rose into the air in front of his face, seemed to regard him, and then flew away.

In the back of his mind he could hear a voice, a voice that he believed to be the spider-wasp's voice. It said, "Thank you, kind host." And then all was silent. Forty-five minutes later, Erin died from extreme blood loss.